No one can agree what time signature “Row Row Row Your Boat” is in

“Row Row Row Your Boat” is one of the simplest songs in the world. Little kids sing it. It’s obvious what time signature it’s in. Or so you would think. But people are arguing about it on Reddit, and more people are arguing about it on Twitter, and there is no consensus. Is it in 4/4 with a triplet or swing feel? Is it in 3/4? Or 6/8? Or maybe 12/8? Some people have seen it notated in 2/4. A number of people say that the answer is obvious, but they don’t agree with each other what that answer is. I decided to settle the question once and for all. Using my Time Signature Song as a backing track, I recorded myself singing it in 4/4, 2/4, 3/4, 6/8, 12/8, 5/4, 5/8, 10/4, 7/4, 7/8, 9/4, 9/8, 11/8, and 13/8.  

Hope that clears things up. You can all go on with your lives now.

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I made a Patreon page

I have a lot of blog posts and videos in the pipeline, but I’m feeling some anxiety about where all this work is taking me. Don’t get me wrong, I love blogging for the sake of blogging, it has improved my life immeasurably and has had major professional benefits as well. But it’s not very lucrative, and neither is academia, so I’m developing other plans too. I have some ambitions in commercial publishing and business, but these things move slowly and the rewards are far in the future. Meanwhile, I love blogging and Twitter (and also, recently, YouTube) because they’re so immediate. I write stream of consciousness threads, turn them into posts and videos, and continually refine and update them in response to all the feedback. It’s fun, like teaching without all the bureaucracy!

Someone on Twitter suggested that I try Patreon, and my feeling is, why not?

So what am I hoping to achieve with this?

  • Money in my pocket so I can keep rolling out the blog posts and videos with less guilt and anxiety about other things I’m supposed to be doing.
  • More feedback from the people who value my stuff the most, and more incentive for me to give them more of what they want.
  • A new place to build community. Apparently there are a lot of lurkers out there who don’t write blog comments or Twitter replies but who would happily make their presence known through Patreon. Someone suggested I do Adam-Neely-style Q&As, and I love this idea. I’d also be open to taking requests for songs to analyze or production techniques to break down. I’m interested to see what other ideas you folks have for me.

I have undertaken all of my online activities in the spirit of, okay, well, this thing seems cool, what happens when I post a lot stuff here? So far the rewards (lots of new friends, some great jobs, a doctoral fellowship, regular dopamine hits) have vastly outweighed the downside (occasional right wing hate mail). So let’s see what transpires with Patreon!

In praise of campy Batman

My son is deeply obsessed with Batman, like any four year old should be. His favorite articles of clothing include a Batman sweatshirt, Batman pajamas, and Batmobile-shaped slippers. When he plays Batman, he imagines his powers to include shooting bats out of his hands. And he loves the Batman theme song.

In fact, the boy loves this theme song so much that he insists I sing theme songs for all his other favorite superheroes. This is easy for Spider-man, who also has a great 60s vintage theme song. But I had to make up songs for Superman and Iron Man (which has meant improvising goofy lyrics to John Williams’ theme music and the riff from the Black Sabbath song, respectively.)

The only version of Batman that’s really age-appropriate for a four-year-old is the sixties one. This is just as well, because the late Adam West’s Batman is the best version all the way around.

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Please stop saying “consuming music”

In the wake of David Bowie’s death, I went on iTunes and bought a couple of his tracks, including the majestic “Blackstar.” In economic terms, I “consumed” this song. I am a “music consumer.” I made an emotional connection to a dying man who has been a creative inspiration of mine for more than twenty years, via “consumption.” That does not feel like the right word, at all. When did we even start saying “music consumers”? Why did we start? It makes my skin crawl.

Barbara Kruger - Untitled

The Online Etymology Dictionary says that the verb “to consume” descends from Latin consumere, which means “to use up, eat, waste.” That last sense of the word speaks volumes about America, our values, and specifically, our pathological relationship with music.

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A book you should read

I’m currently reading On Immunity by Eula Biss, which is so good you can’t believe it. Recommended if you’re interested in vaccination, health generally, being a parent, gender, race, class, the history of medicine, Greek mythology, vampires, or if you just need an example of how to parse out a difficult subject in a warm and elegant manner.

On Immunity

Also, if you have money and want to make a well targeted public health intervention, I recommend buying a bunch of copies and handing them out in front of the Park Slope Food Coop and the equivalent locations in Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Laurel Canyon, Portland, and wherever else well-educated professionals aren’t getting their kids vaccinated.

Carl Sagan explains why Pong is good for you

From from Sagan’s highly-recommended 1977 book The Dragons Of Eden:

There is a popular game, sometimes called Pong, which simulates on a television screen a perfectly elastic ball bouncing between two surfaces. Each player is given a dial that permits him to intercept the ball with a movable “racket”. Points are scored if the motion of the ball is not intercepted by the racket. The game is very interesting. There is a clear learning experience involved which depends exclusively on Newton’s second law for linear motion. As a result of Pong, the player can gain a deep intuitive understanding of the simplest Newtonian physics – a better understanding even than that provided by billiards, where the collisions are far from perfectly elastic and where the spinning of the pool balls interposes more complicated physics.

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Nicest blog comment ever

Received via email from one Pierre Boyer:

Wow. I just stumbled upon your blog tonight, and I’ve been reading it for 4 hours straight now. I just can’t stop. I’ve been a rock enthusiast, guitar player and amateur composer for some years,but only as a hobby. Being more of a scientific mind, I’ve always tried to find patterns in the music I like, as much out of curiosity about *why* I liked this particular song and not this one, as because it gave me clues for my compositions. That lead me to moody all-nighters (probably like this one) reading countless scientific literature pdfs about psychoacoustics when I really should be sleeping. I’ve always made small experiments whenever I thought I found a pattern. Using GuitarPro (which, I now realize, is just a dumbed-down version of your ideal 3-in-1 tool of transcription,edition and recording) and tabs I found on the net. So just imagine how I felt reading the first few articles on your blog :D. I also happen to LOVE physics, mathematics, and anything that provides abstract and mathematically-beautiful models about the world we live in. I’m not very good at getting ideas from my mind on a paper in a structured or even remotely intelligible way however. And your blog…it’s just… It’s like everything I ever thought of or considered (and a LOT LOT more stuff that I never thought of and just blew my mind),but could never clearly state or manage to get my head around is just there, beautifully told, expertly written, using a nice wordpress theme. I can’t stress enough how much in awe I am right now. You definitely are one of the most clever and useful person I’ve ever met in my life (well, read, but you get the point) and will probably met. I’ll be reading your blog like mad for the next few hours, and probably a few days after that, and some more days again after that. And from the very little I had time to read, it’ll probably change my understanding of music, and my whole life in general, forever. I also agree with you about the western way of teaching music, which I took class of for 3 years before I just couldn’t stand this non-sensical and counter-intuitive way of notation and composition. Which also is,I guess, one of the thing that pushed me to look somewhere else for answers. I also read books about copyright (like that one by Lessig recommended on xkcd) and thermodynamics, and pretty much all the stuff that is featured on this blog. Well, as you can see by now, I didn’t lie about not being able to write anything structured :p. I just wanted to let you know how much of a miracle your blog is to me right now. I sincerely, whole-heartedly thank you for putting all that priceless knowledge for free on the internet.

Greetings from France !

Pierre. (Not a native speaker)