Mnemonics

[lar3ryca]

At the risk of perhaps duplicating an old thread...

What mnemonics do you know, useful or not, comical or not, let's have
'em.

I'll start with a few. First, the order of planets, from another thread,
and this time including three more, heard from the same source, which
nobody has yet guessed.

Mary's Virgin Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour
Moist Vagina Expected Might Just Steam Up Nightie
My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets
Many Volcanoes Emit Mulberry Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure

Correct spelling of words:
George Evans' Old Grandmother Rode A Pig Home Yesterday
A Red Indian Thought He Might Eat Tobaccon In Church
There is a 'rat' in 'desparate'

Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine it's
no longer used, for good reason:
Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.

[Rich Ulrich]

On Sat, 15 Jan 2022 14:27:18 -0800 (PST), lar3ryca
<lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:

Spelling mnemonics?

>There is a 'rat' in 'desparate'

That's an inadequate clue, not a mnemonic.

Disparate is separate from desperate.

--
Rich Ulrich

[Peter Moylan]

On 16/01/22 09:27, lar3ryca wrote:

> There is a 'rat' in 'desparate'

Better: there is an e-rat in 'desperate'.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

[lar3ryca]

On Saturday, January 15, 2022 at 9:02:56 PM UTC-6, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 16/01/22 09:27, lar3ryca wrote:
>
> > There is a 'rat' in 'desparate'
> Better: there is an e-rat in 'desperate'.

Darn! I couldn't remember that separate was the word in the mnemonic.
Would that count as a Skitt's Law example/

[Peter Moylan]

On 16/01/22 14:43, lar3ryca wrote:
> On Saturday, January 15, 2022 at 9:02:56 PM UTC-6, Peter Moylan
> wrote:
>> On 16/01/22 09:27, lar3ryca wrote:
>>
>>> There is a 'rat' in 'desparate'
>> Better: there is an e-rat in 'desperate'.
>
> Darn! I couldn't remember that separate was the word in the
> mnemonic. Would that count as a Skitt's Law example/

Not quite. Skitt's Law applies to the case where you make a mistake
while correcting someone else's mistake.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Sat, 15 Jan 2022 14:27:18 -0800 (PST)

lar3ryca <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:

> At the risk of perhaps duplicating an old thread...
>
> What mnemonics do you know, useful or not, comical or not, let's have
> 'em.
>
> I'll start with a few. First, the order of planets, from another thread,
> and this time including three more, heard from the same source, which
> nobody has yet guessed.
>
> Mary's Virgin Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour
> Moist Vagina Expected Might Just Steam Up Nightie
> My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets
> Many Volcanoes Emit Mulberry Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure

Most Vegetarians Eschew Meat, Joints Sometimes Upset Nice People

> Correct spelling of words:
> George Evans' Old Grandmother Rode A Pig Home Yesterday
> A Red Indian Thought He Might Eat Tobaccon In Church
> There is a 'rat' in 'desparate'

some errata required

>
> Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine it's
> no longer used, for good reason:
> Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.

Billy Bunter Rogers Old Yahoos, Gets Violent: Gosh! Waroosh!

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

[J. J. Lodder]

lar3ryca <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine it's
> no longer used, for good reason:
> Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.

Typically one that is more trouble than it is worth.
It is just a rainbow, or the spectral order of colours,
with faily obvious additions at the ends,

Jan

--
Still in use btw, and not just for resistors.
<https://www.hornbach.nl/shop/COROPLAST-Isolatietape-set-0-15x12x3300-mm-10-rollen/3896448/artikel.html>
(not in the right order, but all the right colours)

[Richard Heathfield]

On 16/01/2022 11:00, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Jan 2022 14:27:18 -0800 (PST) lar3ryca
> <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> At the risk of perhaps duplicating an old thread...
>>
>> What mnemonics do you know, useful or not, comical or not, let's
>> have 'em.
>>
>> I'll start with a few. First, the order of planets, from another
>> thread, and this time including three more, heard from the same
>> source, which nobody has yet guessed.
>>
>> Mary's Virgin Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour
>> Moist Vagina Expected Might Just Steam Up Nightie My Very Easy
>> Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets Many Volcanoes Emit Mulberry
>> Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure
>
> Most Vegetarians Eschew Meat, Joints Sometimes Upset Nice People

The alphabet song - "a b c d e f g h i..." stop me if you've heard this
before...

Stalactites cling tight to the ceiling; one day stalagmites might reach
the top.

Treble clef ascending lines:
Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

Treble clef ascending spaces: FACE

I know several for the bass clef too, but none of them worked. I never
really learned the bass clef until I spent several years of scraps of
spare time transcribing about 1,300 scores into Lilypond format. By the
time I was done, I knew the bass clef inside out, upside down, back to
front, and every which way but loose.

Pi: several good ones, including "Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling" - but
we did those to death quite recently. Besides, 3.14159265358979323846 is
its own mnemonic.

Tom Lehrer helps us with the Elements:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2cfju6GTNs>

>> Correct spelling of words: George Evans' Old Grandmother Rode A
>> Pig Home Yesterday A Red Indian Thought He Might Eat Tobaccon In
>> Church There is a 'rat' in 'desparate'
>
> some errata required

Rhythm has rhythm: r-H-y t-H-m

So does Dixieland: M - I Double S - I Double S - I Double P - I.
Bobbie Gentry sings it *here*: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HixZ_BIAt5o>

and lastly, my personal spelling favourite, because it just rolls off
the tongue so easily:

i before e except after c and except for absenteeism ageism albeit
apartheid beige caffeine canoeist casein codeine counterfeit cuneiform
decaffeinate deity deign feign feint feisty foreign forfeit freight
geisha gesundheit heifer height heinous heir heist herein heterogeneity
homogeneity inveigh inveigle kaleidoscope lei leisure leitmotif neigh
neighbour neither nonpareil nuclei obeisance onomatopoeia pharmacopoeia
plebeian poltergeist protein reign reimburse reimpose rein reincarnate
reindeer reinforce reinitialise reinsert reinstall reinstate reinterpret
reinvent reinvest reissue reiterate reiteration reveille seismic seize
sheikh skein sleigh sovereign spontaneity stein surfeit surveillance
their theism therein veil vein villein weigh weir weird wherein and all
their associated inflections and derived terms and no doubt a good few I
missed out.

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

[occam]

On 16/01/2022 12:13, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> lar3ryca <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine it's
>> no longer used, for good reason:
>> Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
>
> Typically one that is more trouble than it is worth.
> It is just a rainbow, or the spectral order of colours,
> with faily obvious additions at the ends,
>

I'm missing 'indigo' in the resistor scales. But I always found 7
colours a ridiculous summary of what is really a spectrum.

[Quinn C]

* lar3ryca:

> On Saturday, January 15, 2022 at 9:02:56 PM UTC-6, Peter Moylan wrote:
>> On 16/01/22 09:27, lar3ryca wrote:
>>
>>> There is a 'rat' in 'desparate'
>> Better: there is an e-rat in 'desperate'.
>
> Darn! I couldn't remember that separate was the word in the mnemonic.

Then it should also be: There is '*a* rat' in separate. Pretty sure the
second vowel is the most misspelled one, not the third one.

"Separate", I just have to say it to me in German if I'm unsure. For
"desperate", Spanish should work ("desperado").

--
Queer people shuttle between worlds each time they look up from
their smartphones at the people gathered around the family table;
as they climb the steps from the underground nightclub back into
the nation-state. In one world, time quickens; in the other it
dawdles. Spending your life criss-crossing from world to world can
make you quite dizzy. - Mark Gevisser

[Jonathan Harston]

On Saturday, January 15, 2022 at 10:27:21 PM UTC, lar3...@gmail.com wrote:
> Mary's Virgin Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour
> Moist Vagina Expected Might Just Steam Up Nightie
> My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets
> Many Volcanoes Emit Mulberry Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure

Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto.

> Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine it's
> no longer used, for good reason:
> Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.

Black Brown Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain never need the rest.

[Peter Moylan]

It had to be 7 because 7 is a mystical number. Seven colours fits in
with seven planets, seven heavenly virtues, seven deadly sins, seven
days of the week, seven brides for seven brothers, and so on.

[Ken Blake]

Don't forget seven wonders of the world, seven hills of Rome, seven
virtues, seven sacraments, seven dwarves (Doc, Dopey, Bashful, Grumpy,
Sneezy, Sleepy, Happy), seven dwarves (Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control
Data Corporation, Honeywell, General Electric, RCA), seven sisters,
the pleiades, seven samurai, the magnificent seven, seven seas, seven
oceans, seven continents, seven seals, and the seven words you can't
say on television.

[Richard Heathfield]

Forgetst thou neither kine nor corn!

Genesis 41:2 And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well
favored kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.
Genesis 41:3 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the
river, ill favored and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the
brink of the river.
Genesis 41:4 And the ill favored and leanfleshed kine did eat up the
seven well favored and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.
Genesis 41:5 And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold,
seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good.
Genesis 41:6 And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind
sprung up after them.
Genesis 41:7 And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full
ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, it was a dream.

[Jerry Friedman]

On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 4:39:08 PM UTC-7, Ken Blake wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 10:10:55 +1100, Peter Moylan
> <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:
>
> >On 17/01/22 02:05, occam wrote:
> >> On 16/01/2022 12:13, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> >>> lar3ryca <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine
> >>>> it's no longer used, for good reason: Bad Boys Rape Our Young
> >>>> Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
> >>>
> >>> Typically one that is more trouble than it is worth. It is just a
> >>> rainbow, or the spectral order of colours, with faily obvious
> >>> additions at the ends,
> >>
> >> I'm missing 'indigo' in the resistor scales. But I always found 7
> >> colours a ridiculous summary of what is really a spectrum.
> >
> >It had to be 7 because 7 is a mystical number. Seven colours fits in
> >with seven planets, seven heavenly virtues, seven deadly sins, seven
> >days of the week, seven brides for seven brothers, and so on.

