The Official Good Ideas Thread™
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@boomzilla said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
I feel like I just read something about cricket.
I don't trust cricket players.
They play wicket games.
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@mott555 said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@da-Doctah said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
Locrian
I do know this one off the top of my head, at least as it applies to guitar. It's a fun one. It makes thrash metal riffs sound very progressive and weird.
Back when I was still writing songs (so, late '70s to very early '80s) I wrote one in Locrian just to see if I could do it.
Apart from that little quirk, it was country and western.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
tonic triad
Is that what Chinese gangsters mix with gin?
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@Zecc said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@Karla said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
I guess my ear is as uncultured as my pallet.
I'm leaving it...for the LOLs.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@Karla said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
What makes a song whatever key.
I know the notes. I have a basic understanding of sheet music.
I've taken vocal lessons
Based on this, I'm going to assume you know what a scale is. Take the notes of the melody; there a couple of things to look at to figure out what key it is. One is to look at what notes the melody starts and ends on. The melody usually ends on the tonic; starting on the tonic or the third is common. Another is finding a scale that contains all or most of the notes of the melody without requiring accidentals. The key of that scale is the key of the song and the key that the songwriter will base the harmony on (see @dkf's post). Finally, if you have sheet music, the written key signature is a dead giveaway (almost).
Let's say all the notes of the melody have no sharps or flats; that's an indication of C major. (It could also be A minor if it's a sad song, especially if the last note of the melody is an A.) I would expect the song to start and end with a C major (or A minor) chord. If not, either the songwriter is being clever* or incompetent.
If it's too high or low to sing comfortably in the key it's written in, you might sing it higher or lower. If, for example, it's too low and you want to sing it two steps higher, all the Cs become Es, etc., and the C major chords become E major chords; it's now in the key of E.
* One of the ways in which a songwriter might be clever is by using a modal scale. This is a type of scale (and corresponding harmony) that was common in older (medieval) music and is occasionally used today. If you take, say, the notes of the C major scale but start on G instead of C, that's the G Mixolydian mode, but it's likely to be called "in the key of C" because the key signature looks like C major.
Also, can you give some examples of songs I might know or at least can find?
I'd like to see if I can hear the differences once I know what they are.
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@Karla said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
I'd like to see if I can hear the differences
Probably not, unless you have perfect pitch. All notes — melody and harmony — are shifted up or down by the same amount, so it sounds the same, just higher or lower. If one singer performs a song in, say, C and another sings the same song in D, any differences you notice are more likely due to differences in arrangements and individual style and technique than simply the key change.
That said, for instrumentalists, some keys may be easier to play in than others. A good pianist should be able to play in any key, but for those of us who cannot be described as good, a key with few sharps or flats is easier than one with many, so the key may affect the quality of the performance. For transposing instruments like clarinets, the key of a piece will affect whether the clarinetist chooses to play a B♭ or an A clarinet, as some keys are a little easier to play on one or the other, and the instruments may have slightly different sounds. Harpists generally prefer keys with flats to keys with sharps, as the instrument sounds a little richer and more resonant; they will play a sharp as the equivalent flattened note above where practical (e.g., A♭ instead of G#). Some instruments, especially winds, have distinct registers, where the tone quality changes (e.g., the clarinet has three registers; from written E4 to B♭5 is rich and dark, B5 to C6 is bright 'like a trumpet heard at a distance', and above C6 is rather shrill), and changing the key may move some notes from one register to another, changing the sound of those notes.
In music of the Baroque and earlier, before the advent of modern tempered tuning, enharmonic notes like, say, F# and G♭ were not only different pitches, but the tuning would be slightly different in different keys. Changing the key really did change the sound and mood.
In general, though, in modern music, the effect of changing the key of a song is simply to change the pitch up or down.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@Karla said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
I'd like to see if I can hear the differences
Probably not, unless you have perfect pitch.
LOL, no. Told I was tone deaf most of my life.
All notes — melody and harmony — are shifted up or down by the same amount, so it sounds the same, just higher or lower. If one singer performs a song in, say, C and another sings the same song in D, any differences you notice are more likely due to differences in arrangements and individual style and technique than simply the key change.
That said, for instrumentalists, some keys may be easier to play in than others. A good pianist should be able to play in any key, but for those of us who cannot be described as good, a key with few sharps or flats is easier than one with many, so the key may affect the quality of the performance. For transposing instruments like clarinets, the key of a piece will affect whether the clarinetist chooses to play a B♭ or an A clarinet, as some keys are a little easier to play on one or the other, and the instruments may have slightly different sounds. Harpists generally prefer keys with flats to keys with sharps, as the instrument sounds a little richer and more resonant; they will play a sharp as the equivalent flattened note above where practical (e.g., A♭ instead of G#). Some instruments, especially winds, have distinct registers, where the tone quality changes (e.g., the clarinet has three registers; from written E4 to B♭5 is rich and dark, B5 to C6 is bright 'like a trumpet heard at a distance', and above C6 is rather shrill), and changing the key may move some notes from one register to another, changing the sound of those notes.
