@RegDwigнt Good question. I'm tempted to say A minor, because it carries that feel throughout, with the A major being interpreted as a Picardy Third. And if it were A major the D minor chords wouldn't make sense. And a third part of me wants to say Aeolian mode, but then that doesn't feel right because the tonality is so strong.

Why an F# major chord if the E major is not a dominant chord? (F# is built on the second scale step of the dominant in A, and F#/B/E ... dominant of dominant relation.)

No, I think I'm right in my first assessment. A minor, with Picardy Thirds throughout, giving it a very interesting play between the wistful sadness of the minor countered by the hopeful joy of the major.

Side note: And why not a double stop A - C# in the first violin at the end to bring out that hopeful joy?

See, the reason I say A minor and not A major straight off the top is that it just has that minor feel throughout. So much so that when the major is played it's like sunlight breaking through clouds.

Which is not a very musical explanation, I know, but ... well, you asked.

And why not a Dm7 in bar 22? Instead of the half-note B just carry over the C from the previous eight-note C? The B there can be seen as a suspension in Dm, but it doesn't resolve downward to the logical next step, A.

Anyway, that's me thinking out loud, or the typing equivalent of that.

And now this:

@geekahedron Is there any way i can message you personally.

@Cerberus Does the Bible allow voting at all?

@Mitch I'm sure there will be some tribal voting in it somewhere!

keeping unflappable isn't easy now

you can't be unflappable until you have been accommodated in your milieu

@Robusto Ah, but see. You're treating this like a serious question worth investigating. Which, as far as the song at hand is concerned, it actually is. As you've only just demonstrated. And that's the really sad part. That it totally should be the question they're asking.

Should be, but is not. This is MuseScore.

So let me paraphrase their actual question for you. "I see that there are no sharps or flats in the key signature; I see that the first note is an A; and I see that the chord symbol right under that note reads 'Am'. So that makes me wonder: is this in E minor? Because I need this in E minor. Is this E minor? Thanks so much!"

And I'm paraphrasing only ever so slightly, mind. They did literally ask if this was in E minor. You can go and check.

So yeah. Rather than writing up something actually interesting and worthwhile, as you just had the privilege to, I had the privilege to write up that no, this is not in E, this is in A. But MuseScore has a button that will let you transpose the score to any key. It's the button that says "Transpose". If you click it, you'll be able to transpose.

Every word that you just wrote is worth pandering about, but alas, every word that you just wrote would fly straight over the asker's head. You'd be casting pearls before creatures not interested in pearls.

Oh well.

I also explained to them that they shouldn't transpose, actually. That this was a professional arrangement where the key was very carefully hand-picked. The fingering is exceptionally comfortable, and the entire piece is playable by a complete beginner, all of it in first position, which is the easiest position and the first one that you learn.

E minor is a fifth up from this, which is completely unplayable for a beginner. You're pretty much playing at the bridge at that point. Hilary Hahn can find the notes there. You can't.

You can take it a fourth down instead, but then the fingering is actually quite hard. If you take it down, it should be by a fifth, giving you D minor not E. Then you can play the exact same fingering as indicated, just a string lower.

However, then you have no room left for the second violin. It will have to constantly cross voices with you, or you will have to find a viola or a cello instead.

Yeah.

That is what I had to talk about instead of talking about Picardy thirds. They don't know what a "Picardy" is. Or a "third". They don't even know what "Am" means, or what the key signature for Em would be.

Anyhoo. To answer your question, that is also why I don't write double stops. Because I write for noobs like myself.

Noobs like myself can't play double stops. They can barely hit one note correctly, much less two notes at once. In fact they spend the first couple years learning how to not hit two strings at once by accident, and only play one single note cleanly.

And then once you master that, if you ever master that, then you need to unlearn it all again to be able to play on two strings at once.

I don't know who invented the violin, but they must've been really, really, really drunk.

in that case it probably evovled. have you seen how mother nature makes creatures? she's like a soccer mom whose spouse is ignoring her, and has taken up pottery. "This one? It lifts with its nose. And these small ones interact with these big ones, causing the big ones to shit themselves to death." OK nature, I'm cutting you off. No more Chardonnay for you.

either that or nature is a young child with a big imagination.

@MattE.Эллен IKR, can you even close your mouth with that wide giant teeth?

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ and this misaligned jaw

Fact nugget: Vampire fish can't close their mouth.

when they made me I broke the mold, because noone else should suffer like this

It must be painful.

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ yeah. Me and vampire fish

As far as Google Scholar is concerned, disorders in prisoners and disorders among prisoners seem to be equally acceptable. (Look at the titles for quick examples.)

