Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2010 July 1

= July 1 =

Star Spangled Banner -- Music question

 * With a range of one and a half octaves, it is known for being difficult to sing.

I don't understand any musical jargon but am interested in knowing what this means in reference to the Star Spangled Banner (copied from the second paragraph). Reading the octave article doesn't help me, because in addition to now not understanding what octave means, I have the added difficulty of interval, pitch and frequency. I understand that frequency is the number of sine waves within a given length of rope, but I don't know how that physics-lab sort of definition necessarily plays into music. If someone could please explain in complete and utter non-musical-jargon (or at least define jargon words exceedingly well when used) what it means that the Star Spangled Banner ranges in one and a half octaves and explain which words are the ones that go to the varying ranges (I do know the tune). Thanx.  DRosenbach  ( Talk 03:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * One and a half octaves is about the limit an untrained voice can sing. Unfortunately, unless the pitch range of the song as sung on any given occasion exactly matches the pitch range of your voice, it will be tough to sing.
 * The lowest note in SSB is the third note, on "say"; the highest, an octave and a half up, is on "red glare". Antandrus (talk) 03:07, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * To be honest, defining words such as "interval" and "pitch" are difficult to describe non-musically. (I'll tell you straight-out that few musicians use the word "frequency" when describing a song - that's really more a scientific thing." But I can describe it in terms of the song. In "The Star-Spangled Banner," an octave is the distance note-wise between the words "say" and "see" in the first line. The distance between the very first word of the song, "Oh," and "red glare" is also an octave. (Timing doesn't matter here - I'm talking just about the sound of the notes.) As Antandrus mentioned above the average untrained voice can only sing a maximum range of one and a half octaves - about the distance between the words "say" and "red glare" in that song. Which means that for an untrained singer this song may start on notes which are about in the middle of their able singing range and end up—when we get to the "rocket's red glare" bit—higher than the person can sing. Hope this explanation helps. Ryankiefer (talk) 03:27, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Klaviatur-3-en.svg shown)]] [[Image:Callas's Vocal Range.JPG|thumb|350px|right|The Green square is the Middle C (C4) and the Blue square is the High C (C6), which is the typical 2-octave vocal range for a soprano. The Red squares show [[Maria Callas]]'s vocal range in performance, going from F-sharp (F#3) below Middle C to E-natural (E6) above High C. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 20:04, 1 July 2010 (UTC)]] Frequency is indeed the number of sine waves within a given length of rope if you are wiggling the end of a rope. Think of sound as sending wiggles through the air. The frequency is the number of wiggles that go into your ear every second. Actually the "wiggles" are pressure variations. The whole range of sound frequencies is 20 to 15 000 cycles (wiggles) per second. Only a few ears can hear the lowest and highest ends of that range. No singer can make their vocal chords vibrate at all these frequencies. Most people can manage an octave range which is best understood if a piano is available, see image. Play the lowest (leftmost) note C, then play the next C, then the next C. Each repetition of C is an octave apart. In terms of frequency an octave increase means doubling the frequency. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 09:59, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

For context about how difficult it is to sing more than an octave and a half, while of course you'd expect many professional singers to be able to exceed the norm, the singer Cyndi Lauper is renowned for being able to sing four octaves. This factoid, referenced, is mentioned in our article about her. It's truly astonishing. I've not heard of anyone who has been cited as being able to sing more than four, but I await the next post in this thread... --Dweller (talk) 10:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Four octaves is reasonably common among professional opera singers, I think. I suspect this is partly training but mostly selection. --Trovatore (talk) 16:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry to disappoint, but I'm here to witter a bit about the nature of conceptual confusion. I find your (the OP's) situation fascinating, because I frequently encounter similar situations when reading about unfamiliar subjects - it frequently happens that the next article in my quest to understand things just introduces more jargon and makes things worse. This usually happens to me in mathematics, though, not music, and not only does the concept of "a range of one and a half octaves" present zero difficulty to me, I also find it hard to see why it troubled the you. (I mention this purely out of interest, and am not trying to call you an idiot or anything.) It's as if you don't understand what it means for a note to be higher or lower than another note. Is that really the case? If you do in fact have that much background knowledge, then I can tell you the highness or lowness of a note is what pitch is, and the "range" referred to is between the highest and lowest notes in the song. Not meaning to be rude or nosy, but I wonder where the gap in the chain of connected concepts was, for you? Perhaps you hadn't connected "octave" to "musical note"? In such situations I usually find the answer is a frustratingly simple conceptual connection which it just hadn't occurred to any editor to put into any of the articles. Yet I suppose there are unmanageably many such connections, and we can't put them all in ... 213.122.39.120 (talk) 10:22, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Not sure anyone's really answered your question, so I'll have a go. Musical notes are given a letter of the alphabet as a name, and there are seven identified whole notes (see later for this) - a b c d e f and g.  b is higher than a, c is higher than b and so forth.  If you sing or play your way up from a to g and then sing one note higher, you get back to an a - but one that's obviously higher.  Musically, it's said to be an octave higher than the original a.  I believe it's named like this since there are 8 notes between the lower a and the upper a, and octave comes from the Latin for 8.  Scientifically, the upper a is twice the frequency of the lower a - that is to say, whatever causes the note (e.g. your vocal chords) is oscillating twice a fast for the higher note.  Notes an octave higher are always twice the frequency of the lower note.


