Can I kick this off with:

What’s the difference between concertinas and accordians?

What’s the difference between Northumbrian, Scottish and Irish bagpipes?

How does a pedal steel guitar work? What is all that hardware?

Feel free to add any other questions you thought were too dumb to ask, but realise that by asking them you are showing the wisdom of knowing your own ignorance! Ommmmm...

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

I believe the difference between concertinas and accordions is that the former are held in the hands and the latter is strapped to the body. As for your other questions, I'm afraid I can't help.

I'd like to add a question: How does the C extension on a double bass work? Is it 'fretted' on an E, then when the extension in 'active' that fret just drops away?

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www.allyle.co.uk

Quote The Elf:

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What’s the difference between concertinas and accordians?

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I once heard a record rep say to hanger-on'er "Look at that clarinet!", and with the talkback mic still on, the engineer said "It's a f!cking bassoon you tw@t!".

Laugh? I nearly followed through!

Absolutely everything that anyone could ever possibly want to know (and much, much more — almost too much, in fact) about pedal steel guitars can be found here (an article from the now sadly deceased Performing Musician magazine).

Cheers!

Chris

Quote Korff:

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Absolutely everything that anyone could ever possibly want to know (and much, much more — almost too much, in fact) about pedal steel guitars can be found here

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Ouch! Lots of words!

And the 60 word bluffer's version for we unversed in string-ridden things, might read?...

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

I saw a How it's made about pedal stell guitars. The pedals bend some notes, that's about as much as I remember!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedal_steel_guitar Says

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The pedals and knee levers raise and lower the pitch of certain strings "on the fly" while the instrument is being played. The exact action of these pedals and levers—which strings are affected—can be set by the player to their preference.

Characteristic effects are obtained by changing pitch of one or more strings while other strings' pitches are static or change at differing rates. Melodic lines are composed primarily of dyads (two-note chords). In the E9 tuning, many characteristic idioms involve tonic-dominant and tonic-subdominant harmonic relationships.

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Bagpipes, well I don't know much about them, but it's the way they are played and how the bladder is filled IIRC that makes the variations.

Having said that, I looked them up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bagpipes So many variations!

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http://soundcloud.com/richie-royale
http://www.mixcrate.com/richieroyale

Northumbrian pipes are played sitting down, like uilleann (Irish) pipes. Both sets are inflated by pumping a bellows with your elbow, instead of blowing down a tube.

Why do some desks (and interfaces) not have pads on all channels? Does removing a push-switch and two resistors *really* save a worthwhile amount of money? And would adding 20p per channel to the price of a desk *really* make people buy something else?

Perhaps a more serious question. What's the highest documented frequency range of human ears?

There's Rupert Neve's famous story about Geoff Emerick apparently being able to hear artifacts around the 50K region. Nice story, but check the rest of the story - GE was pissed off that Neve were sending various oiks to him who hadn't a clue about how to fix problems. I could quite believe that someone who's paid a fortune for a top-line desk and was getting shafted on support might invent an issue just as a way to get someone on site who actually knew what they were doing. Kind of like the Van Halen brown M&Ms - the important thing is not the minutiae of it, but just that the other person's taking their responsibilities seriously. So the fact that Rupert Neve happened to find faults on two channels might be purely coincidental, when the real reason for GE being happy could be that it was RN who was personally doing the work.

So ignoring that, what's the *documented* highest frequency that anyone's been proven to hear in proper aural testing?

According to a book on amplification published some 10 years ago by a professor at one of the London Unis (sorry, memory fails on the exact author) 1% of the population can perceive frequencies up to 200k, or way above Geoff Emerick's quoted 56k.
No, I didn't believe that at first but the author's credentials in electronics are impeccable, so who am I to doubt?

Dave.


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Lots of Ataris which keep on going, 12 Kurzweil 1000 modules, a bunch of hardware synths. Still recording to tape -the old ways are best.....

Quote Aliweasel:

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I'd like to add a question: How does the C extension on a double bass work? Is it 'fretted' on an E, then when the extension in 'active' that fret just drops away?

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Hi,
there are 2 versions of the double bass extension: one has an extra bit of fingerboard under the E string that extends right up to the scroll and gives the extra string length and range. On the top not there's a pivoted bar (Fret) that can be swung out of the way to lengthen the string as desired, and then clipped back into place for 'regular' tuning and playing.
The other type is a mechanical system that has the fingerboard extension, but uses a system of keys and bars to press down on the extension so that you don't have to move your hand up to the extended part of the fingerboard.
This system seems ingenious, but every bass I've seen that has this seems to suffer from the fact that you need either an A level in Meccano to keep it going or a can of WD40 (or both ) , as the mechanism can clatter, squeak and generally make a lot of untoward noises.
The big drawback of both systems is that the extra string length means that when trying to play a bottom C loudly will produce a helluva lot of string slap and a rather iffy tone.

