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Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

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Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#291

Post by khedoros1 »

HenryTheHorse wrote: post #229
steamer25 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gist of music theory: It sounds interesting when sounds with simple frequency ratios are played at the same time. E.g., playing a 440 Hz tone at the same time and 660 Hz tone has a 2:3 ratio. Some combinations of frequencies, when played before or after other combos can establish an expectation and then either fulfill it or negate it. E.g., if you take the ratio above and then play 440 + 587, it'll sound like it'…

Sorry, but you are way out of your league in trying to explain the "gist" of Music Theory in terms of frequencies. That's so not what Music Theory is about.

OK. What is music theory about? The explanation using frequencies, ratios, etc matched my understanding of the underlying physics and their effects on human perception.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#292

Post by steamer25 »

steamer25 wrote: post #289
andrepd wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the gist of music theory as much as "radiation in the order of ~100nm excites your retina and you see colour" is the gist of photography or painting. x) It's the fundamental physical explanation, but there's a world of complexity and subtlety that eludes such a "first principles" explanation.

I agree that to fully appreciate musical qualities, you have to play around with sound and that text alone won't suffice. On the other hand, your description of radiation hitting the retina might be a decent primer on color theory which has about as much to do with photography and painting as music theory has to do with playing an instrument. My goal was to demystify the jargon by showing that it has very tangible de…

> to fully appreciate musical qualities, you have to play around with sound

@jimbokun: It might be easier for your son to express what he's learning if you can catch while he's got e.g., a piano or guitar at hand. Humans have a hard time generating compound musical waveforms using just their vocal folds (though it can be done to a limited extent as in Mongolian throat singing). Explaining it while playing it will probably also help cement the concepts in his understanding ;) .

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#293

Post by steamer25 »

jimbokun wrote: post #137
ams6110 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an immense amount of effort to do it consistently. And it gets harder with each kid, at least for me. One of the things you figure out is that some kids aren't interested. And if your kid isn't interested in thinking about prime numbers, you're going to be hard pressed to change that. Conversely they will have interests that you don't share, and it's going to be harder for you to participate meaningfully in that…

My teenage son is a musician and is taking AP Music Theory right now. I ask him to tell me about what he is learning, and he patiently tries to explain it to me, but I just nod along because I have no idea what he's talking about.

I was replying to another sub-thread here and had another thought:

It might be easier for your son to express what he's learning if you can catch him while he's got e.g., a piano or guitar at hand. Humans have a hard time generating compound musical waveforms using just their bodies/vocal-folds (though it can be done to a limited extent as in Mongolian throat singing). Having him play the sounds as he explains them will probably also help cement the concepts in his own understanding ;) .

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#294

Post by Double_Cast »

rkangel wrote: post #238
HenryTheHorse wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but you are way out of your league in trying to explain the "gist" of Music Theory in terms of frequencies. That's so not what Music Theory is about.

This comment would be valuable if it provided some support to the assertion that the original author was wrong.

The problem with the above explanation is that it starts at a lower level of abstraction than is warranted. Analogously, it explains MOSFET's rather than algorithms. The fundamental unit of Music Theory is the Interval (as in "frequency interval between notes"). A better explanation would have explained Intervals, how particular combinations of Intervals form various Scales, and how Scales influence Chord Progressions and Key Signatures.

There are 12 unique notes in an Octave (yes, octave means 8; ignore this for now). On the 13th note, the octave repeats itself (counting is 1-indexed). But of these 12 notes, only specific subsets are combined into specific scales.

The most popular scale is the Major Scale which follows the pattern "Tonic Major_2nd Major_3rd Perfect_4th Perfect_5th Major_6th Major_7th" (there exist other notations). The Major Scale imparts a generically-happy mood. But there's other scales, including: the Chromatic Scale; the Major Scale; 3 varieties of Minor Scales; 7 varieties of Diatonic Modes (including Major and Natural Minor); the Pentatonic Scales; etc. E.g. Smoke on the Water, Sunshine of your Love, and Fight for your Right (to Party) all sound similar because they use the Blues Scale.

