[RANT]: Absolute bitch

It’s not about my girlfriend, even though I consider Music to be my muse.

It is about a myth I want to kill and bury forever. Alas, the human race is desperately stupid and enjoys it. Meh.

I’m going thermonuclear on this, and I’ll exhaust myself to death ingraining the truth in consciously ignorant brains… If I can call this ugly slime that way.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE ABSOLUTE PITCH.

Come on, do you really think a newborn can spot a G flat? If so, die, useless being (you, not the newborn)!

This fucking “absolute pitch” is not innate. It is acquired!

How?

With a pitchfork. Ha! Where’s the “absolute” part of this shit? Tell me!

It is RELATIVE. Want it or not.

Notes are learnt according to this pitchfork. The pitch is usually set to 440Hz for a reference A.

In the western tradition, there are 12 notes, each spaced evenly… Or so you may believe.

Wanna jump back to Bach’s era, when each land had two reference pitches. One for the Church, and one for the profane.

How many Länder in Germany? How many references?

It was a mess. Though, Bach managed his way through.

Add to this that not all instruments are tuned in a 12-tone system, equally divided. Especially not the organ. Silbermann and Bach clashed often about it.

Dividing the octave into 12 tones is called tempering.

It may be a revelation to you, but there are countless ways of tempering, not to mention that the western 12-tone equal temperament is nothing but a mediocre compromise.

I won’t go too deeply into that, but upon request (use the contact form), I can send you examples of other tunings and temperaments.

There are modern turkish makamlar/ persian maqamat (systems of scales, beyond the scope of this post), which contain 24 notes per octave. With slight variations, it builds up to 79 notes for makamlar.

It can be called infra-chromatic Music. It can be called microtonal Music.

To me, it is Xentonal or Xenharmonic Music.

Back to the pitchforks.

Haydn and Mozart were taught using a 430Hz A.

Bach was taught using a 415Hz A.

Marin Marais, Antoine Forqueray, Couperin used 392Hz As.

Only the late Rameau used a 415 and a 440 (harpsichords had transposing mechanisms). As much as I love Rameau’s Music, I can’t help hating equal-tempered Music (it is limited, no key has any “colour” or “mood” anymore), though it allows anyone to play within the 12 keys equally (i.e without Bach’s issues when going further and further from the overused C major. Again, explaining in detail why we western retards chose to compromise our musicality is beyond the scope of this post).

Note:

A scale is not a temperament. A temperament is how notes are set within a scale.

Pythagoras made thorough research about temperaments. His works show two versions. The ideal one, with 53 notes per octave, and an extremely theoretical one, with 665 notes per octave.

How absurd is it to ever imagine that anyone can spot 665 discrete notes…

Recap:

3 things to remember:

-pitchfork (reference)
-scale
-temperament

I leave you with an (oversimplified, so you can still understand) diagram of what I just overlooked here. Do your homework and don’t fall prey to ignorance. Learn to discern, question and shun mundane, narrow thinking.

Obvious is the new viral

Here’s a list of the buzzword/bullshit bingo winning words. Do you want to play? I am sure your next meeting will be fun!

They’re “viral”, and their virality -again, hype word- may well kill them sometime soon. I call some of them “lethal”, for if you use them, you feed clichés and remove any meaning out of what you write.

Yet don’t worry, viral words are like cockroaches. You’ll kill one, but don’t know about the thousand others. They proliferate at an alarming rate.

Call me names if I use any of them in my own writings. Heck, send me flame-mails if you want. Hate me on Twitter, on Facebook (on which I’m not), on any “social” thing. Build me a bad rap.

I’m sick and tired -beyond ultimate repair- of those words. That’s all.

I also want you fellow bloggers, contributors and authors, to be creative and use other words, or find new ways to use the old ones. I know you can do it and save humankind.

I don’t want to read dozens of blogs I actually love containing exactly the same nonsense.

One last thing: don’t “build” virality anymore. Relevant words don’t have to be viral. They are obvious.

Obvious is the new viral.

Over with the rant. Enjoy the non-exhaustive list:

-Sabotage

-Disruptive

-ROI (Return On Investment, or rather “Return On Ignorance”)

-Sustainable

-UX (User Experience)

-SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

-Entrepreneur

-Generation Y

-Generation X

-Millenials

-MBA

-Strategic

-Leadership

-Remarkable

-Teamwork

-Failure

Feel free to add some.

The Dreaded End Of The Year

It’s that time of the year again, when people get together to celebrate spend tons on useless commodities (weird dichotomy) with money they borrowed.

I really don’t get the point of all this “noise”. I live in my hometown’s main street, which is full of über-excessive luxury shops… And full of morons keeping emptying them.

Anyone here to remind me what Christmas is really about? Do you remember what it means?

I’m no bigot, I am even rather mystical and Buddhist in a “Steve Job’s way” (not writing that I’m of the same caliber as him. Don’t get me wrong.)

If you do remember, that’s great.

Well, it has been a good bunch of days that I had not blogged, and now I rant.

I could be constructive, instructive…
If you want to be instructed, set up a LinkedIn profile and browse the news.

Meaty Greasemas and Heavy New Gear!

Read you next year…if so.

[Edit: if you fear disappointing your children because you can’t buy them this mega-hype toy, don’t worry. Rather, worry about how you behaved with your offspring the whole year. You perhaps blamed them because they got an F instead of the A+ you expected, and you berated them… Missing the point that they had a blatant A in another area. If you did so, you perhaps killed a vocation.]

Why Absolute Pitch Is a Curse And Not a Blessing

You wanted it? So, here we go.

What is absolute pitch, exactly?

