h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is great Gnomon! Just what I need...
Is it ok for me to lift this and use it then? It will certainly make a great complement to the rest of my project
Out of interest... why did you withdraw it btw?
I have added you into the list of helpers on this project, which I finally have time to do now!
shazzPRME

I just saw your question. Why did I withdraw this? I never submitted it. It was never finished, although I am adding bits to it all the time. It looked to me like the sort of thing that is too specialised to get into the main guide, but it is there for anyone who does a search.

Yes... it isn't exactly your easy-read kind of article.
I must admit that I've been so busy recently that I haven't even thought about the uni project

I really should be decorating the house atm...

Oh well... if I can refind my enthusiasm, I will try to restart it I guess!

shazzPRME

Erm, would just like to say that I thought the article on Equal Temperment Scales was brilliant . Have always been vaguely aware of relationship between harmonics and the scale - I play guitar, and have enough physics for curiosity to be stirred by neatness of it all, but have always felt that guitar was slightly out of tune in some respects, and in tune in others. No amount of tiny changes to my string length was helping, and now I know why.

I always assumed that the twelve divisions of an octave were made to accomodate both the fisrt and second harmonic, and that twelve equal divisions just happened to fit nicely, but tried not to let it bother me - now I know the truth, and can be content with my out of tune instruments Thank you Gnomon.

Hmm, will that project need more help?
If so, I could probably do a bit...

I'm glad you liked the article. I wrote this article long before I joined h2g2. The day I joined h2g2 I bunged it in as an experiment. Later I found that Shazz was organising a project. I offered him the contents of my article to do with as he pleased. That's how my name is up there on the University project list. I reckon I've done my bit, so if you want to volunteer and do some stuff, feel free!

Incidentally, I attended a Simon and Garfunkel concert many years ago. (About 1982). Many people in the audience would recognise the songs when the singers started singing the words. They would applaud at this point. Others would recognise the song as soon as Paul Simon started playing the introduction on his guitar. They would applaud at this point. I and my wife found that we could recognise the song as soon as Paul Simon started to tune his guitar! He tuned the guitar slightly differently for each song, so that an E Major song was tuned so that the E major chord sounded perfect while the B and A chords were nearly right. A song in F required a totally different tuning, although still officially tuned to EADGBE.

G

Hi Gnomon (and Shazz, if you want to footnote this)

I've just come back from holiday in Istanbul, where I was intrigued to learn (from a Turkish-English publication called The Gate) that Turkish classical music, which uses an instrument called a kanun, defines each note into nine parts called "koma" (the equivalent of semitones). The article also noted there are five 'komas' between the natural note and its sharp.

Unfortunately that was all the information included in the magazine, and I've not yet learnt more about it. As a tourist, I heard many street musicians, but they seemed to use violin, handdrums, and sometimes a lute (looked as if it had been made out of a saucepan, though; I don't know if it has a unique name!)

Hope this is useful or at least interesting

x x Fenny

The term "comma" is also used in the design of Western musical scales. I think that it is defined as follows: If you start with a low C and build a series of 12 perfect fifths on top of it, you get: C - G - D - A - E - B - F# - C# - G# - D# - A# - F - C. The high C is seven octaves above the low one. But not exactly 7 octaves. The frequency is (1.5^12) times the original, which is slightly bigger than 2^7, which is the correct freqwuency for the high C. The difference between these two (expressed as a ratio) is called a comma. I think. I don't know if this is the same comma as the koma in Turkish music.