Dan German
Doctor of Teleocity
In Bedrock (twist, twist…)!I hate to burst your bubble
Who Invented the First Guitar Strings and Amplifier? (Hint, you have to go waaaaaay back)
- Thread starter redhouse_ca
- Start date
redhouse_ca
Tele-Holic
Cool stuff. My brother warned me not to get sucked into the math stuff (didn't need to, tho, I suck at math). I'm going to taunt him by sending this this to himNerd alert View attachment 1089320
Music scale math fun:
2^(1/12)=1.05946309435929...
This is an irrational number.
It's the ratio between note frequencies in an equal tempered 12 tone scale. (And also between string lengths of adjacent frets). Note that when you multiply this number by itself 12 times you get 2, which is the octave. Good for laying out a fretboard.
History of Irrational Numbers | Brilliant Math & Science Wiki
Irrational numbers are numbers that have a decimal expansion that neither shows periodicity (some sort of patterned recurrence) nor terminates. Let's look at their history. Hippassus of Metapontum, a Greek philosopher of the Pythagorean school of thought, is widely regarded as the first person...brilliant.org
History of logarithms - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
The interval of the perfect 5th is the closest we have to a rational number.
The ratio of the open string to the length at the 7th fret (to the bridge) is 1.49830707687668... which is really close to 3/2. I think that's the reason you find something like it in most music scale systems around the world. Other notes can be all over the map.
When the frequency ratio is a rational number, the waves line up and there are no beat notes, so it sounds "in tune".
In equal temperament, transposing to any key sounds equally out of tune because the ratios stay the same.
OK I'll stop now.
Seriously cool stuff, thanks!
redhouse_ca
Tele-Holic
You'd think.
redhouse_ca
Tele-Holic
You'd think
Thanks for clarifying that. I guess pre- is not a universally know pre-fix (get it? "pre" fix, lol) for before. I'll stick with it, tho, since the first Sumarian civilationa were founded before first kingdom Egypt, and before Abraham (Abraham was born in Ur, a Sumarian city, and one of those Cities was said to be founded by Enoch, whose book was passed on when they later (ie, not before/"pre") made the Bible (the OG bible). As for sources, I hear Penn is a decent school, but what do I know. Clearly need to read more.
redhouse_ca
Tele-Holic
You gotta post them when you get home. Thats a pretty big tease otherwise
redhouse_ca
Tele-Holic
Oh man, gutsy comment.
redhouse_ca
Tele-Holic
It's a good point. I put "invented" in quotes cuz we always get the old stuff wrong.
Not that old but this African instrument is legit, given to my Mother bya museum curator
Not much to look at and not the more common flint cutting tool.You gotta post them when you get home. Thats a pretty big tease otherwise
Supposedly checked by an expert and considered genuine, possibly circa 10,000 years old.
Found by an old farmer years ago not far from where I grew up.
redhouse_ca
Tele-Holic
Lucky you. That's incredible.
redhouse_ca
Tele-Holic
It's great stuff, I listened to this this afternoon.
Tele-beeb
Friend of Leo's
If we critically compare text-book history to text-book human ‘evolution’, then absolute eons are omitted… let’s not be fooled, our ‘real history’ has been erased ‘multiple?’ times. How could it not… compare the timelines and please prove me wrong?!?
ficelles
Tele-Holic
Text-book history is tied to the development of known writing systems and covers the last 9,000 or 10,000 years. Everything else is prehistory meaning not much is known about it apart from what can be inferred from archeological remains. Since homo sapiens has been around for some 300,000 years and developed language around 150,000 years ago, text-book history doesn't cover much of that.
