Music
From The Encyclopedia of Pointless
“Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands - and all you can do is scratch it.”
-- Sir Tomas Beecham, to lady cellist.
Contents |
Overview
Everyone knows what music is. You hear it everywhere: At the supermarket, at the Restaurant, at a different supermarket, at a bookstore, on the radio, at another supermarket, and also a the local supermarket. But do you know how music works? In this edition of How Crap Does Stuff, we will look into the amazing world of music.
Music is composed of a series of notes that are assigned because they sound nice. You see, that's the beauty of music. Sure, there are people that call themselves "Music Majors" who claim to know the "Science" about music and why it sounds good, but ultimately it boils down to if it sounds good or not.
Playing Music
There are two ways to make music, the easy way and the hard way. The easy way is to press "play" on the playback device of your choice. The harder way is to look at a piece of paper with dots on it then decipher the dots so you can use your instrument to play the notes they request for the amount of time and in the right order.
It doesn't get much more complicated than that. Music majors are a cagey, elitist bunch, though, so they like to complicate matters with talk of "overtones" and "chord progression" and "tonality". Don't worry about all that garbage, it's just there to make music seem more complicated and thus less appealing to the sort of slackers that just want an easy college degree so they can focus their time in college on having as much wanton sex as possible.
It is possible, though that some pieces of paper have LOTS of little dots in addition to other little curvy lines and squiggles that make it VERY difficult to use your instrument to play the notes they request for the amounts of time they designate. If you can successfully translate the little squiggles into properly timed and tuned notes, you have what it takes to be a music genius.
Writing Music
There is one thing that is even WEIRDER than taking little scribbles and turning them into fine music. This is of course taking fine music and turning it into little scribbles.
The art of composing music is actually far more complex than it first seems. The simple process of taking a beautiful work out of your head and turning it into an incomprehensible array of dashes, dots, scribbles, and curly things can drive even the most well-grounded person into a gibbering blob. It's a well known fact that Beethoven willfully went deaf because he couldn't stand to hear people trying to translate his squiggles correctly into music.
Musical Instruments
There are a lot of these that represent pretty much every single way of creating sound.
- Woodwind instruments -- These instruments create noise via a little piece of wood that vibrates when somebody blows over it. Examples of this instrument type include the Bagpipes and the saxophone. Flutes go in this category too because while they don't have wood bits that vibrate they make noise from air and Brass instruments are jerks and didn't want to have anything to do with flutes. These instruments are known for making romantic music, especially bagpipes.
- Percussion instruments -- These instruments make noise when smacked. Examples include Drums, Bigger Drums, Smaller Drums, and Bongos. These instruments are known for making inspiring music, as in "I am inspired to row this boat faster".
- String instruments -- String instruments have tight metal or nylon strings that make noise when hit, plucked, strummed, or bowed. You'll find Violins, Guitars, and Harps in this category. These instruments specialize in wistful, soothing tones, especially the Electric Guitar.
- Brass Instruments -- Brass instruments are so designated because they tend to be made of brass. They make noise when people stick their lips in them and blow raspberries. The raspberry travels down a long series of tubes and comes out the other end as music in one of the greatest miracles of life. Trumpets, Trombones, and Tubas are all Brass instruments, as well as non-T words like French Horn. These instruments are used in marching bands because band teachers are invariably born without imaginations.
- Keyboard instruments -- Back around the 14th century people decided string instruments weren't complicated enough, so they rigged up machines that would pluck or strike strings when you press a button. These marvelous inventions became known as the Piano and the Harpsichord. The Organ also falls in this category, even though it uses wind rather than strings and is in fact much older. Keyboard instruments are highly versatile and can be used to generate nearly every single variety and genre of music, as any ballpark organist can demonstrate.
Conclusion
So there you have it. Music really isn't that complicated, it just seems like it because of a vast music major conspiracy. There are a lot of instruments though, and they all take a lot of practice to use effectively, so there might be something to it after all.
| -- Mr. Encyclopedia |
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