Me? I prefer a 5 string bass anyday; more logical, easier to play, and you get the extra semitone down to B!

Best wishes,
Dave.


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Lots of Ataris which keep on going, 12 Kurzweil 1000 modules, a bunch of hardware synths. Still recording to tape -the old ways are best.....

Thanks David! I too prefer 5-string basses but it's more because that's what I learnt to play on and I miss the B-string when I pick up a 4-stringer.

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www.allyle.co.uk

Quote The Elf:

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What’s the difference between concertinas and accordians?

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concertina: small, thin sound, can only play in certain keys
accordion: huge, lots of different fat sounds, can play in any key

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Real strings online

Thanks David. Wow - that's amazing! That's well into the range of hearing bats directly. I bet switch-mode power supplies really annoy them too.

I'm sure Concertina Chap will be along to correct this, but as I recall, there are three main systems of concertina fingering:

Anglo concertinas are quite similar to harmonicas, in that each button plays a different note depending on whether you're sucking or blowing (ie. on the way 'in' or 'out'). Like harmonicas they are usually restricted to playing in certain keys.

English concertinas are fully chromatic, but the notes are distributed between the two hands, so it's hard to play a melody on one hand and an accompaniment on the other.

Duet concertinas are bewilderingly complicated, but designed to have the low register on one hand and the high on the other.

I believe there are several different types of accordion, too. The only one I've tried to play is a piano accordion, which has a piano keyboard on one end and a huge number of buttons on the other.

Concertinas have a much 'harder' sound than accordions.

It's great to learn so many things I had no idea of! Thanks all!

I love those little hexagonal squeezeboxes with the woody 'honk'. The large chest-expander things covered in buttons just don’t appeal to me at all.

Just a taste thing...

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Quote David Etheridge:

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According to a book on amplification published some 10 years ago by a professor at one of the London Unis (sorry, memory fails on the exact author) 1% of the population can perceive frequencies up to 200k, or way above Geoff Emerick's quoted 56k.
No, I didn't believe that at first but the author's credentials in electronics are impeccable, so who am I to doubt?

Dave.

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I'd like to know the source of that............. I have my doubts about that one!!!....

Hi Narcoman,
I finally found the source:
'High performance audio power amplifiers for music performance and reproduction'
By Dr. Ben Duncan (A.M.I.O.A.) Newnes published 1996.
(Ben's also the author of the Live Sound Manual)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Performance-Audio-Power-Amplifiers/dp/0750626 291#reader_0750626291
You can view the section 1.6 on the Amazon listing which quoted 0.1% of the world's population (several million) who's perception of sound can be 10 times theusual quoted norms, and in this case, up to 200kHz!!
I managed to put the cat amongst the pigeons at a Music Tech college
in 1999 when I quoted it!

Best wishes,
Dave


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Lots of Ataris which keep on going, 12 Kurzweil 1000 modules, a bunch of hardware synths. Still recording to tape -the old ways are best.....

Hmm. The second page says "the ear can perceive the result of air moving over a distance equal to the radius of a single hydrogen atom". That's got to be fiction, for starters. If the human ear could do that, we wouldn't need electron microscopes!

Then Section 1.6 blatantly picks numbers out of his ass - "possibly 0.1%" with no reference at all. And section 1.7 states the requirements of audio as "0-200kHz" with no reference for this.

Sorry, but this excerpt isn't suitable as a source - simply making wild claims with no references doesn't prove a thing. If Duncan didn't do the testing himself, he needs to give references to the people who did. Oh, and if he's claiming 0.1% (1 in 1000 people), those tests need to have been run on at least 10,000 people to be even vaguely statistically significant. Amazon does also include the final few pages, including his list of references, and there's nothing on there about hearing studies.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I don't believe in fairies at the bottom of my garden, just because Enid Blyton got books published which say they exist. And it's quite possible to be a very competent engineer or scientist and still have whacky ideas that aren't based in reality. If you're going to claim something out of the ordinary (e.g. 0.1% of people hearing to 200kHz), you'd better be able to back that up.

So you're putting yourself up as more of an authority on the subject than he is?
By the way, the section on hearing in the book is an adjunct to the book which is about amplifiers, so it may not be germane (strictly speaking) to the subject.
Maybe SOS' theoretical oracle Mr. Robjohns may care to wade in with some fax'n'info?

