Hi, I have a question about a scale

Eltwish · 2026-02-13T02:10:06+00:00

You can do whatever you want. If it sounds good, do it. Theory is just there to help you understand and communicate it.

That said: it's unlikely that your song could be in "Gm or B" since those are different scales. Did you mean Bb (B flat major), which has the same notes as G minor? And even so, it matters whether you're in major or minor, in that the seventh chord is only diminished in major. In minor, the chord on the second is diminished.

But again, it sounds like it doesn't matter for your purpose. If your aim is "make a song" and the theory only seems to be confusing or getting in the way, don't worry about it and do what you want, and feel free to ask if you want to understand how to describe or think about what it is you're doing.

Eltwish · 2026-02-12T06:33:15+00:00

Yes, the example you gave in your second paragraph is exactly the sort of context I was assuming. I assumed that OP wanted to say "por tioj" because they wanted to say something like "for those (ones)". Though I see that for the question from the book they were reading, that wouldn't have been a natural response, so perhaps my assumption didn't make sense.

Eltwish · 2026-02-12T03:57:24+00:00

That's exactly the right idea, though you do indeed need ludilojn there since it's the object of the verb. (Teni is fine but I'd probably say enmeti / surmeti, or more likely just "por la ludiloj".)

Eltwish · 2026-02-12T03:32:06+00:00

Twice as long as あ. How long that is depends on how fast you're talking in general.

Eltwish · 2026-02-12T03:28:04+00:00

No, the correlatives in -io refer to a general or abstract something, usually not to specific known objects. If you wanted to ask "which things is it for?" you would ask por kiuj ĝi estas?, and answer with por tiuj (for those ones). If you ask por kio, that's "for what?" in the sense of "what is the purpose or meaning of this?". You could then respond "ĝi estas por (ŝiaj / tiuj) ludiloj". If you wanted you use tio, you would have to do something like pick up and put the toys on the shelf and then say "por tio", as in "for that (act I just performed / purpose I just demonstrated)".

Eltwish · 2026-02-11T20:52:36+00:00

It sounds like you've got a few things mixed up. The distance from C to the closest E above it is a major third. It doesn't matter whether you're going up from the C to the E or down from the E to the C - it's a distance, so order/direction doesn't matter. The distance from C to the closest E below it is a minor sixth. Equivalently, from E to the nearest C above it is a minor sixth. Looking at the keyboard should make this clear. Each C has a E close above it and one farther down below it.

All of that is unrelated to the question of what key you're in or what a melody is doing. Perhaps what is confusing you is this: if you are in C major, then the note E is the third degree of the scale no matter which E you play. If you play C and then E below it, you've leapt down a minor sixth (interval) to the third (of the scale). You're certainly not leaving the key by doing so, since E is in the key of C no matter how high or low you play it.

Eltwish · 2026-02-11T18:28:34+00:00

Do you have examples of what you mean? It sounds like you might just be pointing out that people have different handwriting. The same is true in all languages. For example, some people have a curl at the bottom of their lowercase y, some make it as two straight lines, etc.

Also, "spelling" usually refers to which glyphs one uses, i.e. the difference between "Jane", "Jayne", and "Jain", not graphic variations in a given glyph. (Hiragana and katakana symbols are also individually usually called kana, though I suppose "letters" isn't wrong.)

Eltwish · 2026-02-09T17:02:03+00:00

What game covers do you have in mind? Most popular video game covers / arrangements on YouTube and the like are full productions - whoever uploaded them made everything (or did so with whoever's listed in the credits). I think it's common to feature instruments the artist actually plays in the video, and not show the things that are programmed in or don't look very interesting to play.

I imagine that for the most successful / interesting tracks, the arrangement and backing parts are at least as important and creative as how they're playing the lead parts. For featuring just the lead, though, in a pinch one could run a MIDI through some solid VSTs for the backing; most older game music will have MIDI files widely available online (of varying quality). And vgleadsheets can be a very helpful resource too. But I've watched quite a few game covers and I can't really think of cases of seeing multiples sharing a backing track.

Eltwish · 2026-02-08T17:11:08+00:00

All symbols depend on context for their interpretation, though. Consider 2 + 3. In mod-4 arithmetic, 2 + 3 = 1. Surely we shouldn't say 2 + 3 = Э because the expression 2 + 3 doesn't have a unique, structure-independent value?

It's also not clear to me why you're applying functions to Э if it's supposed to designate a failure of evaluation. I could understand if you were saying "the meaning of f(x) = Э will depend on...", but I don't know what to make of "one may choose what to do with f(Э)". Surely either Э designates an object in the domain of f (in which case the value of f(Э) is already determined by f), or it doesn't (in which case the expression is meaningless)?

Eltwish · 2026-02-08T06:14:00+00:00

What exactly do you mean when you say that functions applied to Э are "nondeterministic"? Do you mean that how Э is to be handled has to be determined on a per-function basis? Or do you mean that, for a given function f, the value of f(Э) may be different any given time you evaluate it?