 * Most trained male singers will have a vocal range of 2 octaves or so - females can generally do more, but untrained singers often quite a lot less. So we see that trained singers could cope with the 1 1/2 octave range of the US anthem, providing it starts and finishes in the right place, but untrained singers would struggle.


 * I mentioned whole notes above. I was slightly inaccurate in what I said.  When we write music we use the letters a to g to name the notes, but confusingly there's not the same distance between them.  From a to b is a whole note (it would normally be called a tone), but from b to c is half as big a jump (called a semitone).  So from a to b the jump of a tone could also be viewed as a jump of 2 semitones.  Because the scale from lower a to upper a has a variety of jumps, some whole tones and some semitones, in fact the most accurate description of an octave is as 12 semitones.  So it really should be called a duodecave if we count the semitones, or perhaps a sextave if we count the tones.  But we don't we count the notes and there are 8 and so it's an octave.  HTH.  --Phil Holmes (talk) 12:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it would help to point out a commonly heard interval?  The first two tones in "Somewhere over the Rainbow" ("Some-where") are one octave apart. APL (talk) 15:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * If you want to try a song with a narrower range, you could try Mary Had a Little Lamb.
 * http://www.kididdles.com/lyrics/m003.html
 * http://www.wikihow.com/Play-Mary-Had-a-Little-Lamb-on-the-Piano
 * http://www.wikihow.com/Play-'Mary-Had-a-Little-Lamb'-on-a-Phone
 * http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/music/piano/index.htm
 * —Wavelength (talk) 16:55, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * (ec)Not an explanation, but a note of sympathy. I am hopelessly blank on most musical concepts and jargon. I think Phil did a great job until perhaps the last couple of sentences where I could get the gist of things in the same manner in which I can sometimes understand a foreign language by spotting a couple of words that look familiar :-). The OP may be interested in our article on amusia (a term to describe an inability to "get" music, encompassing tone deafness and other concepts), which mentions that around 4% of people may have the same inability. I don't know whether I meet the technical definition, but it was food for thought for me and may be for you as well. Matt Deres (talk) 17:07, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Let me try. OP, do you know the song Do-Re-Mi? Can you sing " Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do"? This, from the first do to the last do, is an octave. Now I add 4 higher notes to it. Sing "Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, re, mi, fa, so." This is a range of one and a half octaves. OK? Then try to sing "do, re". I think it is easy because "re" is the next note to "do". To sing "do, so" might be a little bit difficult because "so" is not so close to "do". Sing "do (low) to do (high)" is more difficult because it's less closer. Star Spangled Banner uses lot of notes, meaning a wide range and the notes jump a lot, especially at "...(stream)-ing? And (the)." That is why it's a difficult song to sing. Mary Had a Little Lamb uses only five notes, "do, re, me, fa, and so". The range is about half an octave and narrow. The notes do not jump. That is why the song is easy to sing. Sing and compare these two and which do you think is difficult to sing? Hope my explanation would help. Oda Mari (talk) 07:37, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * An excellent approach. Start at "do" with as low as you can go, then start singing up the scale. I start in the baritone area and after 1 1/2 octaves I was getting into falsetto! ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:06, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * In the page from my first and second external links above, Mary Had a Little Lamb uses only four notes in a range of five notes, and in the page from the third external link, the version uses only three notes. With the page from the fourth external link, you can play it with only three notes (F, G, and A): AGFGAAA GGG AAA AGFGAAA AGGAGF.  (The other version can be played as follows: AGFGAAA GGG ACC AGFGAAA AGGAGF).—Wavelength (talk) 14:37, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry. I might be wrong, but the melody I thought was AGFGAAA GGG ACC AGFGAAA GBflatAGF (EDCDEEE DDD EGG EDCDEEE DFEDC in C). Oda Mari (talk) 15:39, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * There can be different melodies with different transpositions (in different keys). Sometimes, a pair of quarter notes can be replaced by a three-eighths note and an eighth note, or vice versa.
 * http://www.enchantedlearning.com/music/sheetmusic/maryhadalittlelamb.shtml
 * http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiMARYLAM2;ttMARYLAM2.html
 * http://www.music-scores.com/midi.php?sheetmusic=Trad_Mary_lamb_voice_or_duet
 * http://www.sheetmusic2print.com/Folk/Mary-Had-Little-Lamb.aspx
 * —Wavelength (talk) 17:07, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * [I am revising my message of 17:07, 2 July 2010 (UTC).—Wavelength (talk) 17:20, 2 July 2010 (UTC)]