> Don't forget seven wonders of the world, seven hills of Rome, seven
> virtues, seven sacraments, seven dwarves

"Dwarfs", except in Tolkien and Tolkien-influenced fantasy.

> (Doc, Dopey, Bashful, Grumpy,
> Sneezy, Sleepy, Happy), seven dwarves (Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control
> Data Corporation, Honeywell, General Electric, RCA), seven sisters,
> the pleiades, seven samurai, the magnificent seven, seven seas, seven
> oceans, seven continents, seven seals, and the seven words you can't
> say on television.

And seven notes in the septave. Uh, wait a second.

For more, see "A Rite of Spring" by Fritz Leiber, or something more mundane--
Wikipedia would probably help.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Ken Blake]

On Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:56:56 -0800 (PST), Jerry Friedman
<jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 4:39:08 PM UTC-7, Ken Blake wrote:
>> On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 10:10:55 +1100, Peter Moylan
>> <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> >On 17/01/22 02:05, occam wrote:
>> >> On 16/01/2022 12:13, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>> >>> lar3ryca <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>> Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine
>> >>>> it's no longer used, for good reason: Bad Boys Rape Our Young
>> >>>> Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
>> >>>
>> >>> Typically one that is more trouble than it is worth. It is just a
>> >>> rainbow, or the spectral order of colours, with faily obvious
>> >>> additions at the ends,
>> >>
>> >> I'm missing 'indigo' in the resistor scales. But I always found 7
>> >> colours a ridiculous summary of what is really a spectrum.
>> >
>> >It had to be 7 because 7 is a mystical number. Seven colours fits in
>> >with seven planets, seven heavenly virtues, seven deadly sins, seven
>> >days of the week, seven brides for seven brothers, and so on.
>
>> Don't forget seven wonders of the world, seven hills of Rome, seven
>> virtues, seven sacraments, seven dwarves
>
>"Dwarfs", except in Tolkien and Tolkien-influenced fantasy.

Yes, thanks. I don't know why I wrote "dwarves."

[Ken Blake]

I forget almost everything in the Bible, in part because I never knew
much of it.

[Peter T. Daniels]

(Because Newton devoted far more time to mysticism and
alchemy than to mathematics.)

"A guy don't get much sleep when he's sleepin' with sheep."

I'm inclined to put that as the best movie musical of the 1950s,
ahead of *A Star Is Born* and at least giving *Singin' in the
Rain* a run for its money.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, January 15, 2022 at 5:27:21 PM UTC-5, lar3...@gmail.com wrote:
> At the risk of perhaps duplicating an old thread...
>
> What mnemonics do you know, useful or not, comical or not, let's have
> 'em.

I could use a mnemonic for the twelve Minor Prophets.

[lar3ryca]

On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:13:52 AM UTC-6, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> lar3ryca <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine it's
> > no longer used, for good reason:
> > Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
> Typically one that is more trouble than it is worth.
> It is just a rainbow, or the spectral order of colours,
> with faily obvious additions at the ends,

Never noticed that. I like it.
Even 'black (no colour) and 'white' (all colours) makes sense.

[lar3ryca]

On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:
> On 16/01/2022 11:00, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
> > On Sat, 15 Jan 2022 14:27:18 -0800 (PST) lar3ryca
> > <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> At the risk of perhaps duplicating an old thread...
> >>
> >> What mnemonics do you know, useful or not, comical or not, let's
> >> have 'em.
> >>
> >> I'll start with a few. First, the order of planets, from another
> >> thread, and this time including three more, heard from the same
> >> source, which nobody has yet guessed.
> >>
> >> Mary's Virgin Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour
> >> Moist Vagina Expected Might Just Steam Up Nightie My Very Easy
> >> Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets Many Volcanoes Emit Mulberry
> >> Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure
> >
> > Most Vegetarians Eschew Meat, Joints Sometimes Upset Nice People
> The alphabet song - "a b c d e f g h i..." stop me if you've heard this
> before...

Is the alphabet in that order because of the song?

>
> Stalactites cling tight to the ceiling; one day stalagmites might reach
> the top.

Nice. I remember them because of the 't' for top,
and what's left is on the bottom.

"If I face north, I remember west is left because it has an E in it."
"But East has an E in it too."
"I really wish you hadn't told me that!"

>
> Treble clef ascending lines:
> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.

[lar3ryca]

And besides, Roy G Bv is hard to say.

[occam]

Ah, Newton, my all-time favourite crackpot. He was an ordained member of
the Christian Church, to boot.

[charles]

In article <oda9ugt04cbf8r1f7...@4ax.com>,

seven days in a week is probably the most fundamental

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

[Richard Heathfield]

Yes, all that nonsense about gravity and that. What a hidjit Newton was.
Truth: the earth sucks, right?

> He was an ordained member of
> the Christian Church, to boot.

Citation needed. He fought pretty hard to pursue his career /without/
ticking the box marked "ordained".

[J. J. Lodder]

Perhaps he was one of those mathematicians who think while sleeping.
Push against the problem in the daytime, without results.
Or do silly other things.
Waking up one morning, all is clear. It only takes writing it down.

Others have described the same happening with them,

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

Yes, most people will never have seen a real spectrum,
and the richness of it.
All they know about is washed out ones, like rainbows,
or reflections from the tapered sides of a mirror,

Jan

[Peter Moylan]

On 17/01/22 15:35, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 6:11:04 PM UTC-5, Peter Moylan wrote:
>> On 17/01/22 02:05, occam wrote:
>>> On 16/01/2022 12:13, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>>>> lar3ryca <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>>> Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I
>>>>> imagine it's no longer used, for good reason: Bad Boys Rape
>>>>> Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
>>>> Typically one that is more trouble than it is worth. It is
>>>> just a rainbow, or the spectral order of colours, with faily
>>>> obvious additions at the ends,
>>> I'm missing 'indigo' in the resistor scales. But I always found 7
>>> colours a ridiculous summary of what is really a spectrum.
>>
>> It had to be 7 because 7 is a mystical number. Seven colours fits
>> in with seven planets, seven heavenly virtues, seven deadly sins,
>> seven days of the week, seven brides for seven brothers, and so
>> on.
>
> (Because Newton devoted far more time to mysticism and alchemy than
> to mathematics.)

Let's not be too rough on Newton. The mysticism appeared rather late in
life, when he was possibly affected by mercury poisoning. Meanwhile, he
was still contributing to physics and (especially) mathematics for a
substantial part of his life. Those are fields where many of the best
people burn out early, doing their best work right near the beginning of
their careers. Newton kept going. He might have had a poisonous
personality, but his intellectual feats were impressive.

His writings on religion are, in hindsight, pretty solid Christian
theology in an age where Christian theology was a very respectable
pursuit for a gentleman. He got on the wrong side of the established
religion only because he argued against Trinitarianism - a position that
some Christians still hold.

Alchemy gets a bad rap that I believe is unjustified. Alchemy was just
the chemistry of that age. Most of it looks silly by the standards of
today's chemists, but isn't that true of any field of study while it is
still in its infancy?

[Peter Moylan]

On 17/01/22 20:54, J. J. Lodder wrote:

> occam <nob...@nowhere.nix> wrote:

>> Ah, Newton, my all-time favourite crackpot. He was an ordained
>> member of the Christian Church, to boot.
>
> Perhaps he was one of those mathematicians who think while sleeping.
> Push against the problem in the daytime, without results. Or do silly
> other things. Waking up one morning, all is clear. It only takes
> writing it down.
>
> Others have described the same happening with them,

I find something similar happening when I'm trying to solve a cryptic
crossword. When I'm at the point of getting nowhere with a clue, the
trick is to stop trying to find the answer, and to set my thinker on to
some other (preferably less demanding) task. Meanwhile, the work
continues in the background, and some minutes or hours later the answer
pops out.

Getting insights in the middle of the night has worked out less well for
me. When I've written down those answers, all I find in the morning is
meaningless scrawl.

[Peter Moylan]

On 17/01/22 16:19, lar3ryca wrote:
> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:13:52 AM UTC-6, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>> lar3ryca <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine it's
>>> no longer used, for good reason:
>>> Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
>> Typically one that is more trouble than it is worth.
>> It is just a rainbow, or the spectral order of colours,
>> with faily obvious additions at the ends,
>
> Never noticed that. I like it.
> Even 'black (no colour) and 'white' (all colours) makes sense.

And leaving out Indigo makes even more sense.

[J. J. Lodder]

Of course. The resistor colour code was invented for maximum clarity,
so it must not have obscure intermediate colours.
The anti-colours Cyan and Magenta are not in it for the same reason,
despite 10 colours being needed,

Jan

[occam]

On 17/01/2022 10:44, Richard Heathfield wrote:
> On 17/01/2022 08:22, occam wrote:
>> On 17/01/2022 00:10, Peter Moylan wrote:
>>> On 17/01/22 02:05, occam wrote:
>>>> On 16/01/2022 12:13, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>>>>> lar3ryca <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine
>>>>>> it's no longer used, for good reason: Bad Boys Rape Our Young
>>>>>> Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
>>>>>
>>>>> Typically one that is more trouble than it is worth. It is just a
>>>>> rainbow, or the spectral order of colours, with faily obvious
>>>>> additions at the ends,
>>>>
>>>> I'm missing 'indigo' in the resistor scales. But I always found 7
>>>> colours a ridiculous summary of what is really a spectrum.
>>>
>>> It had to be 7 because 7 is a mystical number. Seven colours fits in
>>> with seven planets, seven heavenly virtues, seven deadly sins, seven
>>> days of the week, seven brides for seven brothers, and so on.
>>>
>>
>> Ah, Newton, my all-time favourite crackpot.
>
> Yes, all that nonsense about gravity and that. What a hidjit Newton was.
> Truth: the earth sucks, right?

No quarrels with his optics, physics or maths.

However, if you take all the other nonsense into account (alchemy,
numerology, and the literal interpretation of the Bible) I'd say he
definitely qualified as a crackpot.

Have a look at no.5 on this list.
<https://blog.oup.com/2014/07/ten-myths-about-isaac-newton/>

A more definitive source for his religious nuttery can be found here:
<https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/contexts/CNTX00001>

>
>> He was an ordained member of
>> the Christian Church, to boot.
>
> Citation needed. He fought pretty hard to pursue his career /without/
> ticking the box marked "ordained".
>

Here you are correct. He was required to, but was never ordained.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 12:29:07 AM UTC-5, lar3...@gmail.com wrote:

> > The alphabet song - "a b c d e f g h i..." stop me if you've heard this
> > before...
>
> Is the alphabet in that order because of the song?

There has been much speculation (see Driver, *Semitic Writing* (1976
2nd ed. for discussion; more recently it has been found that Egyptian
started the list with H) but no plausible explanation has been devised.
I suggest that the letters are in the order the inventor thought of them.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 5:37:06 AM UTC-5, Peter Moylan wrote:

[second attempt at writing/posting]

> I find something similar happening when I'm trying to solve a cryptic
> crossword. When I'm at the point of getting nowhere with a clue, the
> trick is to stop trying to find the answer, and to set my thinker on to
> some other (preferably less demanding) task. Meanwhile, the work
> continues in the background, and some minutes or hours later the answer
> pops out.

When I'm stumped, I just set it aside; answers don't come to me out
of the blue. But when I pick it up the next day, some of them are
obvious, and usually give enough crossing letters to get (most of)
the rest. (These are in books or magazines, not newspapers, so the
answers are in the back, but I don't look at them until the third day
at least, and they usually turn out to be unfair clues or unknown words.)

[Richard Heathfield]

Clearly his understanding of reality when he was around is very
different to what yours would have been had you been around in the
seventeenth century, so obviously he's a crackpot. Well done you.

[Ken Blake]

On Sun, 16 Jan 2022 21:29:04 -0800 (PST), lar3ryca
<lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:

>> Treble clef ascending lines:
>> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
>
>Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.

also ...fun, ..fruit, and ...football.

[Ken Blake]

That reminds that in my first programming job (in 1963 or 64, I think)
the company I worked for had a new year's eve party that I went to.
After being there a while, I felt too drunk to safely drive home, so
I went back to my desk and continued to work on a program I was
writing.

The next day working day, I returned to my desk and saw all these
coding sheets with meaningless scrawls all over them.

[Quinn C]

* lar3ryca:

> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:

>> Treble clef ascending lines:
>> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
>
> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.

I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.

The ones I did use regarding music were:

Geh du alter Esel Heringe fischen
Fieberkranke Buben essen Aspirin deshalb gesund

(not directly applicable to English, but the first one might be
recognizable.)

--
Statler: I was just thinking, apropos of nothing, but is it
pronounced tomayto or tomahto?
Waldorf: Is what pronounced tomayto or tomahto?

[lar3ryca]

On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 11:48:38 AM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
> * lar3ryca:
> > On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:
>
> >> Treble clef ascending lines:
> >> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
> >
> > Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
> I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
> useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.

For one who knows more about music than I do, I imagine.

> The ones I did use regarding music were:
>
> Geh du alter Esel Heringe fischen
> Fieberkranke Buben essen Aspirin deshalb gesund
>
> (not directly applicable to English, but the first one might be
> recognizable.)

Not to me. Care to explain?

I was stationed in Germany at an RCAF base near a small town (Village?,
Hamlet?) named Hügelsheim. One day I decided to do some skeet shooting,
and asked someone if they knew where I could find a skeet range.
They told me it was near the racetrack in a nearby town, and I went
looking for it.

We found the racetrack, but could not find anything resembling a skeet
range. While driving past the racetrack (it was enclosd by a high
fence), I saw a young boy, perhaps 10, riding his bicycle toward us,
and I stopped him to ask where the skeet range was.

My German was not anywhere near fluent, having only had two years of it
in high school, but I had looked up "skeet shooting", which was
"tontauben schiessen".

So I rehearsed it quickly in my head, and asked, in my possibly broken
German:

"Koenne Sie mur sagen, wo is die tauben scheissen?"

He got a strange look on his face, and I realized right away what I had
actually asked. His strange look was definitely him trying not to laugh.

He said something that sounded like he was puzzled, and I said.

"Oh. Koenne Sie mur sagen, wo is die TONTAUBEN SCHIESSEN!?"

He pointed to the racetrack fence and said "Herein".

I thanked him, and drove on. As I did, I looked in the rear-view mirror,
and saw him lying on his back, obviously laghing uproariuosly.

I ended up with a great respect for that young fellow. He acted in a
most diplomatic and polite manner. I bet all his friends and relatives
appreciated the humour as much as he did.

[Ken Blake]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 12:48:29 -0500, Quinn C
<lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:

>* lar3ryca:
>
>> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:
>
>>> Treble clef ascending lines:
>>> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
>>
>> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
>
>I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
>useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.
>
>The ones I did use regarding music were:
>
> Geh du alter Esel Heringe fischen
> Fieberkranke Buben essen Aspirin deshalb gesund
>
>(not directly applicable to English, but the first one might be
>recognizable.)

Circle of fifths?

[Quinn C]

* Ken Blake:

The candidate has gained 12 points!

--
Quinn C
My pronouns are they/them
(or other gender-neutral ones)

[Richard Heathfield]

On 17/01/2022 18:36, lar3ryca wrote:
> On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 11:48:38 AM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
>> * lar3ryca:
>>> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:
>>
>>>> Treble clef ascending lines:
>>>> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
>>>
>>> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
>> I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
>> useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.
>
> For one who knows more about music than I do, I imagine.

There is indeed a simple logic to the order of the notes, so in theory
you can identify a note by knowing just one reference point (middle C,
for example) and working everything out from there. But EGBDF gives you
five reference points, greatly speeding up sight reading. To call EGBDF
and FACE mnemonics useless is like calling multiplication tables useless
because you can use repeated addition to work out any required multiple.
That's true - you can - but the tables helped us when we were kids. When
we can multiply in our heads, we no longer use multiplication tables,
but that doesn't mean they weren't useful when we were learning.
Similarly, once you know the treble clef you don't need EGBDF, but that
doesn't mean it isn't useful to beginners. Music teachers know what
they're doing when they teach these mnemonics.

[lar3ryca]

Ahh!
Gin, Disaronno, Absinthe, Everclear, Hiram Walker, Frangelico?

[lar3ryca]

OK. I like music, or at least most of it.
But I don't read it, play it, or understand most of its terminology.

[Ken Blake]

Have a fifth of each of these, and you'll no longer care about what
the mnemonic stood for...

...or care about anything else.

[Quinn C]

* lar3ryca:

> On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 11:48:38 AM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
>> * lar3ryca:
>>> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:
>>
>>>> Treble clef ascending lines:
>>>> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
>>>
>>> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
>> I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
>> useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.
>
> For one who knows more about music than I do, I imagine.

Or those who know more about the alphabet. You may have learned a
mnemonic for that one long ago. It might have started "Apple, ball,
circus ..."

>> The ones I did use regarding music were:
>>
>> Geh du alter Esel Heringe fischen
>> Fieberkranke Buben essen Aspirin deshalb gesund
>>
>> (not directly applicable to English, but the first one might be
>> recognizable.)
>
> Not to me. Care to explain?

Here are English ones I found quickly:

Caroline Goes Down And Eats Bread Fast.
Caroline Flattens BEADs Good.

Caroline is gratuitous to me, but OK.

It's the order of the Major scales by number of sharps (first line) or
flats (second line). G Major has one sharp, D Major, two, etc. The
English mnemonics above start at 0, the German ones I know at 1.

The differences to English are that German H is English B, and that in
German, more than the first letter is significant - ESsen ASpirin
DEShalb GESund encodes E♭ A♭ D♭ G♭, while the English mnemonics above
don't include which letters have a sharp or flat behind them.

When I used a text-based musical notation program, it didn't have German
mode OOTB, but it had Dutch, so I just had to learn to use "Bes" for
German "B" (and "B" for "H" as in English).

[Quinn C]

* J. J. Lodder:

My experience, too. My girlfriend thought I wasn't working hard at my
math thesis because she mostly found me not at my desk, but on the bed,
sometimes scribbling, but often watching TV, or just daydreaming. But
that all was the setup that led to less consciously controlled parts of
my brain doing a lot of work. Sometimes they suddenly required a
midnight stroll to pick up speed. Reading a book or meeting people,
OTOH, would have interfered.

--
They spend so much time fussing about my identity
that I really shouldn't have to bother with it
myself at all.
-- Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman, p.223

[Quinn C]

* Richard Heathfield:

> Similarly, once you know the treble clef you don't need EGBDF, but that
> doesn't mean it isn't useful to beginners. Music teachers know what
> they're doing when they teach these mnemonics.

I may not appreciate it because I started learning the notes at a time
when I wasn't even expected to know the alphabet yet (although I did).

