@user1357113 Adieu!

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, potentially bad ns for domain in body, potentially bad ns for domain in title, potentially bad keyword in body (99): #@@!$$$ govslive.de/burtonalbionvsmanchestercity by ikram vai on english.SE

@Robusto I usually use the pair to refer to two aspects which may not be opposite in a sentence to make a long sentence easily readable, because I feel a sentence containing more than one "and" doesn't look so decent and I am afraid the reader can't perceive I am describing things of two different aspects.

I try to think about other alternatives to "on the one hand" and "on the other hand", but feel there seem not to be other better alternatives.

@Robusto chilly? It's been fucking freezing for the last couple days. The coldest weather since like eight years. And that's, like, inlands. She must've turned into an ice block riding along the sea.

Poor Nagarajan, nobody told him that there are no famous Tamil sayings. Like, at all. Not a one.

@RegDwigнt "The coldest weather since like eight years"? Dein Deutsch blutet durch dein Englisch, amigo.

"Coldest weather since like eight years ago" would be better.

Or "coldest weather in like eight years".

I still can't fathom the Announcer badge.

When did I ever share a link about that? Like, never, that's when.

I don't even remember ever viewing that question.

Maybe my account has been hacked, and someone has been sharing links without my knowledge. If so, please keep it up. I only have 516 of these bronze badges and I've been using them to play games of tiddly-winks, which I keep losing to smug, talented children.

@Robusto I knew it was wrong as I was typing it, but a) I'm an old man and don't give a fuck, and b) my only wont here is to keep entertained an even older man that is yourself.

To that end, my story of the day goes thusly. Last night I was browsing MuseScore and someone posted a question so I figured meh why not reply. He wanted people to look at the final chord in his score, which someone else had already commented sounded muddy and dissonant, but he had no idea what to do about it.

So I looked at it and he had just a fucking C major chord in both hands, second inversion in the right, root position in the bass in the big octave. And yeah it sounded like eww. So I said, yo, that's the lower interval limit at work, as a cheap rule of thumb avoid writing small intervals below the middle D in the bass clef. So in your case, get rid of the third, and while you're at it, might as well get rid of the fifth as well.

So he'd end like with a single C in the bass, or maybe play an octave for a fuller sound, whatever. You understand.

So that guy comments thanks a lot! then two minutes later comments, wait, like this? and posts an update. And I swear in the bass he still has C-E. Just lost the G. meanwhile in the right hand he changed the G-C-E to a G-C for some reason. Lost the E. Thus changing the melody. And was now asking me, wait, like this?

And I'm like fuck, this ain't ELU, I need to be polite now or something. So I write up something like, yo, much better, sounds less muddy, you did get rid of one third in the bass, now just get rid of the other. Also dude, you've changed your melody. Which of course is up to you, but I'm just saying.

And then an hour later it hit me what had happened. When I said "get rid of the third and maybe the fifth while you're at it", this composer took it to mean he must get rid of the third and fifth note counting from the bottom. Facepalm. And then to top it off he miscounted and got rid of the third and sixth note instead.

This was in the Pro Composers group or something.

So to recap, if you want to become a pro composer, make sure to not know what a third is, or how to count to five.

Also make sure that the chord you stumble on is a C major of all things. Like the entirety of your piece. While the key signature says D minor for some reason.

Yeah. That should make you a pro composer in no time. Kthxbai.

As a side note, while the muddiness came from the lower interval limit, the dissonance was mostly to blame on the MIDI sound font. I've been bumping into that myself more than once, and am constantly amazed at what kinds of intervals that sound perfectly fine on an instrument don't sound fine at all in a MIDI.

Like, the last one I remember was an E7 chord with an E in the bass, G# in the middle voice, and the melody was going down D to H, via a passing note. Business as usual, you'd think. But the MIDI said, haha, fuck you, that C quaver over the E-G#, what are you writing, Petrushka? I'm rendering that to sound like you stepped on a cat, with no formal training on how to properly step on a cat.

And people think that all these new computer thingamajigs make it easier to write music. While in reality it's still a fucking art to write something that sounds good on a real instrument, but now you must also master the art of making it sound good on a fucking cat.

I don't know that I would call that progress, really.

@RegDwigнt What is your problem with cats?

Why do you hate cats so much?

@RegDwigнt Still less do I give a fuck. I was just yanking your chain for amusement. For the record, your English is so good I tend to jump on your occasional solecism with both feet, since I may never get another chance.

I think I've been able to do that about three times in the last 8.25 years.

And yeah, I typically cease being involved with "composers" who don't know what inversions are. They're like doctors who ask what that stethoscope thingy is for.

@RegDwigнt For the record, Brahms liked to use close harmonies that flirted with the lower interval limit. He could pull it off, though, mostly.

