Roger Lustig

"Kick it" seems to have been generalized to mean "do it" at some point. In _Juno_ the title character asks to "kick it old school," i.e., do the adoption without modern things like visitation rights, etc.

I've also seen a t-shirt that directed one to "kick it old school" above a picture of a tricycle complete with the tassels hanging from the handlebar grips.

3 weeks, 2 days ago onWordpress in languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

Wartime Britain was enriched (?!) by a song called "Hands, knees and bumps-a-daisy"–evidently, with a dance to go with. Oopsy, upsy and other such versions pale…

1 month ago onWordpress in languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

@Matt: The terminology is frustrating because the history of music theory is the history of 2500 years of kludges and trying to reconcile and integrate incompatible systems. Among other things, the terminology was developed over a long time, starting long before zeroes were in common use. The ancient Greek term for a perfect fifth is diapente, so the 5 was there then already.

As to the range of letter-names, a) it doesn't start on C, and b) the "major scale" as we know it wasn't a concept when the letters came into use. The lowest note was "Gamma-Ut", a G (from which we get the word "gamut"), and after that Greek beginning, the Roman letters kick in with A, B, C, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guidonian_hand for that particular schema.

As to the "second" vs. "tone" issue–that stems from medieval theorists' attempts to retrofit what they were hearing and trying to describe onto the Pythagorean notions of tetrachord, mode, etc. Why? Because they had to: everything had to come from Scripture or the ancients in order to be true. ... See all content Hide content

1 month, 2 weeks ago onWordpress in languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

I'd like to know what they consider to be the "the characteristic affective impact of major and minor tone collections". Major/Happy, Minor/Sad? If that's where they're going, they're already lost.

Why are most Freilachs (Klezmer "happy" songs) in minor or similar modes? Those other components of a piece of music (texture, tempo, rhythm, meter) that convey affect? How universal are those , either across cultures or over time?

Do they expect any consistency across languages? Which ones did they tune into?

They may address all of these issues, but the phrase "characteristic affective impact" is a red flag. There have been zillions of studies of these sorts of things, from acoustical to psychoanalytic (the latter producing some real gems); almost all are based on assumptions ranging from flawed to bizarre. ... See all content Hide content

1 month, 3 weeks ago onWordpress in languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu