The purpose of this blog is to add some music to the Shabbat table... Please print and share.
Happy birthday to my dear Mom. Welcome to the age of GEVRUAH!
Last week's Tale of Two Kippers was about color; this week we turn our attention to sound.
Here's a provocative question for your table that links them together:
What do color and sound have in common?
After you let everyone ponder that for a minute, you might want to share the following follow-up questions:
What if we lived in a world without color - only black and white - what would life be like? Would we manage?
What if we humans were only able to speak in monotone, like a pre-Star Wars robot? Would we manage?
If the answer to the above question is, yes, we would manage, then what is the advantage to seeing colors and multi-tonality?
By the way, there is a little-known subtle way in which color and sound seem to be connected.
If you start with the notes of a major scale - say "C" - can you name the notes? [C, D, E, F, G, A, B]
If you measure the frequencies of these notes (starting with middle-C on the piano, or C4), they go like this:
262, 294, 330, 349, 392, 440, 494 (approximately)
So what?
Well now let's look at color.
Can you name them from shortest to longest wavelengths? [violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red]
Their wavelengths are (approximately):
400, 450, 500, 540, 600, 640, 720
So what?
So the ratio of C to D to E etc. is almost exactly the same as the ration of violet to indigo to blue etc.
Why should that be? Who ordered that?
Happy birthday to my dear Mom. Welcome to the age of GEVRUAH!
Last week's Tale of Two Kippers was about color; this week we turn our attention to sound.Here's a provocative question for your table that links them together:
What do color and sound have in common?
After you let everyone ponder that for a minute, you might want to share the following follow-up questions:
What if we lived in a world without color - only black and white - what would life be like? Would we manage?
What if we humans were only able to speak in monotone, like a pre-Star Wars robot? Would we manage?
If the answer to the above question is, yes, we would manage, then what is the advantage to seeing colors and multi-tonality?
By the way, there is a little-known subtle way in which color and sound seem to be connected.
If you start with the notes of a major scale - say "C" - can you name the notes? [C, D, E, F, G, A, B]
If you measure the frequencies of these notes (starting with middle-C on the piano, or C4), they go like this:
262, 294, 330, 349, 392, 440, 494 (approximately)
So what?
Well now let's look at color.
Can you name them from shortest to longest wavelengths? [violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red]
Their wavelengths are (approximately):
400, 450, 500, 540, 600, 640, 720
So what?
So the ratio of C to D to E etc. is almost exactly the same as the ration of violet to indigo to blue etc.
Why should that be? Who ordered that?
Why are the seven colors of the rainbow related to each other’s wavelength with the same ratios as the seven notes of a major scale to each other’s frequencies?
If you had to choose between seeing in color or hearing polytonally for the rest of your life, which would you choose?
Shabbat Shalom
...and happy Sukkot.
PS - Yes, yes, yes the above image is clickable.
To learn about other JSLI projects ....
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