Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2011 December 15

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December 15

Pawn Stars interview Rick

I've been watching Pawn Stars since their first season. It seems like every time they interview Rick, he is in front of the same three guitars. Don't they turn over their inventory? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:54, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The interviews and commentary are done in a single day or two for the whole season's worth of shows. It is especially obvious for Chumly, whose facial hair and hair length changes a lot during the show; regardless of what his hair and beard look like for that day's episode, the entire season's worth of "interviews" have Chum in the same look. Also, Gold and Silver Pawn is huge and has a giant inventory; they can afford to leave a few guitars on the wall behind Rick for "decoration", I'd imagine they have hundreds lying around in storage, given how large the operation is. --Jayron32 05:19, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Followup question about TV seasons

What constitutes a TV season these days? Back in my day, a TV season was roughly from September to the next May. Now Pawn Stars has been on a little more than two years, but it is in its fifth "season". What gives? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Things aren't the way they used to be. I think cable TV and syndication are the culprits. One example is Dancing with the Stars (U.S. TV series), which has two "seasons" per year. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:49, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Television program#Seasons/series discusses the traditional US networks but not the newer style. Cable shows don't work like the networks; they tend to be commissioned for shorter seasons (even a prestigious drama like Breaking Bad or Mad Men); and that means you potentially have time to broadcast more than one season a year even if it's shown one night per week. This is closer to the British usage of season/series (which is discussed at that link) where you have a block of shows, one shown every week without lots of hiatuses and pre-emptions. But basically a season is just a unit for grouping episodes (whether for commissioning, scheduling, or putting in DVD box sets). --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:13, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

With typically two seasons per year, they also get to advertise more episodes as "season premier" and "season finale". I wonder if that is part of the reason. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Tuning before the study of frequency

I've been listening to the BBC's Infinite Monkey Cage program, which this week dealt with acoustics and the study of sound. One thing they mentioned was that in Western music we have certain frequencies that 'sound good' together, and that these make up the scales we recognise - whether it's Do Re Mi or C-D-E-F etc. If you pick a note and then play one a fifth above, the second note will be 1.5 times the frequency of the first. All well and good. But it struck me that now we have electronic tuners, and so you can walk up to a piano, hit a key and measure the frequency and instantly know if it is correct or not. Before, we had tuning forks, which produce a single tone, and so you can tune one note to that and then start working your way up and down. But how did whoever first decided that these notes are the ones we should use communicate these notes through the ages? Has it been through word of mouth, so to speak, with someone who knew about the discovery tuning his own lute (or whatever instrument he might have had around) and then passing it on to his mate to tune his nose flute with? Or is there some sort of 'international standard tuning fork', like the international standard kilogram? Or something else I haven't thought of? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 14:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Equal temperament should give some of the answers. --TammyMoet (talk) 15:39, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

And yes, there is an international standard for tuning: ISO 16. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 15:42, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

These might be helpful. [1] and [2]. See also A440 (pitch standard) and Concert pitch. Oda Mari (talk) 16:03, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

When you want to describe a good sounding scale, you mainly want to describe the ratios between the pitches. You can choose a starting pitch of any frequency, then multiply or divide by the proper ratios to generate the other pitches in the scale. My understanding is communicating musical scales was first done by describing ratios of string lengths. For example, see Ancient Greek Origins of the Western Musical Scale.

The exact frequency of a single pitch is useful if you want to tune several instruments to play the same pitches. I'm not sure how people originally communicated a single pitch so that a specific frequency could be reproduced without hearing it. Maybe by a talking about a standard string material and length? I started exploring History of pitch standards in Western music and its first reference Pitch, Temperament & Timbre, but haven't yet found how people talked about exact pitches before using frequencies in hertz or tuning forks. --Bavi H (talk) 05:29, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Good idea about string lengths - thank you. I think that is the sort of thing I had in mind. One thing just slightly confuses me though - isn't the pitch more to do with tension (or at least equally affected by it)? For instance, when tuning a modern guitar, the length of the string between its two constrained points doesn't change, only the tension. If we were to define some note as 'a cubit of string', what's to say that my string cubit, held in my limp-wristed weak arms will sound the same as your one, held in a strong, manly way? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:09, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I forgot about that. You're right, both tension and length affect the final pitch. On a guitar, the tuning pegs change the tension, and fretting the string shortens the length that actually vibrates. So maybe a pitch could have been defined by a string of material x, with vibrating length y, being held taut by a mass z, as in this diagram: taut string. --Bavi H (talk) 06:03, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Concert_pitch#Pre-19th_century states that there was no pitch standard; the article notes that the same "note" on two different pipe organs could vary wildly. There's not really any need to "tune" to any specific frequency except for the purpose of a single performance, so all you need to do is find a reference note and tune the entire (instrument or orchestra) to that pitch. You don't need to know what that note is called in a different context, or even on a different day with the same set of musicians. Modern orchestras tune to a note on the standard oboe, usually the A. Tuning an intstrument with multiple sound elements (like a guitar or an organ) merely requires one to pick a string/pipe and tune the rest to that one element. Most modern musicians employ an Electronic tuner to tune to A440 standard, but if one is unavailible, you pick a note on one instrument and everyone tunes to that. As long as everyone picks the same note, and tunes relative to that, the audience won't notice if you are off by a few hertz. The only requirement for well sounding music is everyone play together, not that everyone play to any standard frequency. So to answer the OPs question, there was absolutely no standard which was employed across western music. Everyone just guessed. --Jayron32 06:36, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Aha, so that's the answer! Thank you! - Cucumber Mike (talk) 07:43, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Sir Thomas Beecham had a qualified version of "everyone play together":

• Here are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t give a damn what goes on in between. ([3]) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 09:20, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

See Pythagorean tuning for one way ancient Greek scales were constructed. The answer is basically "math". Adam Bishop (talk) 13:30, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Mexican movies 1940's through 1950's

My husband is from Mexico and saw a movie when he was young about children growing up on the streets. It is not the film Los Olvidados. It had a song in the movie that had the lyrics, "Mamacita, tengo frio. Mamacita tengo mucho frio. Mamacita, te necesito. Mamacita tengo mucho frio." We have tried for years to figure out what movie that comes from and I would love to get it for him. Does anyone recognize that and know what movie it comes from? Thanks to anyone who can help.21:10, 15 December 2011 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.119.68.26 (talk)