And when you play an instrument, you don't have time to decipher notes -
you need to translate them into finger actions with minimal delay. In
theory, one can learn the note to finger relation without naming the
notes, and learn naming them in a separate process using other parts of
the brain, but that seems inefficient to me, too. Possibly speaking from
a privileged position.

[Ken Blake]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 18:15:57 -0500, Quinn C
<lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:

>* Richard Heathfield:
>
>> Similarly, once you know the treble clef you don't need EGBDF, but that
>> doesn't mean it isn't useful to beginners. Music teachers know what
>> they're doing when they teach these mnemonics.
>
>I may not appreciate it because I started learning the notes at a time
>when I wasn't even expected to know the alphabet yet (although I did).

I think I was around 10 or 11 when I started.

>And when you play an instrument, you don't have time to decipher notes -

Very true.

>you need to translate them into finger actions with minimal delay.

I play classical guitar and I can translate a note into a finger
action immediately, with no thinking, as long as the finger action
isn't above the fifth or sixth fret. If I need to play a note in a
higher position, I can translate it to a finger action, but it takes a
little thought and therefore a little time--time that I don't have.

That's why it's very important for me to memorize the pieces I play,
but unfortunately my skills at memorizing music are very poor. It
takes me a long time, and lots of practice.

I've been working on Giuliani's "Le Rose" for several months now. I
have about 3/4 of it memorized, but the few parts I can't remember
screw me up every time.

[Lewis]

In message <ss3dq5$npk$1...@dont-email.me> Richard Heathfield <r...@cpax.org.uk> wrote:
> On 17/01/2022 08:22, occam wrote:
>> On 17/01/2022 00:10, Peter Moylan wrote:
>>> On 17/01/22 02:05, occam wrote:
>>>> On 16/01/2022 12:13, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>>>>> lar3ryca <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Colour codes of resistors. We learned the this one, but I imagine
>>>>>> it's no longer used, for good reason: Bad Boys Rape Our Young
>>>>>> Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
>>>>>
>>>>> Typically one that is more trouble than it is worth. It is just a
>>>>> rainbow, or the spectral order of colours, with faily obvious
>>>>> additions at the ends,
>>>>
>>>> I'm missing 'indigo' in the resistor scales. But I always found 7
>>>> colours a ridiculous summary of what is really a spectrum.
>>>
>>> It had to be 7 because 7 is a mystical number. Seven colours fits in
>>> with seven planets, seven heavenly virtues, seven deadly sins, seven
>>> days of the week, seven brides for seven brothers, and so on.
>>>
>>
>> Ah, Newton, my all-time favourite crackpot.

> Yes, all that nonsense about gravity and that. What a hidjit Newton was.

He was still a bit of a crackpot. Gravity and the Royal Mint were not
the only things he did in his life.

>> He was an ordained member of
>> the Christian Church, to boot.

> Citation needed. He fought pretty hard to pursue his career /without/
> ticking the box marked "ordained".

I have no idea about ordained, but he certainly wrote as much about
religion as about anything else, perhaps more.

--
Behind every great man there's a woman with a vibrator--Hawkeye Pierce

[lar3ryca]

On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 4:44:16 PM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
> * lar3ryca:
> > On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 11:48:38 AM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
> >> * lar3ryca:
> >>> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:
> >>
> >>>> Treble clef ascending lines:
> >>>> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
> >>>
> >>> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
> >> I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
> >> useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.
> >
> > For one who knows more about music than I do, I imagine.
> Or those who know more about the alphabet. You may have learned a
> mnemonic for that one long ago. It might have started "Apple, ball,
> circus ..."

I know all I need to know bout the alphabet, but am at a loss as to why
you think that if I knew more about the alphabet, that I would
automatically know something about (as you inform me later) "the order
of the Major scales by number of sharps or flats".

TBH, I have no idea what a Major scale is, let alone how many sharps or
flats are in them. As I said, I like music, and that's as far as it
goes.

[Peter Moylan]

Good Boys Deserve Fruit Always, and All Cows Eat Grass.

[Peter Moylan]

On 18/01/22 05:36, lar3ryca wrote:
> On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 11:48:38 AM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
>> * lar3ryca:
>>> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard
>>> Heathfield wrote:
>>
>>>> Treble clef ascending lines: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
>>>
>>> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
>> I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
>> useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.
>
> For one who knows more about music than I do, I imagine.

One of my high school classmates taught piano, and she absolutely
detested that mnemonic and all its relatives. Once you've established
the habit of counting up the lines, it's hard to break.

You can't sight-read until you can react to the note immediately, on
sight, without having to count up from other notes. My friend used to
complain about the effort needed to get her students to unlearn the
mnenonics. The most successful learners were the ones who hadn't learnt
the mnemonics.

[Peter Moylan]

On 18/01/22 10:46, Ken Blake wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 18:15:57 -0500, Quinn C

>> And when you play an instrument, you don't have time to decipher notes -
>
> Very true.
>
>> you need to translate them into finger actions with minimal delay.

When I first took guitar lessons, at the age of thirty-something, my
teacher got me to play EFG over and over again (with some variants like
GFE and EGF). That was three notes on a single string. The idea was to
get me used to transferring those notes directly from the sheet music to
my fingers, without a conscious detour through my brain.

The secondary idea, which turned out to be very important, was to learn
the notes one string at a time. I'm not sure we even got to the second
string in the first lesson. We certainly didn't get to the second string
until I had thoroughly mastered the first string.

That approach really helped me. Once I got to the point of taking exams,
sight reading was my greatest strength. I don't think I would have been
as good at it if we had started with the EGBDF approach.

[Richard Heathfield]

On 18/01/2022 07:09, Peter Moylan wrote:
> Once I got to the point of taking exams, sight reading was my greatest
> strength. I don't think I would have been as good at it if we had
> started with the EGBDF approach.

Approach? What is "the EGBDF approach"? EGBDF hardly constitutes an
approach to learning to read music. It's just the names of the stave
lines. "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" isn't an approach either; it's
just a mnemonic.

For the guitar, learning two or three notes of a string each lesson (and
for each note, where it is on the stave and where it is on the guitar
and playing the one as you read the other so that you learn to associate
the written note with how to play that note on the guitar) is very much
an approach, and a very good one.

But on reflection, I can think of one reason why a guitar teacher might
want to avoid the mnemonic; some slower students might confuse it with
the EADGBE names of the guitar strings.

[Richard Heathfield]

On 18/01/2022 06:53, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 18/01/22 05:36, lar3ryca wrote:
>> On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 11:48:38 AM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
>>> * lar3ryca:
>>>> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard
>>>> Heathfield wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Treble clef ascending lines: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
>>>>
>>>> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
>>> I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
>>> useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.
>>
>> For one who knows more about music than I do, I imagine.
>
> One of my high school classmates taught piano, and she absolutely
> detested that mnemonic and all its relatives. Once you've established
> the habit of counting up the lines, it's hard to break.

I learned the mnemonic as a child. I never established the habit of
counting up the lines. Why would you do that?

If you know what the E line, G line, B line, D line and F line mean, you
don't have to count from anywhere.

> You can't sight-read until you can react to the note immediately, on
> sight, without having to count up from other notes.

Agreed, which is why "a simple logic to the order of the notes" is
inadequate to the task. Checking your way along an order is too slow.
You need to know where you are just by looking. Some people find that
EGBDF helps them to learn where they are.

Ultimately, though, you learn to sight read by correctly reading a few
thousand notes. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

[Lewis]

In message <ss62m3$v2l$1...@dont-email.me> Richard Heathfield <r...@cpax.org.uk> wrote:
> On 18/01/2022 06:53, Peter Moylan wrote:
>> On 18/01/22 05:36, lar3ryca wrote:
>>> On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 11:48:38 AM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
>>>> * lar3ryca:
>>>>> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard
>>>>> Heathfield wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Treble clef ascending lines: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
>>>>>
>>>>> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
>>>> I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
>>>> useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.
>>>
>>> For one who knows more about music than I do, I imagine.
>>
>> One of my high school classmates taught piano, and she absolutely
>> detested that mnemonic and all its relatives. Once you've established
>> the habit of counting up the lines, it's hard to break.

> I learned the mnemonic as a child. I never established the habit of
> counting up the lines. Why would you do that?

> If you know what the E line, G line, B line, D line and F line mean, you
> don't have to count from anywhere.

Exactly this.

When i was a child, I learned a mnemonic for the planets, and one for
the order of taxonomy. I do not even remember the one for the planets
because I learned the planets and quickly had no need for a mnemonic,
while I still know and use "Kings Play Chess on Friday, Generally
Speaking" because I never had the same interest of base of knowledge in
biology.

Had I been more interested n biology I would probably still use whatever
mnemonic I learned for the planets and not think at all about the one
for biology.

Also, and perhaps even more important, I learned the order of the
planets as a very young child, and I didn't start learning about genus
and species until Jr high school (11-14).

> Agreed, which is why "a simple logic to the order of the notes" is
> inadequate to the task. Checking your way along an order is too slow.
> You need to know where you are just by looking. Some people find that
> EGBDF helps them to learn where they are.

I had to take piano in high school, and learning the notes well enough
to rote-play through three pieces of music was a struggle for me. Every
Good Boy... certainly helped me decode the piece and keep track of where
I was in the piece. I never learned to *actually* play music, but the
tiny little bit of knowledge from that semester has helped a little bit
when I've seen a piece of music to suss out a very basic idea of what
the music might sound like (very VERY basic).

I did buy a keyboard (electronic) in my late 20s and tried to fumble
around with it, but I was distracted by all the shiny computer gear of
the late 80s to 90s I also had and never made any progress.