Would you agree that they are? Or would you draw a distinction? I first thought it should be among, but now I don't know.

the rain is still so heavy after sleeping for around 3 hours.

@Færd I haven't looked at the titles, but I would say in implies that they're talking about how disorders affect individuals, whereas among implies how disorders affect groups.

yeah, the titles seem to bear that out

@RegDwigнt Well, you kinda fooled me then, because I thought it was a serious question, or at least perhaps a trick question, because if it is A minor then the key signature is correct, as that is the relative minor of C major which would yield no key signature at all. So I gave it a quick analysis and came up with what I said.

@MattE.Эллен Hmm. Nice. Thanks.

@Robusto yeah I blame McCartney, for writing a song for once where the question could be taken at face value at all. Had it been about Hey Jude, you'd never had been fooled into taking it literally.

@RegDwigнt Actually, I'm glad you did, because I never really looked at it that way before. It was merely wallpaper from my youth, unremarked, nearly unremembered.

Now is see it as more than just a "silly love song."

So I thank you.

That should be "Now I see it as ..." Stupid pre-coffee fingers.

This is why I couldn't live in a wilderness. Without coffee I would be utterly unable to handle the attack of a savage grizzly or negotiate the building of a fire.

@Robusto inorite, I actually played this one a lot as a kid. I always liked how it went from major to minor and back again. And then this strange F° chord or F+ or whatever it was written as, I remember wondering how and when you'd use it elsewhere.

It was in that book of mine I told you about, that said "Recorder" on the cover and I thought it meant a cassette deck by that.

Interessant.

And diminished chords are the Swiss Army Knives of chord progression. There's a blade in there that works between any two chords if you get the voice-leading right.

And even a blind grizzly could find the coffee using a diminished chord.

@MattE.Эллен: If the new royal baby is named Archie, does that mean the next one is going to be named Jughead?

Also, do royals ever get beach jobs?

@RegDwigнt So ... fake book in the sense of a single staff with the melody and chords written above?

I've just translated a local byword we have in the Urals

Does anybody have a link to the bar graph that was "stickied' a few years ago that represented verb tenses in relation to where they took place in the past/present/future?

@tylerharms Do you mean this:

@Mitch Yes! I have a student asking about this, and I've been sifting through the site for an hour trying to dig it up. Thank you!

@tylerharms Well you now know there is at least one instance of Siri that actually is smart and provides personalized search results in ELU chat.

There are so many instances of "intestinal mobility".. seems like a common typo. It's even on Ngram

@Robusto yeah I learned that lingo from all the jazz musicians that I watch on YouTube. Like literally a couple years ago I wouldn't even know the term. Or that there was a term.

That said, well, I'm calling this particular book a fakebook because that's what it looks to me as a piano player, melody plus chord names, nothing else. But technically this is sheet music for the recorder, so I guess technically it's not really a fakebook in that sense. That's, like, all they ever get to see anyway.

Actually, what's with this talking. Lemme just show you.

Lol WTF. Flip your screen 180 degrees, yo.

So anyway. Yeah. In hindsight that book taught me a great deal more about music than all my solfege lessons did.

@CowperKettle I dunno. Intestinal mobility is kinda important to a lot of people.

That was the only book of that kind I had at the time. With just the melody and the chord names.

Everything else was like Chopin and Bach and Beethoven. Every note writ out. Nothing to think about.

Here I had to actually come up myself with what keys to actually press.

So yeah. Thanks, mom, I guess.

@RegDwigнt It's not one of those Bach things that plays another tune when upside-down and backwards?

I'm staring at Michelle right now laying on her back and all I can think about is, damn those crotched pauses sure look crooked.

Or the Bs for that matter.

Upside down, music looks like nothing you could ever possibly learn to read or comprehend.

Funny.

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I'm always impressed at how fast the high rep users can go through all of the resources on this site.

@tylerharms It's more about the keywords they know to search though, innit?

And the fact that he was there when Robusto answered the question

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Robusto would have answered soon enough.

In other news...

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ @Færd @Gigili Here's a map of languages in Iran:

How ... not totally inaccurate is that. Sure everybody speaks some Persian, but I didn't think the non-Persian languages were that widespread.

1) Does Kurdish as a primary language cover that much area? (also the map shows a lot in the east near Turkmenistan...I didn't think there was a sizeable portion of Kurds there. Is that right?).

2) Does Azeri (as the primary language) really extend that far south?

3) What is 'Raji'? Totally new to me.

4) The nomadic Qashqai...are there really that few people there that the few Qashqai are a majority?

I suppose that's enough for now. Later relativistic quantum electrodynamics.