For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
I understand time signatures in theory, but not in practice. I comprehend what they are and what they mean, but they don’t make sense to me. I don’t understand what they do or why they’re necessary.
Like I get it, the bottom number tells you how many beats are in a whole note. Most commonly 4, but sometimes 8 or something else.
The top number tells you how many beats are in a measure. In common time, that’s again 4.
But mathematically, wouldn’t that mean 3/4 time is the same as 6/8 time? They’re equivalent as fractions. But when I ask a musician they don’t explain it, they just tell me “No, they’re different. That’s 3/4, this is 6/8.” And usually with this undertone like “Are you stupid? This is so obvious, what part are you not getting?”
From what I gather, 6/8 time is usually done in pairs of triplets. So it does sound rhythmically different than 3/4. But no one ever tells you that, not even when the concept is introduced in textbooks on music theory. They just tell you “and this is 6/8 time,” as if you’re just supposed to know how and why that’s in any way different from 3/4 time…
From what I gather, 6/8 time is usually done in pairs of triplets. So it does sound rhythmically different than 3/4. But no one ever tells you that, not even when the concept is introduced in textbooks on music theory. They just tell you “and this is 6/8 time,” as if you’re just supposed to know how and why that’s in any way different from 3/4 time…
I think it is too. I figured it out when I read that Jocko Homo is in 7/8 and it’s very clear because of the staccato notes, 3 by guitar 4 by synth. Another way to think of it is the first beat is accented. So 4/4 is ONE two three four ONE two three four. 5/4 is ONE two three four five ONE two three four five.
I think a lot of musicians don’t really fully understand it so they can’t explain it. Kinda like how programmers can’t really explain casting. And don’t you programmers dare tell me about cows in a pasture or a barn or whatever that analogy is. Just translate your line of code with the word “cast” into a sentence that makes sense. You can’t.
About Casting, at least in the granddaddy of programming languages, C, just meant interpreting the value of a variable as if it was a different kind of variable. Important detail is that variables are actually just memory locations and the number of bytes that conform it. So if you have a variable x of type string that holds the letter A, and a variable y also of type string with the letter B, if you do
x+y
You get ‘AB’. But if you cast the variables like this:
(int)x + (int)y
You get 131
To put it in words as you asked, you are saying “please add the values located at memory locations x and y, but treat the values found there as if they were numbers, and not the ASCII codes for letters (which is what I had originally told you was there)”.
It’s been almost 30 years since the last time I actually used this, so I might be recalling something wrong.
I’m not sure if this answers the question but I feel like the older I get the more I see through “the game of life” and once that illusion gets shattered it’s impossible to unsee. Much of the status seeking, tribal behaviour becomes nearly impossible to partake in once you start seeing what it’s all for.
Go ask a person why their Instagram is filled to the brim with pictures of their face, for example, and you can watch in real time as their world view starts wobbling and they start making up rationalizations and excuses for behaviour that is utterly narcissistic. Try doing that while being fully conscious about the true motivations behind it. You can’t - something has to give.
However, I’m not sure if this is a good thing. Sure you can pat yourself on the back for being above it all but it makes it really difficult for anyone to try and integrate in normal everyday social situations when all of it just feels like a performance.
Yeah I also have autism
autism has nothing to do with this.
Sure, sure