Also for the record, most musicians nowadays can't even read a figured bass, and even if they can they don't know what to do with it.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, toxic answer detected (159): What does "period" mean at the end of the American phrase? by user333271 on english.SE

@Robusto I wish I had a cent for every time you've said that. Which is why I keep doing it in the first place. I'd have twenty cents by now. Twenty! That's, like, over 9000.

@Robusto pfft. Brahms. How about Stravisky. I didn't mention Petrushka for no reason, I guess. I must've been subconsciously thinking how he uses thirds and even seconds all the way down to the contra octave. Brahms smokes nervously in the corner, as they say in Russia.

@Mitch my problem with cats is that you don't have any. Because if you had any, I could have a problem with those. But you have none. So I have a problem with that.

But I'll be taking my problems offline momentarily, as I have two more books to read on my pile of twenty books still to read.

One of the two new ones being by Rimsky-Korsakov for some reason. Also I'm reading it in English for some reason. There's so many things wrong with me. I blame @Mitch's cats.

Oh and yeah @Rob, the other book of the two is the Totenschiff you recommended. Which is in German for some reason. I suppose because he wrote it in German. What a ponce. I can't even remember the last time I read anything in German. That's how much @Mitch's cats suck.

@RegDwigнt "There are several versions of the novel: after the original German text (possibly written in English first) was translated in the United Kingdom, Traven wrote a slightly longer version in English."

We can't really know the original language just as we can't know who the author actually was.

But I've always thought he must be a native speaker of English. The Death Ship's narrator is supposedly a US native, and Traven's most famous work (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) is about Americans adrift in Mexico. But of course I could be wrong.

@RegDwigнt Stravinsky, for me, is the seminal composer of the 20th century. Brahms is merely one of the better composers of the 19th. Of course, the 19th saw more competition: Beethoven, Berlioz, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Ravel, Liszt, etc., whereas Stravinsky had to face ... John Cage? Arnold Schönberg? (And the flip side of Richard Strauss's opus, which apart from Der Rosenkavalier and a few other pieces declined in magnificence.) OK, I'll give you Shostakovich, Copland and a few others.

But Stravinsky rises above centuries. Every genre he explored he mastered.

@RegDwigнt There's always going to be another book. Why worry about it?

Also, it's a bunch of stuff some other person is trying to foist on you, whether it is is some mindless Game of Thrones hack trying to entertain you with their half-baked inarticulate nap-dream-soap-operas, or ... are you kidding some autobiography of a self-aggrandizing artiste? He puts a couple notes together on a tin whistle and then he thinks he's all popular with the ladies?

My cats told me to say that. They were eyeing my calf like a dinner plate.

What I really think is a lot worse.

@Robusto rather famously, Brahms' main weakness was also his main strength. He didn't know which part of the violin should be facing up. So for every single note he wrote he pestered his virtuoso violin playing friend if it was okay like that or not. As a result he ended up writing some of the finest violin music. Funny, that.

I have no idea which other instruments he did or did not know his way around, and whether he had friends to help with those or not. I'm not very familiar with his body of work. At least not compared to how much I'm familiar with Bach's, say.

@Robusto well no shit. Strauß only died in like 1950. At like a hundred years of age. I wonder if many people realize. I wonder if he himself did. Imagine that kind of life. Having to be born before absolutely everyone else, and having to die after absolutely everyone else. Only getting outlived by Lygeti and the Beatles. After surviving two World Wars, too. I'd be fucking exhausted, you know.

Declined magnificence it is alright. Imagine you decline and decline and decline, and then you still have to live for another thirty years. Fuck that.

And then you die and that prick Stanley Kubrick decides to shove into everyone's faces how a hundred years ago you actually mattered. And then follows you up with Lygeti just to drive the point home. And for a thousand years on, everyone remembers you for one minute of music and nothing else.

@Robusto well not to pull a Kubrick and piss on Stravinsky's grave of all people, but you won't find many jazz musicians claiming that Stravinsky mastered jazz, and you will find exactly zero ragtime musicians agreeing that he mastered ragtime.

And that's putting it mildly. Them's pissing on his grave alright, and by the thousands. Do not open YouTube if you don't want to know.

It's not pretty. Then again neither was his ragtime.

Scott Joplin or no Joplin at all, wimps and posers leave the hall.

@Mitch the problem with books is not that you'll have yet another one to read once you're finished. The problem with books is that you can't remember anything from the one you just read.

But that is not the bit of wisdom I'll be leaving you on. The bit of wisdom I'll be leaving you with is this one:

> Hi, I'm relatively new in the composition, and some friends requested me to do an anthem for a roleplay country, and I can't. Could you guys help me please? Btw I have the lyrics, the thing I need is the music.

Ah MuseScore. Good thing I bought a pro subscription for this.

musescore.com/groups/self-taught-composers/discuss/… if you don't believe me.

Hi @Cerberus, bye Cerberus. Your waltz is now up on Musescore as well btw. I still can't decide on the cover image though. Any wishes? Send me a nice picture of your windmill or something. I'll put it here: musescore.com/user/27897310

Cheerio.