Dave


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Lots of Ataris which keep on going, 12 Kurzweil 1000 modules, a bunch of hardware synths. Still recording to tape -the old ways are best.....

No, I'm putting myself up as someone capable of checking whether I might be being sold a line.

• He's made one provably-false claim: ear movement detection accurate to one hydrogen atom radius.
• He's made one further claim which is plausible but has no reference to source studies: 0.1% of people hearing significantly outside the normal range. (Exercise for reader: define "significantly", define "outside", define "normal"...)
• He's then stated the audio bandwidth to be *way* outside generally-accepted human norm, with no reference to source studies or in fact any justification at all: 0-200kHz. Wikipedia reckons this is even outside bats' hearing range. For all we know, this could be a typo.
  

Of course there's a bell curve of hearing performance - the question is where the bell becomes zero at each end. This is a fairly standard thing for audiologists to check, so I thought someone might have actual figures for it.

Thing is, if your amp is linear and stable from infrasound to ultrasound then you're likely to have rather good performance in the 20-20k region. (Assuming you don't blow up your tweeters/woofer, anyway.) It certainly wouldn't be the first time that someone's hit on a good design based on the wrong reasons. And especially when the subject relates to hi-fi, I'm *very* suspicious of outrageous and unsubstantiated claims.

Quote grab:

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No, I'm putting myself up as someone capable of checking whether I might be being sold a line.

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But have you actually checked?

Ben Duncan is certainly no idiot and books like his are peer reviewed before publishing -- I've done a fair few for Focal myself! I see little reason to doubt his claims but, as always, it pays to make independent checks when facts like this seem so surprising.

So... since you're capable of checking, what is the radius of a hydrogen atom?

And... what is the average deflection of a human tympanum for a given sound pressure level, and how does that relate to the deflection at the threshold of hearing?

I've made some quick checks myself and as a result I am pretty confident that BD's claim is broadly correct.

Quote:

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He's made one further claim which is plausible but has no reference to source studies: 0.1% of people hearing significantly outside the normal range.

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There have been several learned papers on ultrasonic hearing in humans that I've seen. Not all have withstood scrutiny and not all have had independently verified results... but some have shown fairly convincingly that some people can perceive something related to ultrasonic pressure waves -- although usually only at very high SPLs if I recall correctly.

But the ear is a very non-linear organ and it is quite possible that non-linearities cause ultrasonic signals to be detectable in some fashion or other -- if not as sound then at least as a sensation that some people can recognise reliably.

I've not searched for evidence to support his figure here, but 0.1% doesn't seem unreasonable to me. 0.1% of the population can run at extraordinary speeds, jump extraordinarily high, lift extraordinary weights or are extraordinarily intelligent or talented in some other way...

Quote:

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He's then stated the audio bandwidth to be *way* outside generally-accepted human norm, with no reference to source studies or in fact any justification at all:

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Again, there certainly are many papers that discuss this. Some I've read claim that human hearing perception is based at least in part on the time domain analysis of signals rather than the frequency domain, and that the temporal accuity of human hearing appears to be the fourier equivalent of something well in excess of 50kHz -- even though we can't detect 50kHz sine waves.

Okay, so that doesn't confirm BD's claim of 200kHz, but it is much higher than the 'accepted' limit of 20kHz and I dare say if I looked around hard enough I'd eventually discover the same literature that BD has read!

Quote:

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Of course there's a bell curve of hearing performance - the question is where the bell becomes zero at each end. This is a fairly standard thing for audiologists to check, so I thought someone might have actual figures for it.

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There are plenty of published figures for simple sine-wave auditory frequency testing. But as we all know, few audio signals are simple sine waves. Most are harmonically complex and most have extremely complex transients which can not be analysed using simple fourier analysis techniques.

Although I think the jury is still out on this, I think it wise to maintain an open mind as to the actual range of audio signals we can perceive and which might be important.

I have in the back of my mind some research I read years back trying to explain how we could hear stereo imaging with the accuity we can, when the time of arrival differences were significantly smaller than the notional response time of normal brain nerve cells!

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Thing is, if your amp is linear and stable from infrasound to ultrasound then you're likely to have rather good performance in the 20-20k region.

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Very true...

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I'm *very* suspicious of outrageous and unsubstantiated claims.

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It's always wise to be cynical and inquisitive, but equally it is important to confirm whether such cynicism is valid before pronouncing upon it...