This thread got me wondering: What is the oldest known instrument? As I typed that question into Google, a thought came immediately to mind. The answer to the first question could only be based on what is known, what has actually been found, so any answer to the question needs to consider that. As it turns out, there is a flute made of a bear femur, made by a Neanderthal person that is at least 40,000 years old. It was found in a cave somewhere in Europe. Aside from that, I Googled "oldest known stringed instrument", and it's a toss up between a lyre and a "plucked chordophone", both of which date to about 4500 years ago. It is stated (according to what I found on the Internet at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-string-family-instruments-history-facts.html ) that the first bowed chordophones where probably developed in Asia (a year is not attributed to that). I'm sure that amongst anthropologists, this is a controversial question and I have no doubt (as has been a central problem with the entire field of anthropology) that accusations of ethnocentrism have been levelled at certain claims. Still, a 40,000 year old flute is pretty cool! No?
radiocaster
Doctor of Teleocity
Actually goes back to hunting bows, and amplifiers when they added a gourd to the bow.
Nana!
Seen this guy live a few times when I was more into whatever music was happening then that I was into
History. Not static.
For those who understand German, there is a documentary about strings to be viewed on ARTE this evening, but one can stream it for now at https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/107201-000-A/das-dunkle-geheimnis-des-herrn-paganini/
The dark secret of Mr. Paganini. Documentation • F, A 2022 • 50 minutes
Legendary facts about the history of strings
We shudder when a Stradivarius or Guarneri violin fetches a top price at auction. If we turn the wheel of time back 400 years, we will be surprised. "The violin was built around the strings" is a traditional sentence from that time. In the string lay the perfectly natural, the "divine sound". The strings were made according to top secret recipes. The string producers in the mountain villages of Abruzzo worked on behalf of Rome and the Vatican. In other countries one tried in vain to reach the quality of the Italian strings. These therefore became an important commodity that brought enormous income to Rome and the Vatican. From the Thirty Years' War onwards, Rome repeatedly imposed string embargoes on the reformed countries. As late as the 19th century, Paganini traveled through Europe with a hidden box. It contained the special strings for sale to many an eagerly awaiting musician. The documentary follows the Italian chemist Mimmo Peruffo to the old mountain village of Salle, where he received information from the last string makers about the string secret in the 1990s. The chemist began with the replica with the cellist Claudio Ronco. It took them three decades to produce strings whose sound characteristics were largely based on the "corde divine". Today the demand is increasing. Musicians are increasingly looking for that special, old sound. What makes this sound is one of the surprises of this documentary, rich in the unexpected, in which Paganini's spirit also finds its place.
The dark secret of Mr. Paganini. Documentation • F, A 2022 • 50 minutes
Legendary facts about the history of strings
We shudder when a Stradivarius or Guarneri violin fetches a top price at auction. If we turn the wheel of time back 400 years, we will be surprised. "The violin was built around the strings" is a traditional sentence from that time. In the string lay the perfectly natural, the "divine sound". The strings were made according to top secret recipes. The string producers in the mountain villages of Abruzzo worked on behalf of Rome and the Vatican. In other countries one tried in vain to reach the quality of the Italian strings. These therefore became an important commodity that brought enormous income to Rome and the Vatican. From the Thirty Years' War onwards, Rome repeatedly imposed string embargoes on the reformed countries. As late as the 19th century, Paganini traveled through Europe with a hidden box. It contained the special strings for sale to many an eagerly awaiting musician. The documentary follows the Italian chemist Mimmo Peruffo to the old mountain village of Salle, where he received information from the last string makers about the string secret in the 1990s. The chemist began with the replica with the cellist Claudio Ronco. It took them three decades to produce strings whose sound characteristics were largely based on the "corde divine". Today the demand is increasing. Musicians are increasingly looking for that special, old sound. What makes this sound is one of the surprises of this documentary, rich in the unexpected, in which Paganini's spirit also finds its place.
redhouse_ca
Tele-Holic
Danke. I got an error that it's verboten in meinem Land. But I'd like to see it. This is very cool stuff. Any idea if it can be seen anywhere else?
redhouse_ca
Tele-Holic
It's just insane to imagine 40,000 yo flute. Just imagine 40,000 is hard for me. I have to constantly reorient myself with current time or I can't grasp it. I read thinks like "the civilizations sudden collapse" or something like that and then I look closely and "sudden" was a 1000 year period. 1023 AD was 1000 years ago from today. That's a really long time. I read Cleopatra is closer to us in time than she was to the building of the pyramids.
Thanks for posting I enjoyed the read.