--
Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.
--Soul Music

[Quinn C]

* lar3ryca:

> On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 4:44:16 PM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
>> * lar3ryca:
>>> On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 11:48:38 AM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
>>>> * lar3ryca:
>>>>> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Treble clef ascending lines:
>>>>>> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
>>>>>
>>>>> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
>>>> I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
>>>> useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.
>>>
>>> For one who knows more about music than I do, I imagine.
>> Or those who know more about the alphabet. You may have learned a
>> mnemonic for that one long ago. It might have started "Apple, ball,
>> circus ..."
>
> I know all I need to know bout the alphabet, but am at a loss as to why
> you think that if I knew more about the alphabet, that I would
> automatically know something about (as you inform me later) "the order
> of the Major scales by number of sharps or flats".

No, in this paragraph, we're talking about "Every Good Boy Deserves
Fudge", which is a mnemonic for "*E* F *G* A *B* C *D* E *F*".

[Ken Blake]

I'm very good at sight-reading, as long as what I'm playing is in low
positions. Get me into a high position, and although I can still
sight-read, It takes me an unacceptably long time to figure out each
note.

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 09:42:38 +0000, Richard Heathfield
<r...@cpax.org.uk> wrote:

>On 18/01/2022 07:09, Peter Moylan wrote:
>> Once I got to the point of taking exams, sight reading was my greatest
>> strength. I don't think I would have been as good at it if we had
>> started with the EGBDF approach.
>
>Approach? What is "the EGBDF approach"? EGBDF hardly constitutes an
>approach to learning to read music. It's just the names of the stave
>lines. "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" isn't an approach either; it's
>just a mnemonic.
>
>For the guitar, learning two or three notes of a string each lesson (and
>for each note, where it is on the stave and where it is on the guitar
>and playing the one as you read the other so that you learn to associate
>the written note with how to play that note on the guitar) is very much
>an approach, and a very good one.
>
>But on reflection, I can think of one reason why a guitar teacher might
>want to avoid the mnemonic; some slower students might confuse it with
>the EADGBE names of the guitar strings.

Just a slight clarification: EADBE are the pitches of the strings in
standard tuning, but not all guitar pieces use standard tuning. For
example, to play Tarrega's "Capricho Arabe" (one of my favorites), the
guitar has to be tuned DADBE.

[lar3ryca]

Listening to that right now, played by Ana Vidovic.
Beautiful!
I think that must be fairly (very?) difficult to play.

[Ken Blake]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 20:38:22 -0800 (PST), lar3ryca
<lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 4:44:16 PM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
>> * lar3ryca:
>> > On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 11:48:38 AM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
>> >> * lar3ryca:
>> >>> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>> Treble clef ascending lines:
>> >>>> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
>> >>>
>> >>> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
>> >> I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
>> >> useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.
>> >
>> > For one who knows more about music than I do, I imagine.
>> Or those who know more about the alphabet. You may have learned a
>> mnemonic for that one long ago. It might have started "Apple, ball,
>> circus ..."
>
>I know all I need to know bout the alphabet, but am at a loss as to why
>you think that if I knew more about the alphabet, that I would
>automatically know something about (as you inform me later) "the order
>of the Major scales by number of sharps or flats".
>
>TBH, I have no idea what a Major scale is, let alone how many sharps or
>flats are in them.

You probably don't want to know, but just in case you do--

A major scale is one with the following differences between notes:

1-whole tone-2-whole tone-3-half tone-4-whole tone-5-whole
tone-6-whole tone-7-half tone-8.

If you don't know what half tones and what whole tones are, going up a
half tone is going up one fret on a guitar, and a whole tone is going
up two frets on a guitar.

Similarly on a piano, going up a half tone is going up one key
(without regard to their color) and a whole tone is going up two keys.

How many sharps or flats there are depends on the key. So the C Major
sale is CDEFGABC, and the G major scale has one sharp and is GABCDEF#G

Note that the distance between the notes ABCDEFGA are all whole tones
except for E-F and B-C, which are half tones.

[Ken Blake]

I learned those mnemonics many years ago, but I never use them. I
never made any effort to unlearn them. I just know what note each
string and space represent.

[lar3ryca]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 12:49:14 PM UTC-6, Ken Blake wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 20:38:22 -0800 (PST), lar3ryca
> <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 4:44:16 PM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
> >> * lar3ryca:
> >> > On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 11:48:38 AM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
> >> >> * lar3ryca:
> >> >>> On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 5:52:40 AM UTC-6, Richard Heathfield wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>>> Treble clef ascending lines:
> >> >>>> Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Or as I learned it, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
> >> >> I rarely do mnemonics in general, but this one seems exceptionally
> >> >> useless. There is a simple logic to the order of the notes.
> >> >
> >> > For one who knows more about music than I do, I imagine.
> >> Or those who know more about the alphabet. You may have learned a
> >> mnemonic for that one long ago. It might have started "Apple, ball,
> >> circus ..."
> >
> >I know all I need to know bout the alphabet, but am at a loss as to why
> >you think that if I knew more about the alphabet, that I would
> >automatically know something about (as you inform me later) "the order
> >of the Major scales by number of sharps or flats".
> >
> >TBH, I have no idea what a Major scale is, let alone how many sharps or
> >flats are in them.
> You probably don't want to know, but just in case you do--

You are right. I didn't particularly want to know, but I do find it
interesting, in that I am interested in many things, whether or not I
will ever use the knowledge, or even remember it.

So I thank you for the explanation..

>
> A major scale is one with the following differences between notes:
>
> 1-whole tone-2-whole tone-3-half tone-4-whole tone-5-whole
> tone-6-whole tone-7-half tone-8.
>
> If you don't know what half tones and what whole tones are, going up a
> half tone is going up one fret on a guitar, and a whole tone is going
> up two frets on a guitar.
>
> Similarly on a piano, going up a half tone is going up one key
> (without regard to their color) and a whole tone is going up two keys.
>
> How many sharps or flats there are depends on the key. So the C Major
> sale is CDEFGABC, and the G major scale has one sharp and is GABCDEF#G

Two questions.
1. What distance in tones are sharps or flats?
2. Is that an F-sharp or a G-sharp in the example?

[Jerry Friedman]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 11:58:49 AM UTC-7, lar3...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 12:49:14 PM UTC-6, Ken Blake wrote:

...

> > A major scale is one with the following differences between notes:
> >
> > 1-whole tone-2-whole tone-3-half tone-4-whole tone-5-whole
> > tone-6-whole tone-7-half tone-8.
> >
> > If you don't know what half tones and what whole tones are, going up a
> > half tone is going up one fret on a guitar, and a whole tone is going
> > up two frets on a guitar.
> >
> > Similarly on a piano, going up a half tone is going up one key
> > (without regard to their color) and a whole tone is going up two keys.
> >
> > How many sharps or flats there are depends on the key. So the C Major
> > sale is CDEFGABC, and the G major scale has one sharp and is GABCDEF#G
> Two questions.
> 1. What distance in tones are sharps or flats?

A half tone (or half-step or semitone).

> 2. Is that an F-sharp or a G-sharp in the example?

F-sharp.

> > Note that the distance between the notes ABCDEFGA are all whole tones
> > except for E-F and B-C, which are half tones.

If you can sing on pitch, including do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do, you can hear the
half-tones between mi and fa, and between ti and do.

Some familiar tunes: "To Celia" ("Drink to me only") goes up a half-tone to
"only" and up a whole tone to "with".

"Londonerry Air" = "Danny Boy" = "An Irish Love Song" ' etc. goes up a
half-tone, then a whole-tone, then a whole-tone in the first four notes.

"All Through the Night" goes down a half-tone and then down a whole-tone
in the first three notes.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Sam Plusnet]

I thought taking holy orders was required of anyone who attended a
university at that time?

--
Sam Plusnet

[lar3ryca]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 1:41:28 PM UTC-6, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 11:58:49 AM UTC-7, lar3...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 12:49:14 PM UTC-6, Ken Blake wrote:
> ...
> > > A major scale is one with the following differences between notes:
> > >
> > > 1-whole tone-2-whole tone-3-half tone-4-whole tone-5-whole
> > > tone-6-whole tone-7-half tone-8.
> > >
> > > If you don't know what half tones and what whole tones are, going up a
> > > half tone is going up one fret on a guitar, and a whole tone is going
> > > up two frets on a guitar.
> > >
> > > Similarly on a piano, going up a half tone is going up one key
> > > (without regard to their color) and a whole tone is going up two keys.
> > >
> > > How many sharps or flats there are depends on the key. So the C Major
> > > sale is CDEFGABC, and the G major scale has one sharp and is GABCDEF#G
> > Two questions.
> > 1. What distance in tones are sharps or flats?
> A half tone (or half-step or semitone).
> > 2. Is that an F-sharp or a G-sharp in the example?
> F-sharp.
> > > Note that the distance between the notes ABCDEFGA are all whole tones
> > > except for E-F and B-C, which are half tones.
> If you can sing on pitch, including do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do, you can hear the
> half-tones between mi and fa, and between ti and do.

Singing is something I do in private, lest I scare the women and
children. I have no idea whether I sing on pitch or not.

As usual, this music theory stuff baffles me.

I recently had a discussion with a friend who plays drums. We were
talking about time signatures. I think the only signature I can actually
identify is 3/4 (if that is, indeed, a waltz). However, it does not
stop me from enjoying 'Kathy's Waltz', 'Take Five', or
'Blue Rondo a la Turk'.

[Mack A. Damia]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 11:57:27 -0800 (PST), lar3ryca

I had a pretty good singing voice growing up. I even sang "Dein ist
mein ganzes Herz" in German and did it fair justice. A gal I knew in
Pittsburgh said I should take singing lessons and rent myself out to
weddings and other events.