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

I think Sam's covered the concertina bases (that's not a pun, because concertinas don't have 'em!), but the difference between accordions opens up a whole new can of worms. There isn't just one kind, as Sam pointed out (I think). Accordion could mean piano or melodeon (diatonic accordion). People often refer to the melodeon as a button accordion, but I believe there's a third we've missed out here that I'll leave someone else to explain!

Unlike concertinas, accordions have a set of basses on one side, with all the tune-playing hardware at the other end. So you can essentially accompany yourself! With the concertina, the tune is played on both ends, but players often create intricate harmonies using both ends at once. This is pretty simplistic, but gives a vague idea of the sound created.

The melodeon is made to play in certain keys, whereas the piano accordion is, obviously, able to play in any key. Also, like the anglo concertina, melodeons play different notes 'in' and 'out', which isn't the case with piano accordions. I'm pretty sure I'm repeating now...

Of course, this only covers accordions of the British Isles. Cross the water south east or west and you'll find all kinds of variations.

Pipes:

I really wish I knew more about pipes. Highland pipes are blown into, as are most European variations, such as the Galician Gaita, which I believe is also the loudest. The highlands' distinctive sound comes from the drones, which is why they have that distinctive set of three pipes over the player's shoulder.

Irish (uilleann) pipes are blown up with bellows that sit under the arm of the player. They also have drones, known as regulators (that doesn't sound right to me...), but these are fitted with keys that can be operated (with great difficulty!) by the player while they're playing the tune. The chanter, unlike most pipes, is set on the knee of the player, which gives that distinctive, sweet, slightly muted sound, which 'pops' slightly when the player reaches a high-D (when all fingers are down, therefore closing the chanter completely, needing to open it from the bottom!).

I won't speculate on Northumbrian 'cause I've never played 'em!

Someone once told me that there was a different style of bagpipe for every country, but this can't be true, surely!

Quote:

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What’s the difference between concertinas and accordians?

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I think the difference is that accordions are played by nerds and concertinas are played by drunk Irishmen, pirates, and Tom Waits.

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Current Music Project at http://soundcloud.com/niht

I used to play the piano accordion mmmfty mmmf years ago. Not only do you get bass notes, you also get bass chords, and with the 120 bass versions, you get a row of what are described as counter-bass buttons, in front of the main ones.

The button with the dimple in is C. Its counter-bass (diagonally down) is E. The first chord behind (diagonally up) is CMag, followed by Cmin, Cmag7, Cdim.

The pattern of keys 'vertically' is rather clever. Above C you have G, and above that D. All with their corresponding chords and counter-bass buttons. Below it's F, Bb etc. This makes most 'standard' progressions very easy.

The way the counter-bass notes relates to this means you can do a fast bass run while hardly moving your fingers

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It wasn't me!
(Well, actually, it probably was)

Quote Folderol:

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The way the counter-bass notes relates to this means you can do a fast bass run while hardly moving your fingers

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As fans of Lau and, specifically, Martin Green will testify.

Quote David Etheridge:

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So you're putting yourself up as more of an authority on the subject than he is?
By the way, the section on hearing in the book is an adjunct to the book which is about amplifiers, so it may not be germane (strictly speaking) to the subject.
Maybe SOS' theoretical oracle Mr. Robjohns may care to wade in with some fax'n'info?

Dave

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Thanks Dave - I'm going to get hold of a copy. I'm very doubtful about some of his claims - but it wouldn't be fair to judge without reading fully what he says..... I've got a research background e - I'll keep up !!...... need to read it though. Thanks for finding the ref...

Fair points, Hugh. (BTW, thanks for not resorting to variations on the theme of "STFU", which in retrospect might have been well justified.)

Logic seemed to dictate that unless the human ear can hear the movement of individual atoms (never mind individual molecules), one atom's movement can't be perceptible. But on further reflection, a lot of atoms moving a very small distance could still do the job. So my initial reasoning was wrong there.

Running the numbers, the particle displacement for air (RTP) at ATH with a 2kHz signal is 3.9 Angstroms. The Van der Waals radius of hydrogen is 1.2 Angstroms. But there is a gotcha here - if he was talking about the radius of the electron shell then he *was* correct, and by a full order of magnitude too. At which point it's worth me zipping it.


Sorry, I got sucked into quibbling about quotes in something which, to be fair, was never intended as a reference on audiology or atom sizes! For sure the numbers quoted were rather startling and unsourced. My problem was more with the unsourcedness than with the startlingness, particularly if anyone *is* (as happened) going to use those numbers for saying "here's your answer".

Assuming that those numbers were based on some study results, I'd be interested to know more about those studies.

(PS. Elf, sorry for the slight hijack.)

The dimensions involved in things like the workings of the ear and capacitor microphones are stunningly small. And remember these things are generally interested in sensing pressure changes rather than pure displacement too.

