Notices by David McMullin (mcmullin@musicians.today), page 2

@inthehands
I think usually those hoops, boilerplate, and check boxes exist so that a machine or database can digest it. For example, I think most of what’s required to go into electronic medical records isn’t to help doctors care for patients, it’s for billing done automatically by the computer.

@KimCrayton1
I’m so sorry. It’s infuriating that this goes on at all, let alone with such depressing consistency. And it’s especially frustrating that any time someone mentions it, (white) people jump in to say no that can’t be, prove it.

I don’t know the solution, but for starters, can we stop pretending this isn’t a real problem? We’re way past isolated incidents or misunderstandings. Almost every Black person here describes the same kind of experiences.

@liztai
It’s a shame but it’s true that as a 老外 I can get away with a lot, and am sometimes afforded respect I don’t deserve.

@liztai
I’m at that beginner-intermediate level that elicits suspicious praise and encouragement meaning more or less, how nice that you tried. Like if someone’s dog could say a few words, you’d pet him and say that’s great. (At least that’s how it works for a white American. I suspect if I were ethnically Chinese and spoke as I do, the reaction might be more like, what’s wrong with you?)

@KydiaMusic @mattly
I speak Mandarin, badly, at a roughly intermediate level. And Mandarin has just 4 tones, so it’s not as complicated as many other languages. So I’m no expert but I can answer this. The tones are really pitch contours, and they are relative, not fixed. You could usually understand enough from context probably to know what people mean even if you don’t register the tones. 1/…

@KydiaMusic @mattly
But if you speak with the wrong tones, (as I often do because I forget which one I need) then people just look at you blankly. Or worse, you say things that make perfect sense but aren’t the words you think you’re saying. Think of the tones like the vowels in English. If someone said “ham” when they meant “home” you might or might not still understand, but if they mixed up all their vowels at random they’d make no sense at all.

@KydiaMusic @mattly

For two years before I realized my mistake, every day when I reminded my in-laws to do their daily exercise (zuò cāo / 做操) I said the second word with a 4th (falling) tone instead of a 1st (high) tone, thus telling them not to exercise (操) but to fuck (肏). Oops!

(Fortunately they are too cultured to hear it that way and/or too polite to correct me.)

@violetmadder @KydiaMusic @mattly
This could have gone on indefinitely. But at some point I heard someone else say it correctly and noticed the difference: oh it’s cāo not cào… hmm I wonder what cào means then… so I looked it up and oh, “fuck.” There are tons of homophones in Mandarin, so usually there are at least half a dozen possible words for one pronunciation. But in this case, as luck would have it, really just the one.

@mattly @KydiaMusic @chris

How does #amusia work in cultures with tonal languages? (Any #linguistics folks know? This must have been studied.)

If as many people were truly “tone deaf” as claim to be, and if the proportion were the same in China, then there’d be at least a hundred million Chinese people unable to speak intelligibly or understand speech well. So it must be either much less common or much less of an obstacle.

@mattly @KydiaMusic @chris
Right, it’s very similar to saying “I can’t do math.” There’s nothing wrong with people that keeps them from learning to do math; they’re just uncomfortable with it, and it’s socially acceptable to be “unable” to do it. (No one says they can’t read, even if they truly can’t, because that has different social connotations.)

@chris @KydiaMusic
Beethoven wasn’t tone deaf, though, he was deaf deaf—eventually. But his musicianship was highly developed before he lost his hearing, and his inner ear or aural imagination remained.

Evelyn Glennie is an excellent deaf percussionist, who describes herself as hearing through other parts of the body.

I was taking “tone deaf” to mean indifferent to pitch, which would be pretty limiting for most instruments.

@inthehands
Is it also a subscription or can you use the version you buy for as long as it works?

@inthehands
I’ve been using Sibelius for the last two decades, and I’m satisfied with the software itself but annoyed at the subscription model. Why am I effectively buying the same expensive thing again every year just keep using it? (Because so much of my music is in it already and I don’t have to learn something new. But it’s still annoying.)

@liztai
I have always envied those who pick up lots of languages in the course of normal life! (I’ve studied 3 foreign languages. I’m really only good at one of them, another I use every day but poorly, and the 3rd I’ve almost completely forgotten.)

@liztai No, it doesn’t work to be that heavy handed now. Cultural Revolution era propaganda is unwatchable but impressive in the sense of conveying how overwhelming the pressures were then. To me the most telling things now are what they don’t show. For example, in all the modern Chinese shows I’ve seen, the government is completely invisible. No political concerns, no politicians, no one even works for the city. Maybe you see a crossing guard or traffic cop sometimes, that’s it.

@liztai Well, pure propaganda is no fun. I’m thinking of the subtler varieties, or if not subtle then the kind you can stand to sit through to watch the rest of the show. Not unlike commercials.

@liztai It is fun—and I’m very interested in how it can be quite similar in some ways and totally different in others. Which all makes me more alert to the deliberate as well as unconscious agendas in whatever I’m watching.

@liztai
I find it really helpful to see the propaganda in Chinese entertainment—because it strikes me as quite obvious, yet it’s often not so different from the propaganda I’m used to and so don’t notice as much in American entertainment. I’m also intrigued by the apparent blind spots, when the premise or implicit values of a show contradict what I would expect the CCP line to be. What they let slide says as much as what they force into a script.

@liztai
Years ago I (Irish-American) was on vacation with my wife (Chinese-American) in Southern California, and we walked holding hands past a gaggle of Asian-American teenagers. Someone said, “I’m a banana! My spoon is too big!” and they all laughed. I didn’t get what it meant until later. My wife’s parents are from China, she’s fully bilingual in Mandarin and English, and even my Mandarin is probably more than those kids know. But she was with me, so: banana. It still annoys me.

@liztai
Filtering aggressively keeps the toxic stuff out, but doesn’t keep me from compulsively checking. In the past, I’ve set daily screen time limits on apps I use too much. Like parental controls, so it makes me enter a code if I want to keep using it. That helps. And a substitute habit helps. If I want to scroll on my phone, read a book there instead of checking social media. It’s still screen time, but it’s immersive concentration, with a different effect on the mind.