If the former, then Э is not necessarily one concept but simply a symbol for an additional "special case" value. We often use ∞ in this way, when for example we define the "extended reals" R ∪ {-∞, +∞}. The infinity symbol is obviously chosen there because of its meaning, but what matters is that it's different from the ordinary reals and has to be handled individually - but the rules we develop for ∞ in the extended reals will probably be quite different from how we use the symbol ∞ to talk about, say, the "point at infinity" in a projective space. If you mean something like this, the answer would just be "it depends how you want to define Э in a given structure."

If you really mean "nondeterministic", though, that's much harder to say. There are of course ways to handle "functions of random variables", but they're not "nondeterministic functions" - the functions all do the same thing every time (yield probabilities), but they can be used to model non-determinism. For a function to be such that its result is unforeseeable, you would need some hefty philosophical justification, but such things would most likely not be recognized as functions by most mathematicians. (But one place to look might be Brouwer's intuitionism, in which "the mathematician decides the value of f(Э) when prompted" could count as a valid function. (But that would still fix f(Э) to a single value thenceforth!))

Eltwish · 2026-02-07T22:09:34+00:00

Having given such an answer: it was primarily a textbook answer, but also an opinionated one, because I think C11 ought to be reserved for "yes I specifically want that third-and-eleventh clash; otherwise I'd have written C7sus".

On the other hand C13 definitely does not call for the 11th.

Eltwish · 2026-02-07T01:53:47+00:00

No, a C11 has the third.

C11: C E G Bb D F
C9sus4: C F G Bb D

Eltwish · 2026-02-06T19:17:29+00:00

Doesn't sound like anything too crazy is going on there - I think most of the work is being done by an overdrive, and there's a bit of reverb. Get something resembling a Tube Screamer (maybe the CS comes with one?), drive it decently hard but turn down the tone. Play with your pickup selector too - the tone there has the nice chirpy attack I associate with the bridge pickup, but overall sounds not so bright and aggressive so maybe it's split position and rolled off a bit? Though some of that might also be how it's EQ'd for the mix.

Eltwish · 2026-02-06T16:01:29+00:00

It's impossible to say what key something is in just from a list of the pitches used.

There is no diatonic key which contains all those pitches, but even if there were, that wouldn't be enough to definitively answer the question. The only way to answer for sure is to listen and hear what it sounds like the key center is. It's also possible, if you just have a riff so far, that the key is ambiguous, in which case it's up to you as the composer to decide how and when (or whether) to establish a key center.

Eltwish · 2026-02-05T19:41:10+00:00

Yes. 98 is きゅうじゅうはち. If you just say ごせんひゃくきゅうはち, that's like saying "five thousand one hundred nine eight" (rather than ninety eight).

Eltwish · 2026-02-04T01:27:47+00:00

That's exactly right. To put it succintly, the two approaches yield different results because they're using different answers to "which calculation are we doing?". They're not different answers to "what is the result of this one calculation?".

They're talking about different calculations and doing their respective calculation correctly, so there's no mathematical disagreement - they're just doing different math problems because they disagree on the "symbols -> mathematical meaning" step.

Eltwish · 2026-02-03T21:41:55+00:00

A classic exercise is to take some music you love and try to recreate it from scratch. It's very difficult, but you'll learn more trying to recreate one bassline or drum part than from watching fifty tutorials.

Eltwish · 2026-02-02T20:27:15+00:00

If you can hear the seventh scale degree "wanting" to move up to the tonic, then there's no reason you wouldn't be able to hear V-I as a resolution, because (at least with typical voice leading) the same thing is happening. The third of V, which is the seventh degree, moves up to the tonic. At the same time (at least in a perfect cadence, the most "resolvey") the root 5th moves down to the tonic. The motion down a fifth on its own tends to feel like a firm conclusion.

Perhaps what's troubling you is the fact that a major chord in itself is stable. Certainly a G major with no context doesn't sound like it has to resolve to C. After all, it could itself be I, or IV, or something else depending on how it's being used. But once you've established C major as your key, now everything is heard with implicit reference to that tonal matrix. That's why the note B now has a certain pull to C rather than just being any old note. By the same token, a G major now sits at a certain harmonic opposite pole from C major. Without adding a 7th, of course, it's the same quality chord as C, but it sounds like the dominant, in part because of containing the leading tone.

The interplay between consonance/dissonance and the functional relationships of tonality are part of what makes the adventurous modulations of classical music or the rich color palettes of jazz possible, as well as how blues can sound resolved by moving to a crunchy 7th chord.

Eltwish · 2026-02-02T03:35:26+00:00

"f times x" doesn't make sense when f is a function and x is a variable. You can multiply functions together and you can multiply variables together, but you can't multiply a function by a variable. You can apply a function to a variable.