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Quote grab:

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(PS. Elf, sorry for the slight hijack.)

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No problem. It's all audio, it's all good to discuss and I'm (hopefully all of us are) here to learn!

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Quote Hugh Robjohns:

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The dimensions involved in things like the workings of the ear and capacitor microphones are stunningly small. And remember these things are generally interested in sensing pressure changes rather than pure displacement too.

hugh

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true. But the book does claim that the "eye can detect a single photon"..... Which is pretty wrong {and doesn't actually make much sense - they aint marbles bouncing off walls}. Theoretically you may be able to discern about 6 photons - to do with the energy sensitivity in eyes ..... . No evidence for even that, though.

Genuine apologies to Elf as its NOT audio... (but very interesting, as is this thread!)

"In 1979 Baylor, Lamb and Yau were able to use toads' rods placed into electrodes to show directly that they respond to single photons."

see this page

Quote The Elf:

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It's great to learn so many things I had no idea of! Thanks all!

I love those little hexagonal squeezeboxes with the woody 'honk'.

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A concertina

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The large chest-expander things covered in buttons just don’t appeal to me at all

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An accordion

Scottish bagpipes - played like giving a bl@#job to an octopus standing up. Can't bring a good example to mind.

Irish Uilleann pipes - played like wrestling an Emu sat down (Rod Hull RIP). See Paddy Keenan.

Northumbrian pipes - like "travel" uilleann pipes, standing or sitting. See Kathryn Tickell.

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Ohm's Law states, "Your PA isn't as powerful as you think it is".

Quote Rain:

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Genuine apologies to Elf as its NOT audio... (but very interesting, as is this thread!)

"In 1979 Baylor, Lamb and Yau were able to use toads' rods placed into electrodes to show directly that they respond to single photons."

see this page

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follow the paper - peer refuted.

Quote narcoman:

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Quote Rain:

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Genuine apologies to Elf as its NOT audio... (but very interesting, as is this thread!)

"In 1979 Baylor, Lamb and Yau were able to use toads' rods placed into electrodes to show directly that they respond to single photons."

see this page

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follow the paper - peer refuted.

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Yes - rods can respond to single photons but that doesn't mean a single photon would be registered consciously. There are several stages of processing of the output from photoreceptor cells within the retina even before the signal gets sent to the brain, so multiple photons would be required before enough signal was present to cause a ganglion cell to spike, sending a signal to the brain.

I'm sceptical of the ultrasonic hearing claims - I'll have a look at the literature/ask around in our department (Hugh, do you have links to any of the references you mentioned?)

An instrument I would like to be educated about is the chromatic harmonica (as opposed to blues harmonica). I always rather liked the sound, but have no idea how much they cost, or how difficult they are to play (I can't play blues harp for toffee), or what to look out for. Any hints?

I'm gonna wade in to the hearing debate and suggest that combine evolution and the numbers of humans present with a species ability to mutate at random intervals and anything is possible.Dave

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My head hurts!

I know for a fact that I can detect tones around 46,000 Hz, maybe higher. But realise I don't say HEAR them; there's no clear directionality, more a sense of pressure. Some CRT televisions & fluoro lights drive me to distraction, respectively due to a faulty flyback transformer or ballast coil. I can find the faulty device by moving warmer-or-colder, but I can't just turn my head & point a direction. I figure the sound is oscillating my skull-bones &/or teeth, rather than going through my ear structure.

I used to demonstrate the ability to detect very high frequencies in the classroom by playing them into the room from a signal generator and a PA rig. Nobody could hear a sound.
Then I would ask them to say something like "This is it"
A majority of students could hear artefacts affecting the sibliants.
Alternatively rubbing thumb and finger together close to my ear would produce enough intermodulation frequencies for me to be able to know when the high frequency was present, and when it was not.
After a lifetime of Rock and Roll and Motorcycle racing, I have only the rags and tatters of HF hearing left but I can still detect the artifacts.
Nobody could hear the sound, but most can tell when it is present.

Quote Peter Iderdale:

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Quote:

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What’s the difference between concertinas and accordians?

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I think the difference is that accordions are played by nerds and concertinas are played by drunk Irishmen, pirates, and Tom Waits.

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Re: accordions - Alan Kelly, Phil Cunningham, Karen Tweed. Sorry, bud. You're talking out the back of your pantaloons.

Re: concertinas - Some bloody talented sober ones as well. Check out Noel Hill and Niall Vallely.

Get up to date, mate!

Edited by shufflebeat (06/01/11 01:13 PM)