Shoulda-woulda stuff. Too late now, methinks.

>As usual, this music theory stuff baffles me.

Bet Jerry is a whiz at mathematics.

[Ken Blake]

And she's very good.

>I think that must be fairly (very?) difficult to play.

Yes, it's difficult, especially for an intermediate-level player like
me. But I've worked on it for years, and it's considerably better than
it used to be.

Here's another one of my favorites,and it's even more difficult:
Giuliani's "Le Rose"--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T09n7gexS

I'm getting much better at that too.

[Jerry Friedman]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 12:57:30 PM UTC-7, lar3...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 1:41:28 PM UTC-6, Jerry Friedman wrote:

...

> > If you can sing on pitch, including do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do, you can hear the
> > half-tones between mi and fa, and between ti and do.

> Singing is something I do in private, lest I scare the women and
> children. I have no idea whether I sing on pitch or not.

Scaring people isn't a good sign, I happen to know.

> As usual, this music theory stuff baffles me.

Well, I'll stop. There are ways to pursue this further if you want.

> I recently had a discussion with a friend who plays drums. We were
> talking about time signatures. I think the only signature I can actually
> identify is 3/4 (if that is, indeed, a waltz).

It is.

> However, it does not
> stop me from enjoying 'Kathy's Waltz', 'Take Five', or
> 'Blue Rondo a la Turk'.

...

Next: "Money" (though it doesn't seem to be your style).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0kcet4aPpQ

--
Jerry Friedman

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 10:58:47 -0800 (PST), lar3ryca

You're welcome. Glad to help..

>> A major scale is one with the following differences between notes:
>>
>> 1-whole tone-2-whole tone-3-half tone-4-whole tone-5-whole
>> tone-6-whole tone-7-half tone-8.
>>
>> If you don't know what half tones and what whole tones are, going up a
>> half tone is going up one fret on a guitar, and a whole tone is going
>> up two frets on a guitar.
>>
>> Similarly on a piano, going up a half tone is going up one key
>> (without regard to their color) and a whole tone is going up two keys.
>>
>> How many sharps or flats there are depends on the key. So the C Major
>> sale is CDEFGABC, and the G major scale has one sharp and is GABCDEF#G
>
>Two questions.
>1. What distance in tones are sharps or flats?
>2. Is that an F-sharp or a G-sharp in the example?

See Jerry's reply and let me add two following comments:

1. The symbols for flat and sharp follow the note they pertains to. So
F# is F-sharp. #G would be meaningless.

2. Think of a piano. The black keys are sharps (or flats). As I said,

going up a half tone is going up one key (without regard to their

color). So if you can identify the F key (white), the black key
immediately to its right (just to the left of the next white key, G)
is F-sharp (aka G-flat), a half tone higher.

[charles]

In article <oe9eug9892475d8qt...@4ax.com>,

Of course, if you meet music that has been transposed by a computer you
also get interesting notes like 'C flat' or 'E sharp'. Very confusing when
sight reading.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

[lar3ryca]

I had a good enough voice to be in the boy's choir in elementary school,
grades 5 and 6. We actually competed in a province-wide competition.
I can't for the life of me remember how we did, except that our
choirmaster said she was very proud of us.

[Ken Blake]

Yes, but that's not an issue of being transposed by a computer. Yes,
C-flat is the same as B and E-sharp is the same as F, but C-flat and
E-sharp are the correct "spellings" of those notes in some situations.

Similarly, you sometimes see double sharps and double flats and they
are the correct spellings in some situations.

[lar3ryca]

I never learned an instrument, except for being able to play the bass
line of the 'Peter Gunn' theme. There is one thing that I can do on the
piano that sounds OK.

Referring to <https://www.onlinepianist.com/virtual-piano>, I play:

567 99 567 99 765 33 765 33

> Of course, if you meet music that has been transposed by a computer you
> also get interesting notes like 'C flat' or 'E sharp'. Very confusing when
> sight reading.

I once heard that if you are a tightrope walker, you have to
C-sharp or B-flat.

[lar3ryca]

I like that song. In fact, I like most Pink Floyd stuff.

I have eclectic musical tastes, and the only genres I just can't stand
are rap and church music.

[Anders D. Nygaard]

Den 18-01-2022 kl. 19:20 skrev Ken Blake:
>
> Just a slight clarification: EADBE are the pitches of the strings in
> standard tuning, but not all guitar pieces use standard tuning. For
> example, to play Tarrega's "Capricho Arabe" (one of my favorites), the
> guitar has to be tuned DADBE.

Probably an incredibly stupid question, but: Why?

(And yes, the piece is indeed "hauntingly beautiful")

/Anders, Denmark

[Richard Heathfield]

On 18/01/2022 18:20, Ken Blake wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 09:42:38 +0000, Richard Heathfield
> <r...@cpax.org.uk> wrote:

<snip>

>> But on reflection, I can think of one reason why a guitar teacher might
>> want to avoid the mnemonic; some slower students might confuse it with
>> the EADGBE names of the guitar strings.
>
>
> Just a slight clarification: EADBE are the pitches of the strings in
> standard tuning, but not all guitar pieces use standard tuning. For
> example, to play Tarrega's "Capricho Arabe" (one of my favorites), the
> guitar has to be tuned DADBE.

I think you lost a G in transit. Setting that aside, I certainly
recognise your substantive point, but I suspect that by the time
students attempt such a piece they are well up to speed on their string
nomenclatures.

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 23:14:26 +0100, "Anders D. Nygaard"
<news2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Den 18-01-2022 kl. 19:20 skrev Ken Blake:
>>
>> Just a slight clarification: EADBE are the pitches of the strings in
>> standard tuning, but not all guitar pieces use standard tuning. For
>> example, to play Tarrega's "Capricho Arabe" (one of my favorites), the
>> guitar has to be tuned DADBE.
>
>Probably an incredibly stupid question, but: Why?

Two reasons:

1. The piece is in D minor and D major, and therefore often contains
the low D that can't be played with standard tuning.

2. I can't put my finger on (pun intended) the exact places, but there
are undoubtedly some phrases that couldn't be fingered in standard
tuning.

>(And yes, the piece is indeed "hauntingly beautiful")

Glad you like it.

[lar3ryca]

On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 8:48:14 AM UTC-6, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 12:29:07 AM UTC-5, lar3...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > The alphabet song - "a b c d e f g h i..." stop me if you've heard this
> > > before...
> >
> > Is the alphabet in that order because of the song?
> There has been much speculation (see Driver, *Semitic Writing* (1976
> 2nd ed. for discussion; more recently it has been found that Egyptian
> started the list with H) but no plausible explanation has been devised.
> I suggest that the letters are in the order the inventor thought of them.

That is an incredible response, Peter. I leave it to you to figure out
why.

[Richard Heathfield]

On 18/01/2022 18:58, lar3ryca wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 12:49:14 PM UTC-6, Ken Blake wrote:

<snip>

>> How many sharps or flats there are depends on the key. So the C Major
>> sale is CDEFGABC, and the G major scale has one sharp and is GABCDEF#G
>
> Two questions.
> 1. What distance in tones are sharps or flats?

Half a tone up or down (a "semitone"). There are twelve semitones in an
octave.

The pitch of a note depends on the frequency with which the medium is
set vibrating. (For example, concert pitch A sounds at 440Hz.

Given a note named X and of frequency Z Hz, the note X♯ is a "semitone"
higher in pitch, having a frequency of approximately 1.06Z - that is 2
to the power of 1/12ths. (Thus, if one note is twelve semitones higher
than another it sounds at twice the frequency of the first.) To sharpen
a note is to multiply its frequency by 1.06, and to flatten it is to
divide by 1.06. Concert pitch A is 440Hz, so concert pitch A♯ (or,
equivalently, B♭) is 440*1.06 = roughly 466.4.

That may sound complicated, but it's the Janet-and-John version, believe me.

> 2. Is that an F-sharp or a G-sharp in the example?

The example is the one-sharp scale of G major, which is G A B C D E F♯ G

[Richard Heathfield]

On 18/01/2022 19:44, Sam Plusnet wrote:
> On 18-Jan-22 1:09, Lewis wrote:
>> In message <ss3dq5$npk$1...@dont-email.me> Richard Heathfield
>> <r...@cpax.org.uk> wrote:
>>> On 17/01/2022 08:22, occam wrote:

<snip>
>>
>>>> He [Newton] was an ordained member of

>>>> the Christian Church, to boot.
>>
>>> Citation needed. He fought pretty hard to pursue his career /without/
>>> ticking the box marked "ordained".
>>
>> I have no idea about ordained, but he certainly wrote as much about
>> religion as about anything else, perhaps more.
>>
> I thought taking holy orders was required of anyone who attended a
> university at that time?

It was, but Newton found a loophole.

[Quinn C]

* Ken Blake:

Yes, if you understand what's going on, they're not too surprising. But
sometimes, there are stupid notations. Several times, we had scores in
choir that went from C-flat to B or similar with a slur ... that turns
out to be a tie. Confuses the hell out of people.

When we practiced the circle of fifth in music theory class, at some
point the teacher had a question that he announced he'd only expect me
to be able to answer (something of the kind: "which minor scale has 10
sharps?" Three of those would be double sharps.)

--
- You all packed?
- Vagabond shoes and all. And pepper spray. For if we run into
that Trump character.
-- Veronica Mars, S02E22 (2006)

[Quinn C]

* Jerry Friedman:

> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 12:57:30 PM UTC-7, lar3...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 1:41:28 PM UTC-6, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> ...
>
>>> If you can sing on pitch, including do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do, you can hear the
>>> half-tones between mi and fa, and between ti and do.
>
>> Singing is something I do in private, lest I scare the women and
>> children. I have no idea whether I sing on pitch or not.
>
> Scaring people isn't a good sign, I happen to know.
>
>> As usual, this music theory stuff baffles me.
>
> Well, I'll stop. There are ways to pursue this further if you want.

