Events

Today's Blogging A-to-Z challenge entry examines the physics of music. Specifically, when a musician looks at a note on a page, what tone does she actually produce? Most people today have passing familiarity with the piano, which has one key per note. This means the frequency of each note remains the same no matter what key a pianist plays in. If she hits the A above middle C, the piano strings vibrate at 440 Hertz (cycles per second). The A below middle C is 220 Hz, the A below that is 110 Hz, and so...

Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz vented his frustration about outgoing mayor Rahm Emanuel in a letter to incoming mayor Lori Lightfoot earlier this week. Today, Emanuel responded: When you own something, you pay the costs and you reap the benefits. Welcome to capitalism and the private sector, Rocky. Look, I get it. For those who have become accustomed to the rules of the road of crony capitalism, and have had sweetheart deals and special arrangements no one else receives, it is tough when you are...

A large number of articles bubbled up in my inbox (and RSS feeds) this morning. Some were just open tabs from the weekend. From the Post: Reporters, tired of catching White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders in bald-faced lies, try to figure out what to do about it. Jennifer Rubin says former White House counsel Don McGahn's testimony "should rock Trumpland." Aaron Blake concurs. In an Op-Ed, Hillary Clinton advises Americans how to respond to the Mueller Report. Student reporters at Bear Creek High...

We're finally putting together a lot of what I've covered in this year's Blogging A-to-Z challenge. Today I'll touch on voice leading (known as "part writing" in the UK), which describes how individual voices in a composition work separately to create a musical whole. We already talked about counterpoint, in which we saw how two vocal lines interact while moving independently of each other. That's the essence of voice leading. But when you add more voices, the rules become a bit more complex. Open Music...

The Blogging A-to-Z challenge entry today starts with a joke: what is the definition of a minor second? Two oboes playing in unison. Sorry, oboes. We already know what unison means: it's two voices sounding the same note. And earlier I mentioned that different instruments use different clefs. And we've covered key signatures. Now I'm going to tell you a dirt secret of the orchestra: unison sometimes looks like a bunch of completely different notes. The problem comes from the way that certain brass and...

Sunday night I visited my 30th park. I have to say, Coors Field is better than Coors Beer. The Phillies won, because apparently I am a curse on all the ballparks I visit. But that's OK. Being in Denver on 4/20, and having walked past the 4/20 Festival earlier in the day, I really didn't mind all that much. It's hard to tell, but while I had a really great seat, the foul screen meant my photos weren't perfect: The weather nearly was, though. And it was a fun game. Just two parks left: Toronto on June...

Friday night I got to my 29th (out of 32 planned) baseball park: Globe Life Park in Arlington, Texas. I didn't realize until I got there that they're tearing it down at the end of this season. (That might affect the Geas if I don't get to both Toronto and St. Louis this season.) It was too busy at the start of the game to get the front-gate photo I always try for. But here's the view from my seat: And the whole park: Things didn't go well for the (then) last-place Rangers. Their in-state division rivals...

Today's Blogging A-to-Z challenge post sits right in the middle of everything. The tritone is the interval between the perfect 4th and the perfect 5th. Depending on which direction you're going, it's either an augmented 4th or a diminished 5th. And it's always going somewhere. In the C major scale, the natural tritone is between F and B (where it's an augmented 4th) or B and F (where it's a diminished 5th). B, remember, is the leading tone in the key of C, so it really, really wants to resolve to C. The...

The day after a 3-day, 3-flight weekend doesn't usually make it into the top-10 productive days of my life. Like today for instance. So here are some things I'm too lazy to write more about today: More evidence that living on the west side of a time zone causes sleep deprivation. Over the weekend, at 2pm on Saturday, Chicago set a record for the lowest humidity on record. A software developer and pilot looks at the relationship between the software and hardware of the Boeing 737-MAX. The grounding of...

The Blogging A-to-Z challenge will get a little funky today as we look at syncopation, which is nothing more than an unexpected rhythm. Here's a simple example. Take this clunky melody: Now let's syncopate it a little, by shifting some of the notes off the beat: Instead of hitting 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, now it hits 1, and, and, and, 2, and, and, 4. It's harder to dance to but more interesting. More examples? How about Mozart's Symphony #40, third movement: Or the Rolling Stones? Beethoven? Scott...