What does it mean when a song is in a certain key?
 * See the article Key (music). The octave is divided up to give 12 notes but a song usually uses only 8 of them. They are 8 notes to which one can sing "do-re-mi..." (called Solfège). It's possible to start singing "do" on any one of the 12 notes and the rest of the 8 will follow in the standard pattern. The song is said to be in the key of the note that is "do". The key of C is easy to play on a piano because it uses only the white notes. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 19:44, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

1/2 ounce gold coins
I have noticed a large difference in the price of gold coins. Is it because of the % of 24 karat gold the u.s. mint used in producing them and how can I find out how pure a coin is? I have seen 1986 coins for sale at $250 and 1998 ones listed at $1400.184.0.110.238 (talk) 04:58, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * American Gold Eagle coins are 22 karat (91.67% pure) Are you sure you are comparing like with like on those prices?  Gold eagles come in various sizes from 1/10 toz to 1 toz.  Googlemeister (talk) 14:02, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Could you point us to an online source that has this kind of price discrepancy so we can take a look at what exactly is being compared? These are gold bullion coins which are priced based solely on their precious metal content and not on rarity or popularity of design, as are "normal" rare coins.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:14, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps one advert was for gold proof coins, minted to a higher standard with a mirror finish and sold at a considerable premium compared to normally-minted bullion coins.   D b f i r s   21:19, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Payments on airplanes
Why do most airlines (in the US at least) now exclusively accept credit cards to pay for things in the air? It seems like it would take a lot more resources to process credit card information while flying than to accept cash. 70.162.12.102 (talk) 07:25, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about duty free goods or things like food and drink? In any event, the answer is that airlines don't want the hassle of carrying cash around with them on the plane.  It's liable to be pilfered and it's a pain to account for and to bank. --Viennese Waltz talk 07:34, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Credit cards take care of exchange rates. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 09:30, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Credit cards are more difficult for staff to defraud. --Dweller (talk) 10:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * True, but there are ways to control that. The story I've heard is that it's so the stews won't have to keep everyone waiting while they try to find change for larger bills. It's probably a bit of both. It could be a problem for someone with no credit cards, though. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:42, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Bugs. Are there folk who fly in planes yet don't have a credit card? Seems it would only affect very few. -- SGBailey (talk) 13:43, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are. Not all that many, perhaps, but they do exist. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:01, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The obvious workaround would be to have another passenger charge it and then pay them the 5 bucks. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:03, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * If you consider international flights, it's probably not an inconsiderable number. In any case, if one only has cash, one just doesn't buy the overpriced sandwich (that we used to get for free)... --Mr.98 (talk) 15:18, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps because items are priced so outrageously on planes, you'd need a wheelbarrow of currency to pay for them. --Dweller (talk) 09:10, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * But the price they would charge you to take that wheelbarrow as a carryon would mean your wheelbarrow would be empty Googlemeister (talk) 15:02, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Outdoor water heater/showers
Hi. I'm looking for information on the water-heater/showers people use when camping and outdoors etc. The way it works is that you heat a small tank of water with fire and the hot water flows up a pipe and through a small shower head. What are these things called? Thanks --Mudupie (talk) 10:15, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * ...er, 'Showers' perhaps?--85.211.211.88 (talk) 12:32, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Camp shower seems the obvious term, but Google searches for that mostly turn up solar-heated camp showers (and illustrate quite conclusively that camp showers are used almost exclusively by young women in bikinis). Googling for fire heated camp shower brings up a number of hits, such as this one and this one. No idea how well they work, though; it seems like the kind of thing you'd have to be careful with in regards to the heat of the water. Matt Deres (talk) 13:24, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you Matt. I wanted to know what they are called so I could search for it. But your link above was exactly what I needed. --Mudupie (talk) 13:53, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Email from Wikipedia
I have created a new header for this question, which had none. Matt Deres (talk) 13:11, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi,

I received the email below and did not create an account with you. Is someone using your name?

Thank you, Jim

EMAIL: From: wiki@wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki@wikimedia.org] Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2010 8:21 AM To:   Subject: Wikipedia e-mail address confirmation

Someone from the IP address 93.189.84.22 has registered the account "technical" with this e-mail address on the English Wikipedia.

