English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@Cerberus Well ... sometimes this shit is just so damn depressing.

(As is the pettiness in this chat sometimes. Can't win an argument? Call the thought police!)

5:14 AM

@Robusto Well, we've managed to deal with chat friction many times in the past as well!

The Most Blatantly Fake Violin Acting...EVER

12:48 PM

@Robusto I haven't checked out that one, will do in a minute. But in the mean time do check out their latest one:

The first 9 minutes is business as usual, they explain things obvious to any professional musician, but if you stick around after that, or skip to about 9:44, they actually went to the effort of re-dubbing the entire scene to how it must have sounded IRL, and that bit is really quite impressive.

1:50 PM

@Robusto Well. They've sight-read it better than I can sight-read Ah! vous dirai-je, maman, so there's that.

And each of them is younger than me by more than the age of the girl.

But can she play Tchaikovsky on an accordion, that's the question.

(Not that I can, but I'm just wondering.)

Actually let me go play some Tchaikovsky on the accordion. That'll show'em.

Triple concerto for faucet, water pipes and fiddle... More - www.av-kwartet.art.pl

2:21 PM

Well I've played something alright. Not sure it was quite what Tchaikovsky had in mind, but I can't ask him, he's dead.

Meanwhile YouTube decided to suggest I watch this:

This seems encouraging. I can play the faucet's part.

Q: If all harmonics are generated by plucking, how does a guitar string produce a pure frequency sound?

3:21 PM

Okay now watch this carefully.

The question:

4

A guitar is a plucked instrument and it is played by plucking a string at an off-centre point fixed at two ends. In general, Fourier analysis tells that all harmonics (the resonant frequencies of the string) will be excited and the string will vibrate in a superposition of different harmonics. It...

The answer:

8

A: If all harmonics are generated by plucking, how does a guitar string produce a pure frequency sound?

Human perception is involved here because when you humans talk about noise this generally means a sound that is aperiodic. However the tone produced by a guitar will be something like: $$ A(t,x) = \sum_{i=0}^\infty A_i \sin(n\omega_i t - k_i x) $$ i.e. a superposition of the frequencies $f$, $2...

The first comment on that answer:

I think I may ask a related question here. What it means to tune a detuned guitar and why do different strings make different sounds? — mithusengupta123 5 hours ago

I have no words.

That's gotta be the single most unrelated related question in the history of history.

Færd

6:37 PM

Any German TV series to recommend? Not featuring particularly flowery language.

I'm not much of a couch potato, but to give you an idea, I liked the Sopranos and Community from American TV.

Hmm. And not much else. I probably learned more English from Friends than anything else, in my early twenties, although it never appealed to me, really.

KannE

6:55 PM

I'm so tired of seeing that henpecked thing every day--BITCH! BITCH! BITCH!--everybody knows the word is bitch...they're just too chicken to say it.

Mitch

@KannE chicken-> chicken shit

@Færd I have heard (but not experienced it) that 'Tatort' is supposed to be good. A cop drama like 'Law and Order' (for those who know the American thing).

@KannE you should add that.

If you dare.

@Færd Supposedly Tatort is very ... localised, each episode (or season) of the series is centered in one city, so you get local flavor and accents and slang.

Robusto

9:11 PM

@RegDwigнt I didn't hear any guitar, either, never mind the tambourine.

But the clapping ... well, that could be the most genuine part of that movie scene. People can't reliably even clap on 1 and 3, never mind 2 and 4.

I recall attending a jazz concert at the Olympia in Paris where the warmup band (for Miles Davis, iirc) was playing "Jump Monk" while the audience tried to snap their fingers in time. Well, nobody even got close to 2 and 4. It was a cascade of white noise, nothing more. Excruciating. One wished them simply to accept that there was music playing and leave it at that.

Speaking of which, here's a nice recording of that piece:

Charles Mingus - Jump Monk

Færd

9:51 PM

@Mitch I'm far from able to appreciate the minutia of various dialects at this level (apart from some obvious ones), but thanks, nevertheless. Gonn' give it a try.

10:48 PM

@Mitch Tatort is the worst piece of shit on Earth. I dare you to watch just one episode to the end. You will kill yourself out of despair that anybody could make that kind of garbage.

