Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007 October 28

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October 28

1970's TV Show

What is the name of the 1970's TV show that featured teen aged twin sisters? I think they were living with their aunt. The show went off the air for a while and returned with the sisters playing opposite roles.68.217.126.32 02:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)Jan T68.217.126.32 02:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

That would be Double Trouble, starring Jean and Liz Sagal (twin sisters of Katey Sagal of Married with Children and Futurama fame. --Canley 13:25, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Music box.

I'm making my wife a music box - using a $15 mechanism made by Kikkerland that reads music from a punched paper tape so you can put your own music on the thing. I'm going to carve a nice box for it...all very tasteful. This is all fine and good - but there are some serious restrictions imposed by the mechanism.

1. It only has two octaves of notes.
2. If can only play in the key of C with no flats or sharps. (ie anything you could play on a piano without touching the black notes).
3. It can't play two conseutive notes at the same pitch at maximum speed.
4. The paper strip only has room for about 100 beats of music.
5. If can play at most four notes at the same time.

I've been looking high and low for a nice snippet of classical music that this gizmo could play...but no luck so far. Any ideas? SteveBaker 03:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Harry potter theme??? ForeverDEAD 04:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Beethoven's Ode to Joy? [1] (just an excerpt, but easy to find online) Pfly 09:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

A couple more ideas; Amazing Grace (not classical, but nice), the first theme of Bach's In Dulci Jubilo (it has consecutive notes at the same pitch, but perhaps you could set "max speed" to 16th notes and it could play consecutive 8th notes?), and the first 8th note theme of Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring? Found basic sheet music for these here (Amazing Grace in the key of G, but no F#s in the melody, and could be transposed to C anyway), and here (could just use part of the piece), and here (it's in G, but could be transposed to C, and could just use the first 8th note melody). The restriction of "white notes" only makes it tricky. Forgive me if you know this, but if you find something nice, you might be able to transpose it to C, and all white notes is not only the key of C major, but also A minor ("natural minor"), and D dorian. There's a lot of jazz in dorian, maybe you can find something there? Interesting challenge. I've mainly thought of single note melodies, but since this thing can play 4 notes at once I'll see if I can think up something more complex. Pfly 17:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Further to what Pfly said, this may be very obvious, but I don't know how much you know about music. Are you aware that you could transpose any piece to play with 'no white notes' as long as it doesn't have any accidentals? So, as long as it doesn't have any sharps or flats specifically in front of particular notes, it doesn't matter if there are sharps and flats in the key signature. We can help you transpose it if necessary. However, taking that into account, it matters what the two octaves are. I would guess that it plays two octaves of the C major scale? So, from C to C? Hmmm. I'd think an excerpt from the moonlight sonata would be cool, but probably wouldn't work within your limits. I'll have a think... Skittle 22:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

The deal with two consecutive identical notes is to do with the way the paper tape pulls little wheels inside the box to pluck the metal 'comb' to make the sounds. You can have two identical notes separated by a rest - but if the music (for example) demands 1/16th notes that are identical and consecutive then you have to space the holes for the entire piece of music twice as far apart and wind the little handle twice as fast to play it. This halves the amount of music you can have on one strip and makes the music box harder to operate - but it's not impossible.

The ability to play four notes at once certainly adds to the joy of the thing...but the problem of a note from the melody 'colliding' with a note required by a chord - so a bit of refingering of the chords is likely to be needed.

In listening to some of the possible candidates, I'm painfully aware that the lack of volume or sustain control is another problem.

I'm aware of the basics of transposing music - but I realise that you can't tranpose just any key into any other key without doing great damage to the music in the process. It's not just about what key the music is in, a piece in C major is useless if it has accidentals in it. It's hard to explain the limits in formal musical terms - but I think "you have to be able to play it without using any black notes" covers the problem accurately. As described in the book that comes with it, you get two octaves C-to-C but looking inside the music box, I only count 15 teeth on the 'comb' - so it'a clearly two notes less than that.