I'm of the school that "everyone can sing." I.e., you can get halfway
decent if you want to. But there's no obligation to, either.

--
The wrong body ... now comes not to claim rightness but to
dismantle the system that metes out rightness and wrongness
according to the dictates of various social orders.
-- Jack Halberstam, Unbuilding Gender

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 22:19:25 +0000, Richard Heathfield

<r...@cpax.org.uk> wrote:

>On 18/01/2022 18:20, Ken Blake wrote:
>> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 09:42:38 +0000, Richard Heathfield
>> <r...@cpax.org.uk> wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>>> But on reflection, I can think of one reason why a guitar teacher might
>>> want to avoid the mnemonic; some slower students might confuse it with
>>> the EADGBE names of the guitar strings.
>>
>>
>> Just a slight clarification: EADBE are the pitches of the strings in
>> standard tuning, but not all guitar pieces use standard tuning. For
>> example, to play Tarrega's "Capricho Arabe" (one of my favorites), the
>> guitar has to be tuned DADBE.
>
>I think you lost a G in transit.

Yes, thanks, I lost an entire string. Should have been DADGBE.

>Setting that aside, I certainly
>recognise your substantive point, but I suspect that by the time
>students attempt such a piece they are well up to speed on their string
>nomenclatures.

Yes. probably true of most guitar students. It was too long ago to be
sure, but it was probably true of me.

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 18:15:47 -0500, Quinn C
<lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:

>* Jerry Friedman:
>
>> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 12:57:30 PM UTC-7, lar3...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 1:41:28 PM UTC-6, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>> ...
>>
>>>> If you can sing on pitch, including do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do, you can hear the
>>>> half-tones between mi and fa, and between ti and do.
>>
>>> Singing is something I do in private, lest I scare the women and
>>> children. I have no idea whether I sing on pitch or not.
>>
>> Scaring people isn't a good sign, I happen to know.
>>
>>> As usual, this music theory stuff baffles me.
>>
>> Well, I'll stop. There are ways to pursue this further if you want.
>
>I'm of the school that "everyone can sing." I.e., you can get halfway
>decent if you want to. But there's no obligation to, either.

Yes, everyone can sing (even me). Singing is easy. Singing well is
another matter entirely (and that doesn't include me). It's not
different from playing the guitar, piano, violin, etc. well. It takes
practice and talent.

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 18:15:46 -0500, Quinn C
<lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:

>* Ken Blake:
>
>> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 21:32:33 +0000 (GMT), charles
>> <cha...@candehope.me.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>Of course, if you meet music that has been transposed by a computer you
>>>also get interesting notes like 'C flat' or 'E sharp'. Very confusing when
>>>sight reading.
>>
>> Yes, but that's not an issue of being transposed by a computer. Yes,
>> C-flat is the same as B and E-sharp is the same as F, but C-flat and
>> E-sharp are the correct "spellings" of those notes in some situations.
>>
>> Similarly, you sometimes see double sharps and double flats and they
>> are the correct spellings in some situations.
>
>Yes, if you understand what's going on, they're not too surprising. But
>sometimes, there are stupid notations.

Yes.

> Several times, we had scores in
>choir that went from C-flat to B

Ugh. I don't remember ever seeing that.

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 22:44:24 +0000, Richard Heathfield
<r...@cpax.org.uk> wrote:

>On 18/01/2022 18:58, lar3ryca wrote:
> > On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 12:49:14 PM UTC-6, Ken Blake wrote:
><snip>
>
> >> How many sharps or flats there are depends on the key. So the C Major
> >> sale is CDEFGABC, and the G major scale has one sharp and is GABCDEF#G
> >
> > Two questions.
> > 1. What distance in tones are sharps or flats?
>Half a tone up or down (a "semitone"). There are twelve semitones in an
>octave.
>
>The pitch of a note depends on the frequency with which the medium is
>set vibrating. (For example, concert pitch A sounds at 440Hz.
>
>Given a note named X and of frequency Z Hz, the note X♯ is a "semitone"
>higher in pitch, having a frequency of approximately 1.06Z - that is 2
>to the power of 1/12ths. (Thus, if one note is twelve semitones higher
>than another it sounds at twice the frequency of the first.) To sharpen
>a note is to multiply its frequency by 1.06, and to flatten it is to
>divide by 1.06. Concert pitch A is 440Hz, so concert pitch A♯ (or,
>equivalently, B♭) is 440*1.06 = roughly 466.4.
>
>That may sound complicated, but it's the Janet-and-John version, believe me.

That's for sure. Go into all the details, and it gets much more
complicated.

But it's good enough for folk music.

> > 2. Is that an F-sharp or a G-sharp in the example?
>
>The example is the one-sharp scale of G major, which is G A B C D E F♯ G

Yes.

[Peter Moylan]

On 19/01/22 09:23, Ken Blake wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 23:14:26 +0100, "Anders D. Nygaard"
> <news2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Den 18-01-2022 kl. 19:20 skrev Ken Blake:
>>>
>>> Just a slight clarification: EADBE are the pitches of the strings
>>> in standard tuning, but not all guitar pieces use standard
>>> tuning. For example, to play Tarrega's "Capricho Arabe" (one of
>>> my favorites), the guitar has to be tuned DADBE.
>>
>> Probably an incredibly stupid question, but: Why?

> Two reasons:
>
> 1. The piece is in D minor and D major, and therefore often contains
> the low D that can't be played with standard tuning.

To put it another way: in standard tuning, the lowest note you can play
is an E, and there are times you'd really like to be able to play one
note lower.

> 2. I can't put my finger on (pun intended) the exact places, but
> there are undoubtedly some phrases that couldn't be fingered in
> standard tuning.

Sometimes, especially in fast pieces, you want to put certain notes on
open strings, so that, for example, the left hand can focus on the
melody while letting the non-melody notes look after themselves. I've
occasionally had to play a piece in a very nonstandard tuning like DADADF#.

(But you don't want to tune down too far, or you get a rattling effect;
and you also don't want to tune too high, or the string will break.)

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

[Peter Moylan]

On 19/01/22 05:16, Ken Blake wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 18:09:42 +1100, Peter Moylan
> <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 18/01/22 10:46, Ken Blake wrote:
>>> On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 18:15:57 -0500, Quinn C
>>
>>>> And when you play an instrument, you don't have time to
>>>> decipher notes -
>>>
>>> Very true.
>>>
>>>> you need to translate them into finger actions with minimal
>>>> delay.
>>
>> When I first took guitar lessons, at the age of thirty-something,
>> my teacher got me to play EFG over and over again (with some
>> variants like GFE and EGF). That was three notes on a single
>> string. The idea was to get me used to transferring those notes
>> directly from the sheet music to my fingers, without a conscious
>> detour through my brain.
>>
>> The secondary idea, which turned out to be very important, was to
>> learn the notes one string at a time. I'm not sure we even got to
>> the second string in the first lesson. We certainly didn't get to
>> the second string until I had thoroughly mastered the first
>> string.
>>
>> That approach really helped me. Once I got to the point of taking

>> exams, sight reading was my greatest strength. I don't think I
>> would have been as good at it if we had started with the EGBDF
>> approach.
>

> I'm very good at sight-reading, as long as what I'm playing is in
> low positions. Get me into a high position, and although I can still
> sight-read, It takes me an unacceptably long time to figure out each
> note.

Oh, moi aussi. I know all the notes on the top string, but on all the
other strings I can't get past the fifth fret without counting.

[Peter Moylan]

On 19/01/22 08:32, charles wrote:

> Of course, if you meet music that has been transposed by a computer
> you also get interesting notes like 'C flat' or 'E sharp'. Very
> confusing when sight reading.

Confusing on a keyboard, but not a real problem on a string instrument.
You know where E is, so E# is one semitone higher. The fact that you
land on the same place as the note formerly known as F can be ignored.

[Ken Blake]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 10:56:04 +1100, Peter Moylan
<pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>On 19/01/22 09:23, Ken Blake wrote:
>> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 23:14:26 +0100, "Anders D. Nygaard"
>> <news2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Den 18-01-2022 kl. 19:20 skrev Ken Blake:
>>>>
>>>> Just a slight clarification: EADBE are the pitches of the strings
>>>> in standard tuning, but not all guitar pieces use standard
>>>> tuning. For example, to play Tarrega's "Capricho Arabe" (one of
>>>> my favorites), the guitar has to be tuned DADBE.
>>>
>>> Probably an incredibly stupid question, but: Why?
>
>> Two reasons:
>>
>> 1. The piece is in D minor and D major, and therefore often contains
>> the low D that can't be played with standard tuning.
>
>To put it another way: in standard tuning, the lowest note you can play
>is an E, and there are times you'd really like to be able to play one
>note lower.
>
>> 2. I can't put my finger on (pun intended) the exact places, but
>> there are undoubtedly some phrases that couldn't be fingered in
>> standard tuning.
>
>Sometimes, especially in fast pieces, you want to put certain notes on
>open strings, so that, for example, the left hand can focus on the
>melody while letting the non-melody notes look after themselves. I've
>occasionally had to play a piece in a very nonstandard tuning like DADADF#.

Yes to all the above, but one additional point. All (almost all?)
classical guitar pieces are written with the tuning specified. You
don't get to choose what tuning you want.

