Happy Days in Random Chatter 10

[Portia]

Got dumped for his job 2,000 miles away, but looks like I have a decent shot at one 1,000 miles away. We were only dating for 2 to 8 days, depending how you count, but I'm still crushed. He was perfect. He IS perfect.

Sorry to hear this.

I'm definitely in irrational mode. I don't even care if he sees me as the crazy 24-year-old, it's like, "NO, I HAVE TO SEE YOU AGAIN, WE HAVE TO SQUEEZE EVERY DROP OF FUN & HAPPINESS." I can't accept it: it's idiotic to break up with someone perfect for you, someone with whom you could find no wrong, preemptively. And I will certainly let him know. I hate dating, I don't like most people, this is SO DUMB!

Probably doesn't help that my best friend, aged 19, also has latent feelings for me, is leaving in 3 weeks.

[Zedability]

I'm definitely in irrational mode. I don't even care if he sees me as the crazy 24-year-old, it's like, "NO, I HAVE TO SEE YOU AGAIN, WE HAVE TO SQUEEZE EVERY DROP OF FUN & HAPPINESS." I can't accept it: it's idiotic to break up with someone perfect for you, someone with whom you could find no wrong, preemptively. And I will certainly let him know. I hate dating, I don't like most people, this is SO DUMB!

I've definitely been in that irrational mode before. It's no fun I don't really know you well, but I'm sending a virtual sympathy hug your way.

[Whistler]

i-is that really how harpsichords are tuned!?

What do you mean?

For pianos, you can't really tune this way, because of equal temperament and also because sympathetic vibrations from other strings can mess up a regular tuner. There are special, super-expensive tuners you can buy for tuning pianos, but in order to get certified as a piano tuner you have to be able to do it by ear, which is hard. It makes sense that a harpsichord would be a bit simpler, since it has fewer strings and only one string per note (and you have to tune them like every day, right?).

I had a friend who tuned her schools harpsichord and I just assumed she was a musical genius, but moving the pin until the light goes green is... pretty easy to learn! Hope that didn't sound patronizing -_-

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Nope.. It was SUPER easy. And since you're tuning it every day, you can tune it however the heck you want, whether that be well or tempered or whatever.

[Katya]

i-is that really how harpsichords are tuned!?

What do you mean?

For pianos, you can't really tune this way, because of equal temperament and also because sympathetic vibrations from other strings can mess up a regular tuner. There are special, super-expensive tuners you can buy for tuning pianos, but in order to get certified as a piano tuner you have to be able to do it by ear, which is hard.

Do you have to have perfect pitch, then, or just (near) perfect relative pitch? (Also, I swear the guy who tuned my grandma's piano once used a tuner, but he worked at the BYU piano shop, so he might have had access to a special one.)

[Giovanni Schwartz]

I think that, generally speaking, they tune one string (who knows how? I forget what the guy did) and then tune the rest in octaves/fifths/whatever interval they want. The same as a violinist who tunes his violin without a tuner every time.

[Katya]

I suppose you could use a tuning fork for just one string.

[Whistler]

What do you mean?

You don't have to have perfect pitch. After you tune the A string to a tuning fork, you use that note to compare to other notes. You're probably familiar with beats--the change in the intensity of two frequencies that are a little different, because of constructive and destructive interference. You actually have to memorize what the beats between certain intervals sound like (with equal temperament, you don't tune any interval beatless, except for same-string unisons). Actually, it's more like you memorize what two intervals should sound like in relation to each other. If you listen to a tuner tune by ear, they are probably playing lots of intervals with one note in common to get a balance between the beats just right (i.e., tenths and thirds, fourths and fifths, etc.). It's hard to practice and much harder to hear on the high and low notes, which explains why I haven't been practicing any piano tuning :-/.

[Katya]

What do you mean?

You don't have to have perfect pitch. After you tune the A string to a tuning fork, you use that note to compare to other notes. You're probably familiar with beats--the change in the intensity of two frequencies that are a little different, because of constructive and destructive interference. You actually have to memorize what the beats between certain intervals sound like (with equal temperament, you don't tune any interval beatless, except for same-string unisons). Actually, it's more like you memorize what two intervals should sound like in relation to each other. If you listen to a tuner tune by ear, they are probably playing lots of intervals with one note in common to get a balance between the beats just right (i.e., tenths and thirds, fourths and fifths, etc.). It's hard to practice and much harder to hear on the high and low notes, which explains why I haven't been practicing any piano tuning :-/.

Interesting. I'm relieved to hear you don't have to have perfect pitch, because I really would like to learn to tune pianos, some day, but I am lacking in the perfect pitch department.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Bummer... Perfect pitch is so cool.

[Katya]

Bummer... Perfect pitch is so cool.

Heh. Most people seem to manage without it. (Read Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia, though if you want some interesting theories about the neurology behind perfect pitch.)

[C is for]

Perfect pitch mostly makes it so I can't use automatic transposers on electric keyboards/organs because the note I'm hearing isn't the note I'm trying to play and it messes me up.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

One day in the MTC, I found out that another elder in my zone had perfect pitch. Since I was the assigned sacrament meeting pianist the next Sunday, I made sure I played one of the hymns a half step up. He appreciated it.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

bob, how do you come up with names of characters on your books? My outline so far is about man 1, man 2, woman, and crone #1.

[Zedability]

One day in the MTC, I found out that another elder in my zone had perfect pitch. Since I was the assigned sacrament meeting pianist the next Sunday, I made sure I played one of the hymns a half step up. He appreciated it.

I'm laughing so hard right now

[Unit of Energy]

bob, how do you come up with names of characters on your books? My outline so far is about man 1, man 2, woman, and crone #1.

I'm not bob, but I like to browse name books. If you don't have an abnormally large name book collection on hand, some of my favorite websites are:
http://www.behindthename.com/
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/
http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#

[Giovanni Schwartz]

So you just randomly pick names? Or do you name your characters after people? Or do you give their names special meanings? Or do you name them like you would your children?

[Giovanni Schwartz]

P.S. If I was picking my family history names, I would totally pick Elkananey. No joke. His father-in-law was Elkenah.

[Unit of Energy]

It depends on the type of story. I tend to name according the the setting. If it's about people my age, in a modern society, I go with common names. If a character is older I like to find names that are more dated sounding.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Hmm... So if they're like 25 year old newly weds, I just name them after my friends?