In music of the Baroque and earlier, before the advent of modern tempered tuning, enharmonic notes like, say, F# and G♭ were not only different pitches, but the tuning would be slightly different in different keys. Changing the key really did change the sound and mood.
In general, though, in modern music, the effect of changing the key of a song is simply to change the pitch up or down.
I was asking more about which songs follow which rules and those that break the rules (for good or for ill) rather than changing the key of a particular song.
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@Karla Oh, hmm, I don't think I'm going to be much help with that question. I have a hard enough time figuring out whether my own compositions follow the rules or break them, probably unintentionally and probably for ill.
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Something similar to mafia, where everyone knows who's actually the bad guys, but everyone uses sock puppet accounts and the goal is to figure out who's who or prevent the good guys from doing so.
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@pie_flavor Do we have any mafia players left?
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@PleegWat said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@pie_flavor Do we have any mafia players left?
No, after the town was wiped out they just kinda.... Left.
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The evil usurper and the deposed prince(ss) trying to get their kingdom back are well-worn tropes in fantasy fiction.
Just once I'd like to see a story about a hero who teams up with the deposed prince(ss) to get the kingdom back from the evil usurper, and then along the way it slowly becomes more and more clear to the hero that the old king was corrupt and awful, and things are a lot better under the usurper's reign, but he can't really have that discussion with the prince(ss) without damaging his relationship with them...
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@Mason_Wheeler said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
The evil usurper and the deposed prince(ss) trying to get their kingdom back are well-worn tropes in fantasy fiction.
Just once I'd like to see a story about a hero who teams up with the deposed prince(ss) to get the kingdom back from the evil usurper, and then along the way it slowly becomes more and more clear to the hero that the old king was corrupt and awful, and things are a lot better under the usurper's reign, but he can't really have that discussion with the prince(ss) without damaging his relationship with them...
.... Star Wars?
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@Tsaukpaetra Star Wars has a hero teaming up with a princess, but I don't see how any of the other ideas I described fit the storyline. Care to elaborate?
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@Mason_Wheeler said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
Care to elaborate?
Be prepared to an annoying voice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dm7vAFdzcc
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@Tsaukpaetra Wow, that is some high-level trollery there.
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@Tsaukpaetra "Good guys always win" is misleading. One party always wins. That party (particularly if they're evil, but even if they're actually good) exterminates the opposition. The winner is left to write the history books. They naturally describe themselves as good. A few hundred years back, all remaining accounts clearly indicate who won, and who the good guys were.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
The evil usurper and the deposed prince(ss) trying to get their kingdom back are well-worn tropes in fantasy fiction.
Just once I'd like to see a story about a hero who teams up with the deposed prince(ss) to get the kingdom back from the evil usurper, and then along the way it slowly becomes more and more clear to the hero that the old king was corrupt and awful, and things are a lot better under the usurper's reign, but he can't really have that discussion with the prince(ss) without damaging his relationship with them...
You might like A Practical Guide to Evil. Not what you're describing, but similar vein.
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@pie_flavor Interesting. Not sure exactly why, but the description kind of reminds me of Soon I Will Be Invincible, despite being very different. My mind is just weird sometimes.
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@Mason_Wheeler either way, I'd highly recommend a read. It's not consistently in the top spot of topwebfiction for no reason.
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@pie_flavor Hmm... not sure. I looked at the tvtropes page, and I immediately see two warning flags on the YMMV tab: Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy (stories tagged with this and stories that annoy/disgust me are very strongly correlated) and various different indications that it spends a lot of time on the protagonist's sex life.
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@Mason_Wheeler I would seriously dispute both. The former I'm not too familiar with, but I felt zero apathy (unless you were supposed to) for the entire thing. The latter? She doesn't even have a love life until partway through book 2 and loses it for the rest of the series partway through book 3.
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@pie_flavor said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
The former I'm not too familiar with
From the article:
It is often said that "conflict is the soul of drama". Without some form of conflict to fuel things there's no engine to drive the story and thus little reason to engage with it. However, we here at TV Tropes would like to propose an amendment to this phrase which includes something important but sadly all-too-often forgotten:
Meaningful conflict is the soul of drama. Because Tropes Are Tools.
Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy occurs when a conflict exists that simply lacks any reason for the audience to care about how it is resolved. This crops up where the setting is extremely but meaninglessly Darker and Edgier, or all sides are Evil vs. Evil, or at least, far enough gone that any difference is a Distinction Without a Difference.
The TLDR version is "that thing that happens when the audience realizes that a story has gotten into grimdark territory and now it sucks". You know, that thing that ruined BSG, or Worm if you've ever read it?
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@Mason_Wheeler I have. I remain disputing APGTE's classification as it. Besides, one of the good parts of APGTE is it hits its stride within the first couple of chapters, so you'll have figured out out whether you'll like it or not by the time the characters reach Ater.
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@pie_flavor All right. I'll check it out then.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
"that thing that happens when the audience realizes that a story has gotten into grimdark territory and now it sucks".
Ah yeah. I've experienced this reading a Mewtwo trilogy. Second book was very dark indeed. But the third book recovered nicely I think.
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A toaster with a dedicated holder for heating one's buttering knife
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@kazitor said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
A toaster with a dedicated holder for heating one's buttering knife
That's not what the middle is for?
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@r10pez10 Why do they call it a chrome extension? That's going to consufe less savvy people.
Get rid of unnecessary distractions
Lol.
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@Zecc said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@r10pez10 Why do they call it a chrome extension? That's going to consufe less savvy people.
It means it's a cross-browser extension. IIRC you can write an extension now that supports Firefox, Chrome, and Edge using the same API.
Edit: Just noticed "less savvy", which means you probably knew that, but leaving this because I didn't for some time and I think it's kind of nifty.
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@r10pez10 pointed to a site in The Official Good Ideas Thread™ that said:
Fewer tabs = happy Tabagotchi. More tabs = angry Tabagotchi.
I'd better not install that. I'd be forever having suicidal Tabagotchis and that'd be annoying after a while…
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@dkf said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@r10pez10 pointed to a site in The Official Good Ideas Thread™ that said:
Fewer tabs = happy Tabagotchi. More tabs = angry Tabagotchi.
I'd better not install that. I'd be forever having suicidal Tabagotchis and that'd be annoying after a while…
Mine would be insane-maniacal.
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@heterodox said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@Zecc said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@r10pez10 Why do they call it a chrome extension? That's going to consufe less savvy people.
It means it's a cross-browser extension. IIRC you can write an extension now that supports Firefox, Chrome, and Edge using the same API.
Edit: Just noticed "less savvy", which means you probably knew that, but leaving this because I didn't for some time and I think it's kind of nifty.
When I see "chrome" I tend to think of the UI design term by the same name, though admittedly the term is so overloaded now that the best option would be to go to whoever used the word and ask them to clarify it.
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@dkf said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
I'd better not install that. I'd be forever having suicidal Tabagotchis and that'd be annoying after a while…
Mine would be the happiest in the world. My OCD is such that I can only have windows and tabs open relating to what I'm doing right now. Otherwise they will drive me increasingly crazy and must be closed.
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@dkf said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@r10pez10 pointed to a site in The Official Good Ideas Thread™ that said:
Fewer tabs = happy Tabagotchi. More tabs = angry Tabagotchi.
I'd better not install that. I'd be forever having suicidal Tabagotchis and that'd be annoying after a while…
Mine would be not merely suicidal; they'd nuke the entire planet along with themselves.
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article @r10pez10 linked in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
You get three minutes
There is no way three minutes is enough.
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@r10pez10 said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
Oh come on, even if someone doesn't agree this is a good idea, was it really worth a downvote?
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@Zecc said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@r10pez10 said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
Oh come on, even if someone doesn't agree this is a good idea, was it really worth a downvote?
Someone hates LaTex almost as much as one entity hates ponies.
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@r10pez10 said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
that would go GREAT in my planned "ultimate sleeper battlestation" build where i put a 30,000$ ThreadRipper based gaming computer in a minicomputer case from the late '80s.
i'm thinking wood grain vinyl, dials and knobs, stuff like that.
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@Vixen You could go even further over the top with separate temperature and load dials for each of those.
And volt/amp meters for every rail.
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@Vixen Replace the vinyl with riveted lacquered copper or brass
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@Mingan said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@Vixen Replace the vinyl with riveted lacquered copper or brass
I want a vintage look, not a steampunk look.
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@Vixen said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
a steampunk look.
Considers a computer with steam pipes and valves instead of wires and transistors
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@PleegWat said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
@Vixen said in The Official Good Ideas Thread™:
a steampunk look.
Considers a computer with steam pipes and valves instead of wires and transistors
I swear it's been done before, if you consider a half-adder a computer...
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