>(But you don't want to tune down too far, or you get a rattling effect;
>and you also don't want to tune too high, or the string will break.)

Yes and yes.

[Peter Moylan]

On 19/01/22 09:47, Richard Heathfield wrote:
> On 18/01/2022 19:44, Sam Plusnet wrote:
>> On 18-Jan-22 1:09, Lewis wrote:
>>> In message <ss3dq5$npk$1...@dont-email.me> Richard Heathfield
>>> <r...@cpax.org.uk> wrote:
>>>> On 17/01/2022 08:22, occam wrote:

> <snip>
>>>
>>>>> He [Newton] was an ordained member of the Christian Church,
>>>>> to boot.
>>>
>>>> Citation needed. He fought pretty hard to pursue his career
>>>> /without/ ticking the box marked "ordained".
>>>
>>> I have no idea about ordained, but he certainly wrote as much
>>> about religion as about anything else, perhaps more.
>>>
>> I thought taking holy orders was required of anyone who attended a
>> university at that time?
>
> It was, but Newton found a loophole.

One that he definitely needed to keep his job. He was a Christian, but
not the right sort of Christian to be compatible with the Church of England.

(The CofE believed in a trinity, and Newton thought that was heretical.)

[Ken Blake]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 10:59:54 +1100, Peter Moylan

I can usually get to the sixth fret, and sometimes even the seventh.
One of the things I know I should practice, but hardly ever do, is
learning all the notes on all the strings, up to the 12th fret at
least.

And there's an occasional note I often need to play in a high position
that always remember. For example, the second string, tenth fret is an
A.

By the way, for the non-guitarists here, when Peter says the *top*
string, he means the highest-pitched string, the high E string
(normally). When the guitar is held in normal playing position, it's
physically the lowest string.

[Ken Blake]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 11:13:50 +1100, Peter Moylan
<pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>On 19/01/22 08:32, charles wrote:
>
>> Of course, if you meet music that has been transposed by a computer
>> you also get interesting notes like 'C flat' or 'E sharp'. Very
>> confusing when sight reading.
>
>Confusing on a keyboard, but not a real problem on a string instrument.
>You know where E is, so E# is one semitone higher. The fact that you
>land on the same place as the note formerly known as F can be ignored.

I agree that it's perhaps less confusing on a string instrument but
it's still confusing. It's such a strange notation that is so seldom
seen...

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 1:58:49 PM UTC-5, lar3...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 12:49:14 PM UTC-6, Ken Blake wrote:
> > On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 20:38:22 -0800 (PST), lar3ryca
> > <lar3...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > >TBH, I have no idea what a Major scale is, let alone how many sharps or
> > >flats are in them.
> > You probably don't want to know, but just in case you do--
>
> You are right. I didn't particularly want to know, but I do find it
> interesting, in that I am interested in many things, whether or not I
> will ever use the knowledge, or even remember it.
>
> So I thank you for the explanation..
>

> > A major scale is one with the following differences between notes:
> > 1-whole tone-2-whole tone-3-half tone-4-whole tone-5-whole
> > tone-6-whole tone-7-half tone-8.
> > If you don't know what half tones and what whole tones are, going up a
> > half tone is going up one fret on a guitar, and a whole tone is going
> > up two frets on a guitar.
> > Similarly on a piano, going up a half tone is going up one key
> > (without regard to their color) and a whole tone is going up two keys.

> > How many sharps or flats there are depends on the key. So the C Major
> > sale is CDEFGABC, and the G major scale has one sharp and is GABCDEF#G
>
> Two questions.
> 1. What distance in tones are sharps or flats?

> 2. Is that an F-sharp or a G-sharp in the example?

[I see that many have posted since I wrote this, but I suspect
they are uber-technical and this may still be useful]

What do you mean by "distance in tones"? In modern tuning (such
as is used for a piano or an organ), there are 12 semitones in an
octave. F# is one semitone higher than F-natural, Bb is one semitone
lower than B. This means that F# and Gb are sounded by the same
piano key.

Two semitones make a whole tone. (A semitone is a half-step.)

Any major scale has the pattern whole-whole-half, whole, whole-
whole-half. You can see this in the white keys of the piano for
C Major. Where there's no black key in between, the two white
keys are only a semitone apart. That pattern can be found beginning
on any of the notes.

If you slowly play the 8 white keys up from a C, you will come
to a satisfactory conclusion with the second C you come to.
Similarly starting on any other note, if you observe the wholes
and halfs.

There are several different kinds of minor scales, so they're
too complicated to go into now.

2. In prose, the "accidentals" -- the sharp, flat, or natural indicators --
go after the letter names, but in music notation they go to the
left of the notehead.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 6:15:56 PM UTC-5, Quinn C wrote:
> * Ken Blake:
> > On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 21:32:33 +0000 (GMT), charles
> > <cha...@candehope.me.uk> wrote:

> >>Of course, if you meet music that has been transposed by a computer you
> >>also get interesting notes like 'C flat' or 'E sharp'. Very confusing when
> >>sight reading.
> > Yes, but that's not an issue of being transposed by a computer. Yes,
> > C-flat is the same as B and E-sharp is the same as F, but C-flat and
> > E-sharp are the correct "spellings" of those notes in some situations.

They're "the same" only in fixed-pitch instruments. (Does that include
fretted string instruments? Hopefully they can bend the pitch when
called for.) A singer or a bowed instrument can make F# higher than Gb
and the harmony will be especially sweet.

> > Similarly, you sometimes see double sharps and double flats and they
> > are the correct spellings in some situations.
>
> Yes, if you understand what's going on, they're not too surprising. But
> sometimes, there are stupid notations. Several times, we had scores in
> choir that went from C-flat to B or similar with a slur ... that turns
> out to be a tie. Confuses the hell out of people.

If you were singing stuff with that sort of modulation, you must
have been pretty advanced.

> When we practiced the circle of fifth in music theory class, at some
> point the teacher had a question that he announced he'd only expect me
> to be able to answer (something of the kind: "which minor scale has 10
> sharps?" Three of those would be double sharps.)

Why would anyone notate a score that way?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 7:13:54 PM UTC-5, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 19/01/22 08:32, charles wrote:
>
> > Of course, if you meet music that has been transposed by a computer
> > you also get interesting notes like 'C flat' or 'E sharp'. Very
> > confusing when sight reading.
> Confusing on a keyboard, but not a real problem on a string instrument.
> You know where E is, so E# is one semitone higher. The fact that you
> land on the same place as the note formerly known as F can be ignored.

You really shouldn't land on the same place. (Unless you have to
play along with a piano.)

[Quinn C]

* Quinn C:

> * Ken Blake:
>
>> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 21:32:33 +0000 (GMT), charles
>> <cha...@candehope.me.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>Of course, if you meet music that has been transposed by a computer you
>>>also get interesting notes like 'C flat' or 'E sharp'. Very confusing when
>>>sight reading.
>>
>> Yes, but that's not an issue of being transposed by a computer. Yes,
>> C-flat is the same as B and E-sharp is the same as F, but C-flat and
>> E-sharp are the correct "spellings" of those notes in some situations.
>>
>> Similarly, you sometimes see double sharps and double flats and they
>> are the correct spellings in some situations.
>
> Yes, if you understand what's going on, they're not too surprising.

When someone does things as complicated, harmonically, as Scriabin, you
can't be surprised to find flats, sharps and double sharps on any note,
possible all in the same bar. But it is easy to read something wrong in
there, too.

<https://youtu.be/xDTgj_69JKA?t=368>

(The hardest piece I ever seriously tried. I didn't really manage the
last third or so, i.e. it was probably an incomprehensible mess for the
audience. But if I hadn't committed to playing it in concert, I'd never
have put even that amount of work in.)

--
Quinn C
My pronouns are they/them
(or other gender-neutral ones)

[Quinn C]

* Peter T. Daniels:

> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 6:15:56 PM UTC-5, Quinn C wrote:
>> * Ken Blake:
>>> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 21:32:33 +0000 (GMT), charles
>>> <cha...@candehope.me.uk> wrote:
>
>>>>Of course, if you meet music that has been transposed by a computer you
>>>>also get interesting notes like 'C flat' or 'E sharp'. Very confusing when
>>>>sight reading.
>>> Yes, but that's not an issue of being transposed by a computer. Yes,
>>> C-flat is the same as B and E-sharp is the same as F, but C-flat and
>>> E-sharp are the correct "spellings" of those notes in some situations.
>
> They're "the same" only in fixed-pitch instruments. (Does that include
> fretted string instruments? Hopefully they can bend the pitch when
> called for.) A singer or a bowed instrument can make F# higher than Gb
> and the harmony will be especially sweet.
>
>>> Similarly, you sometimes see double sharps and double flats and they
>>> are the correct spellings in some situations.
>>
>> Yes, if you understand what's going on, they're not too surprising. But
>> sometimes, there are stupid notations. Several times, we had scores in
>> choir that went from C-flat to B or similar with a slur ... that turns
>> out to be a tie. Confuses the hell out of people.
>
> If you were singing stuff with that sort of modulation, you must
> have been pretty advanced.

I'm not even sure about that. It's just a note that's held across a
context change. But I don't see the point of changing the notation if
you're holding it.

>> When we practiced the circle of fifth in music theory class, at some
>> point the teacher had a question that he announced he'd only expect me
>> to be able to answer (something of the kind: "which minor scale has 10
>> sharps?" Three of those would be double sharps.)
>
> Why would anyone notate a score that way?

They wouldn't - not as signature, at least. Within a certain bar or two,
all notes occurring might be notated in accordance with that.

But that wasn't the point - such a question would test whether you've
understood the principles of the circle of fifths, rather than just
memorized it.