To confirm that this user account really does belong to you and to activate e-mail features on Wikipedia, please open this URL in your browser:

 

If you did not recently register for Wikipedia (or if you registered with a different e-mail address),

click the following link to cancel the confirmation:

 

This confirmation e-mail will automatically expire at Thu, 1 Jul 2010 16:21:26 +0300

~Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.95.226.2 (talk) 12:56, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not familiar with any email confirmations like that (and the help desk would be a better place to ask), but I note that your IP address geolocates to Cherry Valley, Illinois, while the IP address in the email geolocates to someplace in the Russian Federation. In any case, if you've never provided Wikipedia with your email address then obviously someone is spamming you for whatever reason. We don't send out unsolicited emails to random folks. Matt Deres (talk) 13:16, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * See the various similar posts on the Help Desk. It's spam - delete it.  Ka renjc 13:17, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Click "cancel" and move on. I removed your e-mail and the confirm/cancel links (which undermine the entire point of an e-mail confirmation). --Mr.98 (talk) 13:18, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Just delete the email and move on. It's phishing - the links don't lead to a Wikipedia address, they're harvesting live email addresses.  I got one this morning too.   Acroterion  (talk)  13:24, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The links he posted were valid Wikipedia links, though of course there are all sorts of ways for those to be spoofed in the e-mail itself. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:09, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The links he posted were copied from the email: the embedded links in the actual email (which would not carry over from a copy/paste) would not appear here. If you hover the mouse over the links in the email, you will see where the actual links lead, which isn't to anything Wikimedia-related.  Acroterion  (talk)  15:20, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I started receiving these this morning, too. It's phishing.  Perma-delete and move on.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:11, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

SAT Review?
What's your personal preference: Kaplan or Princeton Review?

Thanks in advance,

Perfect Proposal  16:03, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The reference desk doesn't have personal preferences. We do facts, not opinions. Sorry. --Tango (talk) 16:23, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * ... and I was confused about whether you were testing a tiger or a turbine?   D b f i r s   06:55, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Cleaning Smelly shoes with Alcohol
I have smelly feet and wear boat shoes in the summer sockless. Needless to say, this creates some very nasty odours in these leather boat shoes. Am I correct in assuming that these odours are microbial in nature? If so, will I be able to eliminate the odours in the shoes by spraying the inside with a 70% alcohol spray? Will this damage the leather? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 18:05, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The odours are usually advertised as microbial. An alcohol spray may help, but I don't know if it will damage the leather. Most shoe-shops (and probably supermarkets) sell a shoe deodoriser. If you don't want to buy one of those specifically, it might help to know if they are alcohol based. Steewi (talk) 02:48, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Clean your feet first. Use deodorant. This one seems to be popular. Or use Sodium bicarbonate or Alum solution as your foot lotion. An alcohol spray for your shoes may help, but it won't last. Do not wear the same shoes every day. Give them at least one day to dry. Oda Mari (talk) 17:27, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Colour of house


What colour is the Moses McKay House, pictured here? I can't decide between white, a pale yellow, or a pale green, and my red/green colourblindness may be complicating matters here. Nyttend (talk) 20:01, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The brightly lit gable end looks, as near as one can tell without a colour-calibration of the camera, white. The shaded front has patches of light red and light green, both surely arising from the diffuse reflection of the trees and the porch roof. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:06, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Comparing the shadowed areas to the white on the recycling bin in the foreground, I'd describe it as cream-colored.  Acroterion  (talk)  20:15, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with Acroterion, though I arrived at that by assuming the sill on the upstairs window was white; the siding is pretty clearly not as white as the sill is. Matt Deres (talk) 22:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Cream-colored, not pure white which would gleam in the sun. It could be worth a call to the house's caretaker to find out for sure. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:40, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Mysterious gentleman at Wimbledon Championships
For the past number of years I have watched, on television, the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. I have come to notice each year the same gentleman 'minding' the players' family area. He is of senior years, has a smart Van Dyke beard, wears a blazer and a smart ?club tie, but most noticeably he wears a wide brimmed leather hat. He sits at the entrance and always politely gets up if someone enters or leaves the pen. Who is this fine fellow? Does anyone have a link to him? Caesar&#39;s Daddy (talk) 21:35, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * David Spearing, see Who is that bearded man in the hat?. Nanonic (talk) 10:27, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Whoa, good stuff! thanks Nanonic. Caesar&#39;s Daddy (talk) 17:05, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Coincidence?
http://www.galladechem.com/ --75.25.103.109 (talk) 23:49, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * What are you talking about? Matt Deres (talk) 00:43, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Gallade is a Pokémon. --75.25.103.109 (talk) 01:46, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Coincidence? Hmmm... I think not. hydnjo (talk) 02:26, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The Wikipedia article gives a compelling explanation of the Pokemon name. The chemical distributor is probably named after someone specific. I would probably put that under "coincidence." I see no connection. The chemical company is not well-known enough to be a worthwhile reference. (If the Pokemon was named DuPonty, it would be a different story.) --Mr.98 (talk) 13:08, 2 July 2010 (UTC)