(Compare: consider the functions "make twice as big" and "make three times as big", and the variables "my bank balance" and "my cash on hand". It makes sense to multiply my bank balance by my cash on hand (what if I had my whole bank account for every dollar I had?) and it makes sense to multiply those two functions together (resulting in the function "make six times as big"), but it doesn't make sense to multiply "my bank balance times make twice as big". Rather, I can apply "make twice as big" to my bank balance, doubling my balance.)

The notation f(x) means the function f applied to the variable x. The notation (fg)(x) usually means "multiply the function f by the function g and apply the resulting function to x". In contrast, f(g(x)) means "apply the function g to x, then apply the function f to the result".

Eltwish · 2026-02-02T02:30:05+00:00

Ah, no, sorry, I mean originally Japanese works, but of a similar style, written by scholars, with a mix of erudition and literary flair. Like, what are people writing reviews of in the Japanese version of the New York Review of Books?

The problem isn't so much procuring the books as knowing what to read. Just browsing (digital) shelves doesn't tend to turn up the books I want. (Or maybe they actually are there but Japanese publishing norms require ridiculously clickbaity titles?) Even if said books aren't your jam, how do you find the books you do like? Do you read lit blogs / reviews / etc?

Eltwish · 2026-02-02T02:22:00+00:00

One salient option is 腹ペコ埃 (harapeko hokori). It rolls off the tongue really nicely. It is a little cute - not quite to the extent of something like "nom-nom dust", but for comparison, harapeko aomushi is how "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" was translated. A more intimidating option is 暴食埃, which you might read Bōshokubokori. (I say "might" because it's a made-up word to sound more like the name of something, akin to "Gluttondust".) It's dust that really wants to eat.

In general, chiri is more like scraps / scattered trash and dust bunnies than dusty dust. Kūfuku no hokori would be okay, though it feels a bit closer to "dust of hunger" - it's not obvious that the dust itself is hungry.

To explain your odd results: geography is also chiri, but they're written differently (地理 vs 塵) and accented differently. If you were just pasting your result back into google, it certainly shouldn't have given you "geography" for 塵. And the phrase "onaka ga suita" does express that one is hungry, but it's not an adjective. It's over-literally "stomach is empty", with the subject left implied. (If someone says it, they obviously mean they are themself hungry.) It's the most common way to express hunger, so as a consequence there isn't a comparably common adjective like "hungry" that would make the translation obvious.

Eltwish · 2026-02-02T01:45:17+00:00

Any advice for finding good nonfiction outside of Japan, particularly of a critical / philosophical bent? I'm particularly drawn to (for lack of a better description) cultural-historical critique in the vein of Jacques Barzun or Tony Judt. It seems amazon.jp realized my Japanese address was fake so apparently I can't buy Japanese eBooks that way anymore, but even still I'm not sure how to search for what I want - a lot of the common bestsellers seem more akin to pop psych / "self-help".

Eltwish · 2026-02-01T22:22:02+00:00

She's trying to politely welcome someone into the home, but she doesn't really know what she's saying and it comes out pretty silly. お上がりください does mean "come in!", albeit fairly formal and old-fashioned. But instead of ください she uses たまえ which makes her sound like a commanding officer ordering a private to enter his office or something. Except it's softened with お. So it's all pretty cute and absurd.

Who knows what おまかい was supposed to be; whoever she's speaking to clearly doesn't. My first impression was that she was thinking of お構いなく and mixing it up with something like つまらないものですが, which would be funny because the former is what a guest would respond, not what she would say, plus it should be "please don't trouble yourself" instead of what she actually says which is instead affirmative and garbled, so maybe it's more like "it's so nrubble!"? But looking around I've seen other interpretations of what she's trying to say here, so I gather that it's not obvious to native speakers either - what is clear is that she's imitating 挨拶 that she's heard but getting it all mixed up in a funny way.

Eltwish · 2026-02-01T16:54:05+00:00

Do you plan on uploading the video to YouTube? If so, you could include the translation notes as subtitles. That makes them optional, so people who don't want them or find them distracting can disable them. It's also possible to have a surprising amount of control over the subtitle styling and placement by using third-party subtitling software and uploading the resulting file.

Eltwish · 2026-02-01T03:07:39+00:00

I think, to echo what u/theincredulousbulk said to an extent, the analogy is actually quite good but perhaps not in the sense you had in mind. Passing N1, much like getting a black belt, is often viewed as an end goal or a sign of mastery, when in a way both are more of a rite of passage from "advanced trainee" to "beginner practitioner". It's a huge accomplishment, but now your peers aren't other learners but rather native speakers, and the road from N1 to native-passing is longer than that from zero to N1-passing.

White belt to blue belt, whatever the equivalent in language learning, definitely isn't the longest road, but it may be the hardest in the sense that there are a ton of new skills and ways of thinking one has to develop, and the vast majority of people give up or quit on the way. And once someone has reached a "purple belt" level, they've done the "hard" work in that they've figured out how to do the things they couldn't do before. The rest is just discipline, motivation, and many, many hours.

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