Once you familiarize yourself with the intervals, scales, and their various notations (which is its own feat), you can jump into the meat & potatoes of Music Theory. Which mostly consists of analyzing Chord Progressions and Key Signatures in order to find commonalities in mood. Chord Progressions and Key Signatures determine a song's general mood. It's too complicated for me to summarize quickly. But it's where all the interesting stuff happens.

N.B. I've deliberately omitted various details for the sake of brevity. E.g. I could have mentioned Time Signatures, Rhythms, Tempo, Dynamics, etc.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#295

Post by Double_Cast »

khedoros1 wrote: post #291
HenryTheHorse wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but you are way out of your league in trying to explain the "gist" of Music Theory in terms of frequencies. That's so not what Music Theory is about.

OK. What is music theory about? The explanation using frequencies, ratios, etc matched my understanding of the underlying physics and their effects on human perception.

Frequencies : Music Theory :: Logic Gates : Computer Science.

See my other comment.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#296

Post by singingboyo »

khedoros1 wrote: post #290
virtuabhi wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much of their personality is ingrained in them from their DNA Is this really true? I hope not!

I don't think that personality is completely hard-wired, but different people will strongly tend toward different traits, and two people raised in an identical environment will react differently to that environment. Interests can be encouraged because there's some flexibility in someone's natural tendencies. It's the old "nature vs nurture" discussion, about which one dominates the other.

Not to mention that siblings by definition each grow up in a different environment. The addition of a new sibling changes the behaviour of parents and other siblings (sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but it's there).

Perhaps the above poster's sibling looked for other interests because the poster had already 'taken' whatever interests they were sharing. But perhaps not - it's hard (impossible?) to know.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#297

Post by HenryTheHorse »

khedoros1 wrote: post #291
HenryTheHorse wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but you are way out of your league in trying to explain the "gist" of Music Theory in terms of frequencies. That's so not what Music Theory is about.

OK. What is music theory about? The explanation using frequencies, ratios, etc matched my understanding of the underlying physics and their effects on human perception.

"Music Theory" is a very specific term that's used in music studies.

It is mostly a descriptive theory in that it studies musical patterns (rhythm, melody, harmony, intervals, scales, modes, chords and chord progressions) but it can also be prescriptive (for e.g. - don't use certain note intervals in a guitar solo if you are using certain chords in your song)

None of this has anything to do with Physics. Music Theory is completely abstracted from the physical world.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#299

Post by opinionator1 »

steamer25 wrote: post #220
jimbokun wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My teenage son is a musician and is taking AP Music Theory right now. I ask him to tell me about what he is learning, and he patiently tries to explain it to me, but I just nod along because I have no idea what he's talking about.

The gist of music theory: It sounds interesting when sounds with simple frequency ratios are played at the same time. E.g., playing a 440 Hz tone at the same time and 660 Hz tone has a 2:3 ratio. Some combinations of frequencies, when played before or after other combos can establish an expectation and then either fulfill it or negate it. E.g., if you take the ratio above and then play 440 + 587, it'll sound like it'…

Wow, that's really not what music theory is at all. This kind of eggheaded simpletonism is grossly offensive and embarrasses the HN community, not to mention engineers in general. Please, the world outside of STEM is not reducible to a few hand-wavy sentences about physics.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#300

Post by opinionator1 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #270
jedberg wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that makes this easier is being rich. What I mean by that is for example, when my kid is asking me questions or wants to "do it myself!", the fact that I have a flexible schedule helps immensely, and that flexible schedule is possible because I can turn down work that doesn't give me that flexibility. If I had a strict clock-in/clock-out job, and only had limited time to run errands, I'd have a lot less pat…

We actually made a decision to cut our income considerably in order to be as involved as we can in our kids upbringing - we're basically almost always able to go to school concerts, we always eat together, we practically never aren't with them at bedtime, etc.. It's great. But I think we missed the balance a little - there are so many life experiences that are out of reach that we parents experienced when we were kid…

Sorry, being a wage slave, even if above average in pay, is not "rich".
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