QI Music

raindancer · 7719. Sat Jun 26, 2004 6:44 pm

These are fun!

http://www.bflat.musician.org.uk/howlers.html

Jenny · 7720. Sun Jun 27, 2004 9:02 am

Thanks for those raindancer - I've sent the link to my musician daughter.

raindancer · 7724. Sun Jun 27, 2004 12:47 pm

Hey, those might be some of her's! :)

Flash · 7727. Sun Jun 27, 2004 3:04 pm

I used to know a very intelligent person, a lawyer in Chicago, who told me that he had taken piano lessons throughout his childhood, never got very far with it, and then quit in despair on the day that he discovered that the keys are arranged in alphabetical order on the keyboard; it just hadn't occurred to him before, and he had assumed that the order was random, like a typewriter. I guess this came about because piano teachers always start with C, and the note above G sharp is A, and because the fact that it's alphabetical seems so obvious to teachers that they never bother to point it out.

So anyway, I was telling this story to a group of people which included a girl who was doing grade 4 piano, and she said that she had been under the same misapprehension up until the moment that I told the story.

So, my thesis / insight is that there may be lots more pupils out there who suffer from this fundamental misapprehension than the teachers are aware.

Flash · 7728. Sun Jun 27, 2004 3:16 pm

Not music, but on the subject of things that it would seem impossible not to know: yesterday I was speaking to two sisters, carefully-educated English middle class girls, one aged 22 and the other 15. The Hound of the Baskervilles came up in the conversation, and it emerged that neither of them had ever heard of Sherlock Holmes (the older one misheard the name as Charlotte Holmes).

This isn't intended as a sideswipe at modern youth, it's just interesting to wonder how it is possible to lead a life in which you never hear of Sherlock Holmes.

Jenny · 7729. Sun Jun 27, 2004 3:34 pm

I seriously never understood how it was possible to fail English O level until I spent four years teaching in a comprehensive school in the middle of a council estate. There are so many cultural references one takes for granted until one encounters people who have never heard of them (like your young ladies with Sherlock Holmes, Flash).

One of the few good things I can say about the morning assemblies I sat through at school during my youth is that despite a complete lack of religious upbringing by my atheist father and extremely lapsed Catholic mother, I developed a comprehensive aquaintance with Hymns Ancient and Modern and various bits of the Bible despite myself, courtesy of a headteacher who was a Methodist lay preacher in his spare time. They don't run assemblies like that any more though, I think.

raindancer · 7735. Sun Jun 27, 2004 6:06 pm

I've known several clever techies who couldn't spell for toffee, and often got their words and phrases muddled. When I asked one of them about it, he said he thought it was because his brain saw letters as symbols.

Those of us who find English easier do so perhaps because we see a combination of letters as a 'meaning'. My friend said, to him, the word 'cat' had the same sort of impact as 'c + a = t'. It required some effort on his part to adjust his brain to the sort of intuitive absorbtion mode that we take for granted.

laidbacklazyman · 26001. Wed Oct 05, 2005 2:26 pm

two reasons for a bounce of this thread,
1) this is quite interesting musically.
2) wouldn't it be good to have him on the show maybe with Bill Bailey, or do they not talk any more?

dotcom · 26007. Wed Oct 05, 2005 2:53 pm

I find it quite interesting that my friend Stefan can recite the GCSE syllabus backwards, but had never heard of The Hound of the Baskervilles. If I've misspelt that, it tells you something about modern youth, but I dunno what because I'm out busy smoking and getting pregnant :P

Natalie · 26014. Wed Oct 05, 2005 3:44 pm

Are we on about GCSE Music? What has that got to do with the Hound of the Baskervilles? Surely that's Literature.

Flash · 26020. Wed Oct 05, 2005 4:55 pm

Natalie likes to have everything clearly categorized, doesn't she? I bet she has a really tidy sock drawer.

Natalie · 26021. Wed Oct 05, 2005 4:59 pm

Huff. And I bet Flash only knows about it because of his tidy drawers, with a pair of socks set out for each day.

Gray · 26026. Wed Oct 05, 2005 5:33 pm

That's some piece of keyboard-playing. I bet he can roll a cigarette in about 4 seconds...

Flash · 26029. Wed Oct 05, 2005 5:56 pm

laidbacklazyman · 26039. Wed Oct 05, 2005 11:25 pm