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December 13

Time period for Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

I can not figure out the time period portrayed in Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town. Anyone have any ideas as to which year, decade, or even century it is supposedly portraying? LA (T) @ 00:27, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why does it need one? Dismas|^(talk) 00:36, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

While seconding Dismas' point, the postman's van looks very like a converted Model T Ford, which would place it in the first half of the twentieth century. Tevildo (talk) 00:58, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Though the story the postman tells is somewhat older. How fast a man ages when he spends 364 days a year in cold storage and one night traveling at supersonic speed is a question for a jaded rational thinker, but to an innocent child, there's nothing anachronistic about this tall tale starting in the Year of the Consulship of Antiochianus and Orfitus, just like the true stories say. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:51, 16 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Socks for administrator nom

What's to stop me making a whole bunch of socks to nominate my main account for admin? Great success!

borat sagdiyev — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.132.159.228 (talk) 11:08, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's unnecessary as you are welcome to self-nominate (though you may not consider that as entertaining). See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Nominate . -- ToE 12:37, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You might like to read WP:NOTNOW. Given the question, we might actually need WP:NOTEVER. --Dweller (talk) 14:25, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"In music theory, 2+2+2 doesn't equal 6"

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/oc6jp/this_semester_of_choir_at_my_university_is_going/ says a statement like this. Now, does anything in this statement have a figurative definition?? Let's examine the following:

A half note can be split into 2 quarter notes. Now, let's look at a measure of 3/2 time. Filling it with quarter notes will give you 2+2+2, which adds up to 6 quarter notes. So 2+2+2 still equals 6, even in music. What does this statement actually mean?? Does Wikipedia have any article related to this statement?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:00, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The longest post on that page explains it. The issue is how to notate a 6/8 signature as compared to a 3/4 signature. In both, a bar has a length of six eights, but they have a different "feel". Hence, the former should be notated as two groups of three eights notes (3+3), whereas the latter should be three groups of two eights (2+2+2). See the entries in Time_signature#Most_frequent_time_signatures, that should make it clear. --Wrongfilter (talk) 15:35, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

But if we give the measure the 3+3 feeling, it can still be divided into 2+2+2; just with the second group of 2 have second syllable stress (an analogy to the phrase "Maybe tonight I'll come" as opposed to "Maybe Monday I'll come" for 3/4 time. Georgia guy (talk) 15:41, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The difference between the different time signatures, such as all those listed above which account for different varieties of triple meter comes down to I guess what one could call the "microrhythm"s (for lack of a better word, for which there probably is one, that I cannot think of). When you notate a piece of music, there's the strict rhythm as written on the page, the quarter and half notes, etc. It's true that the time signature has no bearing on those notes. However, when a musician plays a piece, there are all sorts of things which aren't directly notated in those notes, but which affect the flow and dynamics and feel of a piece. Deciding which notes to stress by playing them louder or harder, deciding whether to play "on the beat" or to allow certain notes to hit a microbeat early or late, giving a piece a slight "swing", etc. all come about in the specific choice of time signature, because there are conventions on when to stress notes based on where they appear in a measure, based on the time signature, and those conventions make a difference in the overall feel of the piece. So, there is a difference between "2+2+2" and "3+3" even if, for example, all 6 notes were indicated by the same 8th not symbol. How you "group" the notes and places stresses and the like into your playing will be determined by the time signature in many cases. --Jayron 32 15:47, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I replaced the weird third-party site with a link to the original Reddit thread—I hope you don't mind. The person who said "2+2+2 would be 3/4" meant that 6/8 is typically subdivided as 3+3 (though of course it doesn't have to be). The person who responded "Only in music does 2 + 2 + 2 not equal 6" was just making a cheap joke about the pseudo-equation 2+2+2=3/4, as far as I can tell. -- BenRG (talk) 15:43, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

...which can be filled with 6 eighth notes, right?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:45, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. -- BenRG (talk) 16:11, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Truly, that pseudo-equation ought to be (2+2+2)/8 = 3/4. It's certainly not hard to have 3/4 where all six quavers are prominent beats (though of course not equally, but instead with the odd-numbered beats stronger than the even-numbered beats): polonaises can easily be like that. It is, alas, a little annoying that 6/4 and 3/2 are not related the way 4/4 and 2/2 are, which is annoying if you want to show that there are six beats but that the odd-numbered ones are stronger. I would personally write "3/2 (6/4)" for that. Double sharp (talk) 18:13, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Equivalently, you would write "4/4 (8/8)" to mean 4/4 played at a slow tempo so that the eighth note is the beat. Is this a valid generalization of what you said?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:18, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I would do. I have not heard of a standard practice for what ought to be done here, so I'd simply do this and hope it's clear enough. (Or go one better and write "in six" or "in eight" as well.) In the Coronation Scene from Musorgsky's Boris Godunov (Lamm's edition) you can see it done the other way around by the editor as "6/4 [3/2]" (Musorgsky confusingly writes only 6/4, but IIRC the stresses would suggest 3/2 and the quarter-note pulse is constant, only the numerator changing) but I think it makes more sense if you put 3/2 as the main signature to avoid the other connotations of 6/4. Double sharp (talk) 18:26, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]