@Færd I stopped watching German TV like five years ago. Cold turkey. Only occasionally watch the Eurovision Song Contest and the Oscars if I don't forget.

German TV is in a state of utter disrepair and utter despair.

You could argue it has always been, but that's the thing: that was their highest point and they are now miraculously managing to be on a steep decline from that.

It's a marvel of German engineering.

Series in particular, do not bother. There are none. They have telenovelas, every single one of which is worse than the worst telenovela you can dig up in Peru or Indonesia.

And they have Tatort. Which, well again. Don't take my word for it. Watch just one episode. Make sure to have someone around for the occasion, for if you are watching alone you will do unspeakable things to yourself.

Now, German movies are a different thing entirely. I would not skip on those. There's real gems in there. And new ones occasionally get made. But it is a mine field. Tread with caution.

@RegDwigнt How do you feel about Midsomer Murders?

@Mitch I remember watching some Tatort very long ago, on linear television as a child.

I think I liked it.

Oh, as a PS: Tatort is not technically a series. It's a bunch of completely unrelated stories, with completely different actors, set in completely different locations. Basically every episode gets made in a different German state, which is a major reason in why people keep watching them. Every couple years you hear your town is about to come up, so you sit down and watch eagerly. Then you tear all your hair out. After killing yourself.

@Cerberus never heard of that one.

But it doesn't sound very German to me.

It's English.

I had googled before I typed that.

I don't like to be wrong.

Of course.

How would you compare Derrick with Tatort?

11:01 PM

Now Inspector Barnaby is a name that I recognize. But not from watching him in anything.

@Cerberus Derrick was way, way before my time. I am not eighty!

I remember watching Derrick as a child.

Could have been reruns.

But from what little I've seen of the series, I might enjoy it for its camp value. You know, like watching VHS tapes from the 80s for fun.

Derrick ended in 1998.

@Cerberus oh there were reruns alright. But after seeing Alien and Terminator 2, I wasn't exactly enthralled by the visuals of Derrick.

Too bad.

I've never really liked action series.

But I do like detectives.

11:04 PM

@Cerberus yes, but even the last episode probably looks and feels like something made in the 1960s. Because, well. In a way it was. In more than one way.

Does that matter?

So yeah if you nailed me to a cross and asked me to pick between one episode of Tatort or ten of Derrick, I'd probably pick the latter.

We're watching captain Picard now.

@Cerberus it does. Because the 60s had that specific charme.

Tatort has no charme. It has nothing.

And the new Star Trek as well, at the same time.

11:05 PM

I figured. You won't stop talking about it.

So it doesn't really bother me when it was made.

I think you are missing my point entirely.

I am saying Derrick looking like an old thing is a positive.

Ah, OK.

> I wasn't exactly enthralled by the visuals of Derrick.

This didn't sound positive.

I'd rather rewatch James Bond from the 1970 than any of the James Bonds from the 1990s. You know. Both are completely stupid, but in very different ways.

Probably.

I often like old stuff as well.

11:07 PM

@Cerberus there I am explaining why I never watched it. That has nothing to do with whether I ever would.

So you're saying you didn't like it then because it looked old, but you may like it now?

Yes I am saying it looked horribly dated back then, but now 30 years later that might be its greatest plus.

Like, again. Nobody would watch the original Star Trek back then. Everyone said it looked like shit and watched TNG or Voyager instead.

Okay.

Now people say TNG looks dated and shit, but instead go watch Captain Kirk because it has transcended.

I do think Discovery looks better than Picard.

I've never seen Kirk.

Transcended, that's a big word.

11:09 PM

Well yes. But I've heard very differing opinions on that one from fans. So I reserve judgment until I watch it.

Computer animation has improved quite a lot since Picard, so we're seeing the result of that.

Which doesn't mean the plot is any better.

Some say it's way too Star-Warsy and completely not Star Treky. Like, starting with the very foundation. The plot and the storytelling. The conflict. Etc. Not even the visuals or the props, but the basics of the format.

I don't know Star Wars.

But at least one person I trust said they enjoy it quite a bit.

So I am uncertain at this point.

The second season is more like old Star-Trek than the first season was.

11:11 PM

@Cerberus well I skipped on the last 7 movies. Holy shit. Yes, seven! But they had managed to make 6 movies before that. And those I saw.