do we know how to think?

i've heard it said, and i have started saying it too, "common sense ain't so common". especially when dealing with matters of religion, do we know how to think - how to identify what's valid in the morass of ideas.

in our modern society of moral relativism, it is difficult to convince people that there is such a thing as moral absolutes, or even that there is such a thing as truth. is one person's opinion really just as valid as any other's? or are some right and some wrong?

what a brave new world that would be! a world where there is something - someone - that you could be sure of. a world where right and wrong are spelled out clearly. a world where there is absolute truth, not just subjective matters of perspective. can we handle that much certainty? whoops, off chasing rabbits...

back on topic. critical thinking is not something that is covered in k-12, or Sunday morning. so is it any wonder that people seem to be swayed by the most ridiculous and ill founded of arguments because it seems to be grounded in common sense.

i would like to challenge all of us human beings to look at what we believe and why. have a basis for our beliefs. know why we believe what we believe. have reasons why it is the one way. and if we find it is not based on anything, scrap it and find the one that is.

yidaki

what a great instrument. most will have heard of it called a didgeridoo (in any of numerous different spellings), but that is just onomatopoeia. yidaki is it's name in the language of it's originators.

it's cool to think that somewhere in the outback, some dude found a hollow log and picked it up and made some cool noises with it. then someone figured out that termites hollow the logs for you. what a wild instrument. if someone today had come up with the idea we'd think he was a quack!

my reason for posting about yidaki today is that you can construct one, or more likely find one in your home. any tube of sufficient length and diameter can make a cool didge-like noise. if you want to 'make' one PVC pipe is an inexpensive medium. a length of pipe around 1.3m long, give-or-take. yidaki sound wild, and there is something distinctly un-modern about playing one. it takes you out of the everyday existence; time just flies by. also, i dare say that the breathing involved must be therapeutic.

so go grab some big long tube-ish thing you have around your home. make rude noises down it with your lips, and birdcalls, catcalls, whatever. go a little on the wild side. forget yourself for a bit...

if you'd like to read more of the history or physics have fun.

fathers

my thoughts today are with my dad. i'm thankful to him for the way he modeled many of the behaviors that i now try to emulate, either consciously or subconsciously. it's true that our estimation of how wise our fathers are changes throughout our life time. right now the dad-o-meter is very high. i often marvel at all the stuff i remember him doing. the skills he has that i still have no grasp of. he still amazes with his knowledge of various unrelated topics.

here's to you dad. you are a singular individual. i love you.

math & music

yes everyone says that music is mathematical.... ok they don't, but it turns out that music is all about math. sound is vibrations in the air. vibrations at a certain frequency, we call notes. and more specifically, notes are related to each other by very specific ratios. the simplest four would be: unison, perfect octave, perfect fifth, perfect fourth, major third. or in notes this could be starting from a c: c', g, f, and e, respectively. as mathematical ratios they would be 1: 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, and 5/4. if your really interested in some of the nitty gritty, check this wiki page on intervals.

now, this makes me wonder if one could write music that is based purely on math. is it possible to describe or produce a work based solely on math? and if produced would it sound any good? i have a feeling that this might be what 'new music' is about. who knows, food for future bloggings.

so back to math-music... i think that it would be interesting to try to write some music based on mathematical series: geometric, exponential, hypergeometric... who knows maybe even Taylor series! i wonder what it would sound like? maybe music could be produced by random number generator, with notes, chords, and dynamics determined by some statistical method? i'm sure some computer science jocks have tried something like this, but it's fun to think about... maybe you could have your own background music generator that could have it's coefficients tailored to your preferences of key, tempo, style, etc.? music just for you...

is anything sacred anymore?

modern society seems to have largely decided that nothing is sacred. and anything that someone may hold up as special or sacred is immediately attacked, marginalized, and pulled down into the morass.

back in antiquity, some things were sacred. some things were so special - so sacred - you didn't dare to even speak their name.

maybe some things are special. maybe some things are more important. maybe some things are sacred after all.

rude noises... musical sounds...

i have been interested in the possible sounds and physics of the human voice for a long time. the last few years that interest has come to include wind instruments. there are many kinds of wind instruments, but the kind that i'm writing of today are the brass, or lip-reeds as they are also known. this includes everything from the cornett to the cornet, alphorn to the digeridu.

what is intriguing about the brass family is that it takes something that babies do, "buzzing" with their lips and turns it into music. apparently making rude noises is not rude after all, provided you do it down a long pipe! the physics (acoustics) that describe the making of music by..... ahem.... doing whatever you want to call it... down a pipe, are relatively straight forward. greatly simplified, the fundamental (lowest note) is determined buy the length of the pipe. other notes that can be played are multiples of this frequency. this doesn't give us many notes to play with (bugle, natural trumpet). so what do we do? drill holes, make valves, do anything we can to make it possible to change the length of the pipe on the fly while we're playing! this way we can fill in the notes that we were missing before.

in the end, the way that the pipe, the mouthpiece and the bell (if that instrument has one), all work together to change our rude lip noises into something interesting and beautiful to hear. something worthy of donning good clothes and paying money to see and hear. something that doesn't make us laugh out loud when we see men and women in formal tuxes and gowns performing. behold, the brass instrument!