5 ms·
We know which strings were plucked but we don’t know how the instrument was tuned or how long the notes were… as cool as this is, I wouldn’t really say this is
by jjcon 4y ago
We know which strings were plucked but we don’t know how the instrument was tuned or how long the notes were… as cool as this is, I wouldn’t really say this is the oldest *known* song (there are older that we know equally little about).
- colechristensen 4y agoAt which level of detail does this line of thinking stop? At any level of detail there could always be someone saying you didn’t really know a song unless…
- jjcon 4y agoI agree with the other comments here - you should be able to recognize the different renditions as such with an untrained ear. Basically I’d start with knowing the notes of the song… kinda the most important thing but we just just don’t for this I’ll note here too that the article is what draws that line (known vs unknown) not me - I’m just disagreeing with where they have drawn the line since there are older songs that we… “know equally little about”
- praptak 4y agoIf two independent teams recreate this song based on our best knowledge about how the song sounded, can you tell these renditions are two versions of the same song? Not a perfect test (experts can recognize more similarities) but generally makes it possible to discern "we know jack shit" from "we know the melody, just maybe not exactly how the instrument sounded".
- hot_gril 4y agoI listen to a lot of old music where there are many different renditions of the same song, especially Armenian folk music that was either unwritten or transcribed later, and I agree with this metric.
- dwighttk 4y agoThe article mentions two different interpretations of the melody… one of the videos I played had both and they sounded quite different to me.
- boomlinde 4y agoIf, presented the original work, I could realistically recognize it in the reconstruction, you're at a good level of detail. Here, we're talking about work in an artform that is embodied by pitch and rhythm, and the "reconstruction" was created knowing neither, so it is very unlikely that it would resemble the original work.
- Timpy 4y agoI don't know at which level of detail this line of thinking stops, but it's certainly somewhere after "we don't know the pitch or rhythm for any of the notes in this piece, we can only make educated guesses." Just because we don't have a clear line where the pedantry starts doesn't mean every discussion on the topic is pedantic.