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

7. Harpists

No-one can play one of those, find exactly the right string - or even strings - time after time, and in such a way to make it sound harmonic.

I'm willing to admit to degrees on this one. A small harp I can see being playable. Something like a Celtic harp like the one on the front of a bottle of Guinness, or a lyre. But not a full size concert harp with its 47 strings. Pianos and other keyboard instruments, even though they might have more keys than a concert harp has strings, are easy to play because you're looking down at the keys and you have reference points such as the maker's name, but you're perpendicular to the strings of a harp - they're going away from you in a line - and there are just too many of them for any one person to be able to pluck correctly and make music.

The cross-strung harp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-strung_harp

I rest my case.

I can see your point...

OK... by the same theory, I say that one side of accordions are a RUSE!

A RUSE, I say!

OK, I can understand the keyboard side, but you can't think I'm going to believe that anyone can play 120 unmarked keys with their non-dominant hand and make any sense of it.

Oh, sure, they have charts, but that's just part of the ruse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:120-button_Stradella_chart.svg

Those keys serve the same function as those banks of blinking lights on every computer panel in 70's and early 80's movies.

I'm with you there, and in spades. And what about the ones that have buttons... on both sides!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandoneon Oh sure, I've met Flaco Jimenez, and I've seen him squeeze and unsqueeze that thing, but how do we know he's actually playing it?

AND...if all those buttons were genuine it stands to reason that there would be many different notes produced, whereas everything played on accordian sounds the same! Yes, fake, the lot of it...

If it helps, harps strings usually have certain ones (usually all the Cs and sometimes the Gs as well) strung with red and black strings. http://www.welsh-harps.com/images/eos/detail_01.jpg

This give you the frame of reference you need to hit the right notes.

I have noticed that actually, and thought that might be the reason, but I still don't believe it's playable

Most people who play instruments learn young, often at school. Can you imagine lugging one of those to high school? The kids on the bus would be absolutely brutal.

Trust me, I know a little about that. While not in the same league as a harp, I had to schlep a French horn to and from school a couple of times a week. It didn't come in one of those fancy, streamlined, comfortable to carry cases like this http://images.miretail.com/products/optionLarge/Gator/DV016_Jpg_Large_545830_V.jpg No, the case my one looked like the front end of a boat, weighed the same as about 50 half-housebricks* and was a pain in the bum to carry

*Half-housebricks was the preferred unit of measurement at our school, as in "Ooh, I like your new turntable, what's the tracking weight of the arm?" "Oh, about three half-housebricks."

And I didn't go to school on the bus, by the way. I had to carry that bloody thing a mile and a half in each direction.

As well as my schoolbooks and PE kit.

Uphill in both directions, in a blizzard and wearing hobnail boots, naturally.

Better the walk, than suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous, pent-up puberty.

half an hour before you got up?

Exactly, Sho, and I got up half an hour before I went to bed

Ah, if only, BG. This was a British school in the late 60s/early 70s. Everybody walked to school except the kids who lived so far away that they really needed to take a bus, and there were kids who lived at least twice as far away as me who walked, so in a school of about 1200 kids, probably 60-70% of them walked, and we all had to go down the same road because it was the only one that led to the school. I used to go home with the same group of friends every day, but it was inevitable that I was going to bump into other kids I knew, mostly from the same year.

I still get the cold sweats when I think of having to ride the bus to and from high school.

I walked to my elementary school. That was about half a mile. Jr. High and High School were in the next town about 5-7 miles away. I did ride my bike a few times just to avoid the bullies* on the bus.

Odd, that. I used to think a 5 mile bike ride was long.

If work was only 5 miles away, I'd ride to work all the time.




*I nearly remembered some of their names. There were two sisters, Heather and... Nope. It's gone now.

I walked to my junior school - a couple of miles, a couple of busy roads, from the edge to the centre of Windsor. More often than not I read while I walked.

I cycled to the High school from the edge of Windsor to the outer edge of Windsor - about the same distance. But no reading on my bike

after that I rolled out of bed and I was already at school. Still managed to be late for registration most days, though.

my primary school, both infants and juniors was a couple of hundred yards down the road I lived on; secondary school a mile and a half... I'm guessing. Half a mo, I'm going to check the Gmaps pedometer.

Nope, just about a mile.

But still uphill both ways.

On my long (100 mile) commute back to college one day, I devised a way to actually accomplish that... walking up hill both ways.

On flat ground, you walk inside a large wheel.

Tada!