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Urban legends related to music
Related thread:
Folklore: Who or what is or are Snopes? (57)
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Subject: Urban legends related to music From: Marion Date: 22 Jul 00 - 07:29 PM I was just reviewing a thread I started about "devil tones", where it was concluded that it was an urban legend that the diminished fifth could was the devil's interval and was forbidden by the medieval church. I'm just wondering what other pieces of musical misinformation are going around that could be classified as urban legends. Is it really true that you can shatter crystal or glass by hitting just the right note with your voice? Is it really true that you can light a cigarette by touching it to the strings of an open piano after playing a particularly vigourous piece (I saw this in a movie, "The Legend of 1900".)? Not that I would ever want to do this. Marion |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Homeless Date: 22 Jul 00 - 08:27 PM It is true you can shatter crystal by hitting a pure tone of sufficient volume and duration. The same should be true for glass, tho I've never tried it. If you are interested, I can explain the physics of how and why it happens. (It has to do with emphasizing the natural resonance frequency of the object in question.) |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: GUEST,Olafur E. Date: 22 Jul 00 - 09:37 PM Homeless, please explain the physics. I'm curious, not saying that I don't believe you. Is there a way to find the right frequency ? Pure tone = Sinus wave ?
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Joe Offer Date: 22 Jul 00 - 09:55 PM Is there a difference between glass and the "crystal" involved. My Webster's New World Dictionary says crystal is a "very clear, brilliant glass," or glassway made out of this substance. Isn't my ex-wife's Waterford Crystal (that I accidentally broke) glass? Ooops! -Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Jeri Date: 22 Jul 00 - 10:11 PM Joe, I think that crystal is a very pure form of glass, and it's often very thin when used for glasses. I sort of have a clue about the physics, but Homeless, I would love to hear an explanation. Pure tone=frequency. The note causes a sympathetic vibration in the glass, and when it becomes great enough, the glass just vibrates itself to pieces? Sort of what happens when you hit one G string on a hammered dulcimer (or other instrument) and all the G strings vibrate? Or is that completely different? |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Homeless Date: 23 Jul 00 - 11:10 AM This is going to be a rather lengthy post, full of analogies, basics in physics, and definitions, so please bear with me. I will have to assume a certain amount of math and physics knowledge to keep this from going on forever tho. If I gloss over anything you would like explained in more detail, just let me know. First off, it needs to be assumed that sound is nothing more than vibrations of air. Something causes the air to vibrate at a certain range of speed and the ear will detect this and your brain will convert it to sound. The faster the vibration, the higher the pitch of the tone. A frequency is how often something happens on a regular basis. A clock ticks every 1 second. One second is it's frequency. Hertz is a measurement of how often something happens in one second. 440 hertz means that whatever object this is (guitar string, electric signal, air column) vibrates 440 times in one second. Imagine pushing a child in a swing. Each time she (I have two daughters, so I always swing "she"s) swings back, you give just a little nudge. She swings forward again; comes back again. You give another little push, she goes a little higher. The distance that she moves forward (and back) from the starting point is called the amplitude and is considered higher the more distance is covered. The timing of your push must match the instant the child reaches the high spot of the swing. If you try to push when she is still swinging back, what happens? The first thought is that someone gets knocked on their tuckus, but the answer I had in mind is that the swinging gets slowed down, or dampened. When two actions (vibrations) coincide in such a manner that they enhance one another (the child swings higher) they are said to resonate. The time period from when you pushed, thru the swing forward, the swing back, to the point you are just ready to push again (one cycle) is called the natural resonance frequency. Everything has a natural resonance frequency (NRF). Hum a note, any note. Two days later, hum a note. Chances are that you will hum the same note. That is the NRF of your vocal chords. My NRF is a slightly sharp F#. Is there a note that you sing that makes your chest vibrate or feel funny? That note is the NRF of your chest wall. When you take a stemmed glass, wet your finger, and trace it along the edge of the glass, it will produce a tone. What is happening is that your finger sticks to the glass and actually pulls it a little bit. Then the two surfaces un-stick and the glass rebounds. They stick, pull, release, rebound, setting up a vibration. When the vibration gets enhanced enough, you hear the tone. (BTW, both your finger and the glass must be oil and soap free. They need to be clean so that the friction can take effect.) That tone is the glass' NRF. You need to use a stemmed glass because the stem isolates the bowl of the glass from the surface it is sitting on, allowing it to vibrate more freely. You can do this with a tumbler type glass, but it is much more difficult to get the tone because the contact with the table dampens the vibrations of the sides of the