Message #3440

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Re: Introductions!
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2016 16:39:08 -0700

I also play the flute. I had tried a lot of different instruments
(piano, marimba, trombone, clarinet) but none of them really grabbed me
until I found the flute. Piano was great for giving me a grounding for
music theory, but it’s one of the more difficult instruments so it’s
difficult to recommend. Recorders and penny whistles are great ways to
see if someone might be interested in the flute and similar instruments
because they produce the sound naturally. With the flute you have to
learn to do that yourself and it’s difficult to do well but satisfying
when you succeed. Mainly you want to produce a round and compact stream
of air and direct it at the far side of the hole so that the air gets
cut into two streams, one that goes into the flute and the other that
goes across the top. This makes the stream waggle back and forth,
producing the tone. You need to adjust your aim slightly depending upon
pitch but that’s the basic idea.

Interest and skill in music and math tend to go together though I don’t
think anyone yet knows why. I believe that our general interest in music
is a byproduct of our evolution of language. I think that music
stimulates the same brain regions as language listening and speaking.
Language appears to be based around associative stories, and musical
pieces seem to follow similar patterns of story arcs and include
patterns such as call-and-response, etc. I don’t know what music’s
connection is with math but it’s clearly there. Maybe something to do
with finding, following and producing rules and patterns? I’m betting
someone will figure it out soon.

Just for fun I created a group poll to find out what instruments are
popular in our group. Please everyone go there
<https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/4D_Cubing/polls/poll/13267602> and
select your instrument if you have one. This is not to ask your favorite
instrument to listen to, It should be the one that feels like it was
made for you to play. I only listed a few popular instruments. Please
add yours if you don’t find it listed.

-Melinda

On 7/13/2016 2:54 PM, Ray Zhao thermostatico@gmail.com [4D_Cubing] wrote:
>
>
> Hi Edward,
>
> First of all, I love listing things!…I just don’t do it often.
>
> Anyway, congrats on the solve. 1200+ moves doesn’t sound like that
> much considering how it’s your first solve; I bet if you solve it once
> or twice the number will go down to around 1000 (or even less). Layer
> by layer is a good idea; you can even use CFOP on it. However, I’m not
> sure about solving the 5^4 one layer at a time.
>
> Number theory is cool sometimes, and I mean sometimes since modular
> arithmetic didn’t click for me last term (especially non-linear
> congruences) and since I often add up two-digit numbers wrong in my
> head. Maybe once I get those sorted out, I’ll continue reading about
> numbers. The research + simulations part seems real fun though.
>
> Also, you play flute? I’ve always wanted to learn how to play the
> flute…except when I have more energy. A tenor sax would probably w
> ork better in that case. Anyway, how to make a note come out on the
> flute is still a great mystery to me. Actually, music and math is
> still a great mystery to me in general. Is number theory involved there?
>
>
> 10/10 suggest you go solve the 5^4 or at least the 4^4,
>
> Ray
>
>
>
>