It’s not only a misnomer but an enormous lie schlepped around by academics for way too long.

• Misnomer: it is absolute only in one tuning system. It has to be based on a reference pitch, so it is nothing else than relative.

True relative pitch is based on intervals, which are the most important component of melody and harmony. Intervals focus on what’s between the notes.

Imagine yourself thrown in Kazakhstan. Do they have the same reference pitch? NO!

• Lie: it is not an advantage over other musicians. All it allows is to be able to sit at a table and write music you can hear in your head (it can also be achieved with relative ear).

Also, whenever you hear a note, you can mimic a parrot and say which one it is. Can you sing the note you’ve heard? If not, you suck.

Nice. Not impressive at all.

Can you, Western-trained musician, write down music based on maqamat (persian) or makamlar (turkish)?

I don’t believe you can. Until you can prove me wrong.

There are only TWO kinds of music: fixed and yes, absolute.

Fixed means that, when reading tablature (most widespread reading format), you’ll use the same fingerings no matter if the instrument you play on is tuned on D or A. That means transposition , obviously.

Absolute means that the fingerings (and the tuning) have to be modified to be able to play in the same key when switching instruments.

I’ve chosen another way of hearing. I rely solely on frequencies. I mimic the parrot with Hertzian talk instead of A-G notes (I’m not ignoring that diatonic is not chromatic, of course, and not totally overlooking double sharps and double flats, as Western music wants it…)

Over with the rant. Written in a hurry.

Next time, video showing how absolute pitch is of no use when dealing with 665 notes per octave… and how altering cents can make it even harder!

O blogger, where art thou?

Never thought I will write that but…

Apple screwed it all with iCloud and iOS5. Just have a look at the Apple community forums: it’s quite Wall Street!

Feel people seethe.

Every developer has to update to keep up with a promising ecosystem, which turns out to be a nightmare.

I can’t reblog either, and I wonder if it’s WP or Apple who’s getting in my way.

Afterall, it’s not so bad, I skipped two Daily Press topics totally irrelevant to me.

I rant, but it keeps me writing. That’s the point. Writing.

Pick a topic from yesterday, and write about it

Now this really sucks.

Chicken out?
Have a look at yourself, holy shit!

The only thing I can write about yesterday’s topic is that it irritated me beyond words to read “Kikergard”.

Can’t you show some fuckin’ respect and write properly the name of this GRAND philosopher?

Is writing “Kierkegaard” too much for you?

Check your spelling and Wikipedia before throwing out topics.

Remember: I’m Swedish, and very proud to be. Whatever I consider to be an insult to Scandinavian languages (Søren Kierkegaard was Danish) will not be tolerated.

Over with my rant. I needed it.

Topic #275: Pick a topic from yesterday’s list, and write about it. If you chicken out, write about why you’re afraid to write about one topic from your list. … Read More

via The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Money? Bringer of plague!

I allow me some “a parte” since I really need it. It has few to do with the core purpose of this blog, yet…

Just read.

I do hate money. It doesn’t “cripple” my art but (please pardon my vulgarity) fucks up all of my best ideas.

I’m not falling short from ideas, I am not scared about failing…

However I am scared and I hate money for it destroys true, deep and meaningful relationships which are necessary to make ideas spread.

I often need goods I can’t afford because of…lack of money. So do people I work with. We all have ideas but don’t have the money.

What should we do? Become slave whores to a boss? 9-5 again? Schlepping around with mediocrity?

It is, right now, in France, not possible to create anything of any kind without insane amounts of money and painful compromises.

I have my tribe, we are all linchpins in a way, but it’s not enough.

We can’t be “just indispensable”. That is not even enough.
We can barely afford to be indispensable for us…

I am ranting, not whining. I’ll NEVER enter an unemployment agency anymore.

So, besides leading an anti-résumé revolution in Europe, (even quite an anti-degree revolution) what can I do without money?

I even start to hate touching money bills, I just want to get rid of them! (Spending them, I mean.)

Like some saying goes: “the struggle to free ourselves from restraints becomes our very shackles.”

Happy to be stuck with what I’m not content with.

My technical issues are not fixed, but I persist and write.

How many folks would have yelled at an unanimated object because it doesn’t work the way they want it to (cf. my previous blog entry)?

Honestly, I have no clue.

Instead of always saying “that sucks!”, I’m asking myself how to solve the problem. It is way more interesting (and rewarding, also).

Of course, if you are a couch potato… You can still grumble and stuff yourself with junk food to tame your rage.

Hey, before going further: I am not targeting anybody or making any kind of discrimination. Relax!

Let’s keep it rolling:

I’m sure that THIS moment in life, when creativity stands out, and parts ways with all the rest…YOU experienced it.

Seize it everytime it happens (you can even make it happen instead of waiting for it).

Creativity is ingrained in each of us. When it can come out and make a change, don’t stop it out of being laughed at or out of any kind of fear.

I’m not lecturing you. I’m remembering me what is smart!

And I share it with you.

I hope I’m making sense so far. If not, comments are welcome.

No, I don’t beg for some.

So, let’s wrap up things: If you are stuck and content with it, you’re hurting yourself. Do not cry, do not yell, do not break anything. Do not be rude to anyone without explanations.

If you realize that there is an alternative to being content with an issue, you’ve made a quantum leap towards a solution… Which is a pretty good thing!

Every solved problem remains written in your “solution book”. You do not need a computer or a notepad. Next time you encounter an issue, search in your book. Even if there are missing parts.

The more you gather solutions, the more you become an expert at solving problems.

Becoming an alchemist is an art.
Not a Moz-art. An everyday art.

It’s always worth the time and effort you put in it.