glass. The more pure a substance is, the stronger it will react to it's NRF. If you have something made up of a number of different things, each with its own NRF, they will work to dampen each other. There will still be a NRF for the unit as a whole, but it won't resonate as strongly as a pure substance. Vibrations of an object generally move in a lateral direction from the length of the object. For example, a guitar string vibrates back and forth across the face of the instrument, which is across the direction of the length of the string (running nut to bridge). The mouth of a glass has the length bent into a circle, so the vibrations must move crossways from this direction. Since the glass won't stretch, you will get the glass mouth deforming into an ellipse, first running side to side, then switching to front to back. The alternation of these two states is your vibration. While glass can bend a small amount, it will break if bent very far. So, take your stemmed glass. Start playing the exact tone (no overtones or harmonics) that is the NRF of this glass. The glass starts to vibrate. Continue playing the tone; the glass vibrates with larger amplitude, deforming the shape of the mouth of the glass. Add volume to the tone (a harder push), the amplitude increases again, and you will reach a point where the vibrations in the glass cause the glass to bend more than the materials are able, and the glass will shatter. Crystal, while not only being a very pure glass, also contains a high percentage of lead (which, BTW, is why you shouldn't store wine in a crystal decanter - the wine leaches the lead and the next time you drink the wine you're drinking all that lead. Once isn't enough to cause much harm, but if you drink it often enough...) The lead makes the glass stiffer, but more brittle. (Don't ask me how soft lead can make glass stiffer - it's a chemical reaction thing, and I don't profess to understand it.) Crystal glasses also tend to have narrower stems, thus reducing the dampening effect of the stem. So crystal works better than "regular" glass because it reacts strongly to it's NRF, is freer to vibrate, and is more brittle. Overtones and weak NRF reactions due to impurities in glass will generally keep a regular glass from breaking, but given enough volume and duration of the correct tone, theoretically, it can be done. (Overtones will cause the mouth of the glass to vibrate in a combination of ellipse, trianglar, square, etc. shapes, each dampening the others.)
Olafur - The best way to find the NRF of a glass is the old finger on the rim trick. For other things, start generating a loud tone of low pitch and gradually increase the pitch, checking the object for resonant vibrations. When it is vibrating at it's strongest, the pitch being played is that objects NRF. Joe - "Glass" is a very generic term. It is very similar to "cake" in that manner. How many different kinds of cake are there? Depending on the intended use of the glass, it can have a variety of recipes, include different amounts of impurities, etc. Ever notice how, when viewed edge on, some glass has a blue tint, other seems green, and other seem gray? This is due to the ingredients in the glass. "Crystal," while still a generic term, is much more specific - akin to saying "Pineapple upside-down cake." It's still a cake, but more specific. Jeri - you got it exactly. And make it sound so much simpler than I do. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Sorcha Date: 23 Jul 00 - 11:27 AM Homless, that has got to be the best, simplest, EZ to understand explanation of wave physics I have ever heard! BRAVO!! I am printing it out and keeping it. Several years ago, I was asked to take my fiddle to a physics class to they could watch the sound on a 'scope. I wish I had had this explanation then. WOW! PS--because of my hearing deficiency, I use a lot of sympathetic vibrations to get my intonation right on the fiddle. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Homeless Date: 23 Jul 00 - 01:13 PM Thank you. Relatively recently one of the guys I work with lent me his electric bass to mess with. I was playing along with a CD at work, with the bass not plugged in (so no sound) and when I hit a wrong note I knew it - I could feel that the vibrations in my fingertips weren't right. Shocked the heck out of me that I could feel the difference in the note on the CD and the one I played. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Jeri Date: 23 Jul 00 - 01:33 PM Thanks for posting that, Homeless. Mine was simpler because that's about the extent of what I knew - what happened, not WHY it happened. Anyone want to bet whether I runn around all day singing different notes to see what makes me buzz? I think my chest gets going at C, but (Spaw - straight line alert) I'm not sure. Once I was trying to find C on a tuner by singing into it, and started going up from B. When I should have hit C, the thing registered as G. I did this several times, but consistently got the same result. The notes went D, D# G, C#...weird. Wonder if was overtones caused by my sinuses vibrating in G. Maybe I just should have blown my nose... |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: GUEST,Steven Sellors Date: 23 Jul 00 - 01:53 PM Urban Legends about music? Let me see... http://www.snopes.com/music/music.htm
