Sythe Users: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things?? Lets Find Out! #4

I'm assuming their location in near orbit affects their ability to find middle C due to, I dunno, atmospheric disparity that translates to differences in sound perception/transmission?

 

well i got to hand it to ya sythe, youve got me googling how sound and wavelengths are different in space at 11:42 pm on a thursday.

 

Use pv=nrt

(100kPa)(100 volume of people aboard)=n(8.3145 gas constant)(293.15K)

Solve for n moles of being able to hum a soft middle C

 

Take a .5m long cylinder closed on one end, and tune each instrument until the cylinder resonates. Cylinder could be a can of that dried bleach or something similar.

 

Jim need to not get dumb and remember basic instrumental frequencies if he knows music as well as the Shitty people are supposed to.

 

how many keys are on this "piano"?


edit- also you can't tune a piano without the proper tools, does he even have those tools kekekekekek

 

I can answer this in part. Pianos cannot be properly tuned and so he's shit out of luck. Even if he were to find middle C, all other keys radiating from the origin will have compounding error.

Let's jump ahead and say we've found middle C (hypothesis or evidence for which I haven't had time to research or think about, so I'll come back to it tomorrow).

Now, strings vibrate on sin waves in order to produce their sound. The frequency is the number of peaks in these sin waves times the fundamental frequency, or the frequency of vibrations when there's only one peak, a property of the type of string the piano uses. Carbon steel, spring steel, cat gut...

Each different ratio between the pitches have names.
1 to 2 peaks is called an octave, 2 to 3 is a fifth, and so on, and 8 to 9 is called a whole step (which is essentially one key to the next on the piano scale).

On single stringed instruments, tuning is a simple matter of traversing the harmonics. For pianos, however, there is a string for each of the 12 semitones of the western scale times 7 because of the amount of keys and octaves.

Now again, say you have middle C, and you're trying to tune the piano, and you decide to tune using whole steps. 6 whole steps is an octave, which should be the same note at double the frequency.

f(i)*9/8*9/8*9/8*9/8*9/8*9/8 = (9/8)^6 = 2.0728652... and so on.

Not 2, and therefore, compounding error will eventually make all high and low notes either audibly flat or sharp.

Ok, so let's try major thirds, or a step between 4 and 5 peaks in the sin wave of the string.

f(i)*5/4*5/4*5/4 = (5/4)^3 = 1.953125...

Don't even trying using halfsteps, or a step between 15 and 16 peaks.

f(i)*16/15*16/15*16/15*16/15*16/15*16/15*16/15*16/15*16/15*16/15*16/15*16/15 = (16/15)^12 = 2.17... almost 10% difference.

These days, usually tuning is accomplished by tuning each individual key by an irrational ratio to the key below it:
sqrt[12](2) (or however the fuck you write this notation, verbally spoken as "twelfth root of 2")

As you can probably imagine, this doesn't follow the rational and simple ratios of harmonics. The benefit, however, is that once you traverse 12 keys, you end up with exactly twice the frequency of middle C, which means all keys are equally off key across the entire spectrum, all except for every 12th key.


In conclusion, and to answer only PART of your question, the piano cannot be tuned using the simple household items he's restricted to, even if he manages to find middle C.

This means that, when I present my final answer about finding C, and subsequently tuning the instruments, they might as well throw all pianos overboard because he won't have the equipment for tuning to an irrational number.

 

I lol'd, ok I'll be back tomorrow. Don't give the answer at least until I've had a shot.

 

So for the piano, if you take a very large, long cylindrical shaft and stick it up Jim's butt, he'll play the C note and reveal the true ways of music.

 

middle C on the guitar is the fifth fret G string, or 1st fret B string. it sounds a octave lower.

One would simply tune by ear, as you said they are generally good at music they would have the skillset to get the pitch within range to an "Agreeable" point.

 

Who cares, as long it sounds decent.
Just leave Jim alone

 

fk Jim

 

It doesn't have to be quantitative or scientific. It simply works.