Thanks for the suggestion of looking for Dorian scale music - that's a good thing to try. In Duche Jubilo also sounds like a good choice - I've always loved it since Mike Oldfield recorded it and it sounds like the tinkly notes of a twangy bit of metal wouldn't destroy the character of the piece. I'm going to write it out and punch a tape to see how it sounds. The music box came with only three paper tape strips (they are made from very thin cardboard (or very heavy paper) and printed with a treble clef and a staff with faint horizontal and vertical lines to guide you to punching the holes) - but I doubt I'm going to get just the right thing in three tries - so I need to experiment with making my own strips. It's annoying that they don't sell extra strips. Given the difficulty of doing this, I doubt many people have made good tunes using this gizmo! I've also got to find a way to loop the tape back on itself so it can all be hidden away inside the nice wooden box I'm making for it. I'm hoping that merely using sticky tape will work - but I don't know. If that works then I may be able to make much longer tapes - but there will come a limit where the fairly flimsy mechanism won't be able to pull the tape through the rollers without it slipping.

At first sight, this seemed like an easy thing to do - but all of the annoying little restrictions are making it absolutely maddeningly difficult!

SteveBaker 23:28, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Just make sure that if you do choose "In Dulci Jubilo", don't tell your wife it's called "In Duche Jubilo", or she may think it's meant to accompany someone achieving blessed relief after waiting a long time without access to a bathroom. Which doesn't sound nearly as romantic as I think you intend the gift to be.  :) -- JackofOz 21:12, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

"I'm aware of the basics of transposing music - but I realise that you can't tranpose just any key into any other key without doing great damage to the music in the process. It's not just about what key the music is in, a piece in C major is useless if it has accidentals in it. It's hard to explain the limits in formal musical terms - but I think "you have to be able to play it without using any black notes" covers the problem accurately. As described in the book that comes with it, you get two octaves C-to-C but looking inside the music box, I only count 15 teeth on the 'comb' - so it'a clearly two notes less than that."

No matter what key the piece is in, if it doesn't have accidentals you can transpose it to 'no black notes' without any harm or damage. Fitting it within the C-to-C limits might be the tricky bit in that respect. 15 teeth would be the two-octave scale of C-major (remember you only get the C-in-the-middle once!). You could look at traditional music; for example, if you find something arranged for inexperienced penny-whistle players, it should be transposable and an accompaniment shouldn't be too hard to work out. Sumer is icumen in should be quite doable, if you transpose that version up a perfect 5th or down a perfect 4th, so F's become C's. You could then add the bass parts, or have it play as a canon. Alternatively, if you want to go for In Dulce Jubilo, this four part arrangement should work if you again transpose so that F's become C's. Or you could look for a more organ-y version. Skittle 14:54, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Argh! This is turning out to be maddeningly difficult! In Dulce Jubilo transposed nicely without accidentals - but my first effort didn't fit into the C-to-C limits, so I had to transpose it again to make it fit - and even then, with all of the melody fitting, I couldn't get all of the left-hand stuff to fit - so I had to cheat and rearrange it somewhat. The trouble with it is that it has a lot of consecutive identical notes so I had to double the note spacing along the paper tape to avoid that limitation of the mechanism. The result does work - but you have to crank the handle insanely quickly to get it to play at the right speed (because of the double note spacing) - and for the same reason, I can't really get enough of the tune onto one 12" paper tape (although I can theoretically tape two tapes end-to-end to solve that). But the speed you need to crank the machine is really too fast for comfort. So sadly, unless I can figure out some alternative gearing...I need something else. I'll check out Sumer is icumen in. The trouble with penny-whistle tunes is that they don't have polyphony - which is one of the few things that music boxes are really good at! I SERIOUSLY doubt that anyone else who bought one of these machines ever got anything useful out of it! SteveBaker 13:29, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I have one of those boxes. Jesu Joy Of Man's Desiring works very well once you transpose it into C major. Right click and save as if it doesn't play properly Bear in mind that that's the first one I've done. I haven't had much time to do anything else but I will soon. I love my music box and think it's wonderful. You just need to be able to transpose and rearrange. Killerpelicans (talk) 20:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)