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Homeless Date: 23 Jul 00 - 01:53 PM Jeri - it was harmonics that caused that. Starting at a base note, e.g. 110 hz (used for simplicity in math) is an A. The first harmonic is 220 hz - A an octave above the base. The second harmonic is 330 hz - roughly an E an octave and a fifth above the base (I don't recall the exact hertz value for this E, but I believe it's only off by 5 or 6 hertz). Convert the base note to C, and your second harmonic is G. Voila, mystery solved. Apparently, the tuner was responding to the second harmonic when you got to the C. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: alison Date: 23 Jul 00 - 11:03 PM referring back to the "evil chords" bit....I remember being in a church service one day where the pastor taught that minor chords were evil.... because they sounded sad.... he played a few as examples... then played some nice "happy" major chords.... which obviously because they made you feel happy were "Godly" chords... therefore we should only sing major tunes.... boring!!! slainte alison |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Marion Date: 23 Jul 00 - 11:47 PM Alison... I'm speechless. Thanks for the link, Steve Sellors. I looked at the page, and I have heard some of those legends around. Homeless, thanks for the info. I can appreciate that a sound would be able to shatter glass, in theory. What I'm wondering is if it's really possible in practice for a singer to produce such a sound. Don't our voices naturally kind of modulate around the area of a given note? Can a human singer really sing the note that is a material's NRF, "hitting a pure tone of sufficient volume and duration," enough to break the object? Has anyone done this, or seen it done, or put a lot of unsuccessful effort into doing it? Marion |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Marion Date: 23 Jul 00 - 11:50 PM PS: Is it true that Einstein (a hobby violinist) once jammed with a concert violinist and the pro said to him: "Your problem, Albert, is that you don't know how to count"? Marion |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Dee45 Date: 23 Jul 00 - 11:52 PM I believe Memorex ran a tv commercial years ago, showing Ella Fitzgerald shattering a glass with her voice, and then playing back a recording of her voice with the same effect. ("Is it live or is it Memorex" was the catch phrase.") |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Pene Azul Date: 24 Jul 00 - 12:06 AM Homeless, that E in equal temperament, is 329.63hz (rounded off). That's 220 * 2^(7/12) (as I'm sure you know). Great explanation above. PA |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: rangeroger Date: 24 Jul 00 - 12:10 AM I mentioned this in the perfect pitch thread, but I saw an interview with Ella where she was asked how they did that commercial.A technician checked the glasses for their NRF( see above by Homeless) and determined the pitch.Ella was told which note to sing to achieve that frequency. She then sang the note,shattering the glass.3 glasses,and she broke each one the first time. rr |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Sorcha Date: 24 Jul 00 - 02:05 AM I had guessed that a well trained/controlled voice could do it. Wasn't sure, though.Human lungs have more sustain power than any instrument (except maybe synthesizers) |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Homeless Date: 24 Jul 00 - 09:01 AM Pene - I was going to mention something about the twelveth root of two being the "magic number" for figuring hertz, laying frets, drilling holes in flutes, etc., but decided against it. I figured that post was long enough already, and there were a number of questions in the original post, of which I only answered one. I would have calculated the E, but I could only remember 1.058 - which wasn't enough precision to calculate all the way up thru the scale and still be close to accurate. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Grab Date: 24 Jul 00 - 09:25 AM Marion, the version I heard, he was in an orchestra and it was the conductor. Spose the mere fact that there's 2 similar but different versions around qualifies it as an urban legend! Alison, was that guy serious?!? Grab. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Jacob B Date: 24 Jul 00 - 10:17 AM I don't know if anyone ever told Einstein that he didn't know how to count - but, since he flunked arithmetic in grade school, it certainly sounds possible. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: alison Date: 24 Jul 00 - 10:51 AM Grab.. he was deadly serious.. and I sat in amazement as a congregation agreed with him "Hallelujah brother" to every statement..... thankfully he was a visiting pastor and they didn't change their music..... slainte alison |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Susan from California Date: 24 Jul 00 - 11:05 AM I thought the difference between glass and crystal had to do with the lead content--crystal having more lead than glass. Sorry about the thread creep... |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Pene Azul Date: 24 Jul 00 - 11:10 AM Homeless, that's what I figured. I had a calculator right here and couldn't help myself. Kind of a math geek thing :^) Thanks again for that great post. PA |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Mrrzy Date: 24 Jul 00 - 01:45 PM There are some songs that I can't sing an "m" sound in, because it vibrates my upper lip too ticklishly... Must be my lip's NRF! Cool thing to finally understand! Next time it happens I'll note the note, and see if other songs do it... |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Whistle Stop Date: 24 Jul 00 - 02:52 PM More thread drift. Has anyone heard of the performing percussionist who is deaf? I can't remember her name, but she mainly plays vibes/marimba/xylophone, something along those lines. She plays barefoot on a wooden stage in concert halls throught the world, with large and small ensembles, and she knows which notes to play by the vibrations she picks up through her feet and other parts of her body, generated by her own playing as well as the playing of her accompanists and collaborators. This is not some kind of freak show -- she is an astounding musician, and her music is very complex and expressive. I saw a piece on her on TV a while back (was it 60 Minutes?), and I was very impressed. Some of you physics experts should check her out, if anyone remembers her name. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: The Shambles Date: 24 Jul 00 - 03:21 PM Evelyn Glennie. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: The Shambles Date: 24 Jul 00 - 03:27 PM Evelyn Glennie Official Website |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Bert Date: 24 Jul 00 - 04:19 PM Here's an example of destruction by hitting resonant frequency. I believe there is a new suspension bridge in London that is having similar problems. Bert. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Irish sergeant Date: 24 Jul 00 - 09:23 PM Now I understand why I bombed Physics and aced history. I must admit while I thought I would be totally lost, You guys really explained it well and concisely. Urban legends, The song La Llarona deals with a Mexican or Mexican American legend of a mother who murdered her baby if I remember correctly. Of course the story of Lorelei is a German folktale dealing with the musical siren luring sailors on the Rhine river to their doom. If I can come up with others I'll let you know. Neil |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Escamillo Date: 24 Jul 00 - 11:25 PM My teacher Guy De Kehrig refers to a story which happened in the Colón Theatre (main Opera House of Buenos Aires). At dinner with colleagues, one of the tenors proposed to him, "Guy, next time you are not singing, and I sing that superhigh C, you throw a stone to the main lamp and break some crystals, and then we see their faces". Guy replied, "ok, let's do it, but you make a signal to me, so I know when you sing the C" Probably another apocryfous urban legend. Thanks a lot, Homeless for your explanation, that I'll keep in my library. Un abrazo - Andrés (advice for everybody: never sing at the NFR of your dental prosthesis) |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Escamillo Date: 25 Jul 00 - 06:37 AM Another example of killing a thread (sigh) |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: Joe Offer Date: 11 Apr 22 - 10:50 PM After the Mudcat singaround today, Gerry Myerson spoke of the Henry Lawson story, The Loaded Dog. Does anyone know of other instances of this story? While I was in the US Army, I studied German in 1971 at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. All of our teachers were native speakers, and many had been officers in the Wehrmacht, the Germany army of World War II. They insisted that the Americans were the Gegner (opponent), not the Feind (enemy). One of our teachers, Herr Schefke, told the story of a general's prized German Shepherd dog, which was very good at fetching and returning things. During a training exercise, an solder armed and threw a hand grenade. The dog eagerly ran after the grenade and took it back to the general. The result is just what one would expect. But now I see that my teacher's story was a common urban legend. Was he lying to us? -Joe-
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: GerryM Date: 11 Apr 22 - 11:59 PM Jan Harold Brunvand, Too Good To Be True; The Colossal Book Of Urban Legends, pp. 71-73, discusses variants on the loaded dog story. He relates in detail one that spread on the 'net in 1997 about two fellows duck-hunting on a frozen lake in Georgia (do the lakes actually freeze over in Georgia?). They toss a stick of dynamite out to blow a hole in the ice, their dog tries to bring it back to them, they shoot at the dog to scare it away, it hides under their brand new Grand Cherokee, and BOOM. Brunvand mentions the Lawson story, "written about 1899," and then writes, Jack London penned his own treatment, "Moon-Face", in 1902, but the basic plot, involving an animal set afire occurs in the Bible (Judges 15:4-5). Appropriately enough, there's a similar Aesopian fable called The Burner Burnt. Another retold version is in New Zealander Barry Crump's hilarious 1960 book A Good Keen Man. ...a version published in a book titled America's Dumbest Criminals (1995) ... a version written in 1990 for the Lewisburg (Tennessee) Tribune by columnist Joe Murrey.... The duck-hunting story can be found all over the internet, by searching for "he and a friend go duck hunting". One page that turns up is this from Snopes. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: GerryM Date: 12 Apr 22 - 05:06 AM Here is The Burner Burnt from Handford's edition of Aesop's fables: A fox had angered a farmer by the damage that it did. So when he caught it he thought he would make it pay dearly. He tied some tow soaked in oil to its tail and set fire to it. But some god made the fox go into its captor's cornfields, which were ready for reaping, and all he could do was to run after it, lamenting the loss of his harvest. |
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: MaJoC the Filk Date: 12 Apr 22 - 01:16 PM The fox-on-fire tale has an even longer history, going back at least to an incident when Samson wanted to wind up the Philistines:
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Subject: RE: Urban legends related to music From: leeneia Date: 14 Apr 22 - 04:16 PM Who has heard the story about the music professor who got out of bed in the middle of the night, went downstairs and played one chord on the piano - the chord that resolved a piece of music his kid had been toying with hours earlier? I believe this story has been told of many people. |
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