Never Play Next To A Fan :)

[Will Moore]

So, I was merrily playing my new Edgley today, when I heard this strange fluttering sound coming from lots of different buttons! I was horrified, and thought there must be an issue!

 

Opened it up and all was sound. Played again and the same thing! I went to ask my wife if she could notice it, and the fluttering vanished. It was then I realised that it must have been the fan next to me It was messing with the sound waves.

 

Yes, I'm silly.

 

I wanted to share - anyone else done it or am I alone in my stupidity?

[JimLucas]

It was then I realised that it must have been the fan next to me It was messing with the sound waves.

 

...

I wanted to share - anyone else done it or am I alone in my stupidity?

 

A search should find you more than one old thread about this effect, including discussions of the physics involved.

[Patrick McMahon]

I wanted to share - anyone else done it or am I alone in my stupidity?

There are no fans when I'm playing.

[Will Moore]

 

I wanted to share - anyone else done it or am I alone in my stupidity?

There are no fans when I'm playing.

 

haha My 14 month old daughter is my only fan my 4 year old son walks around with his hands over his ears when I'm playing and my wife just about tolerates it

[Anglo-Irishman]

Could this be where Hammond got the idea for the vibrato in the Hammond Organ? It's generated by a rotating loudspeaker!

 

Cheers,

John

[Rod]

I believe the modern Vibraphone has a fully adjustable, inbuilt, power-operated system to produce the desired level of tremolo effect. A rather more sophisticated alternative to Will and his domestic cooling-fan !

[David Barnert]

Not just "next to a fan," but under a ceiling fan, as well. Makes it sound awful.

[Anglo-Irishman]

Fans produce wind, and this puts me in mind of an anecdote that my mother told of her piano lessons as a young girl in the city of Derry. Her teacher gave all her pupils the same homework assignment: to ascertain the exact pitch of chimes of the Guildhall clock, (which can be heard all over the city) using their pianos at home. Apparently, the answers varied considerably, but it emerged that they depended on where the pupils lived - more specifically, upwind or downwind of the Guildhall!

 

Cheers,

John

[JimLucas]

Apparently, the answers varied considerably, but it emerged that they depended on where the pupils lived - more specifically, upwind or downwind of the Guildhall!

 

This not only validates the Doppler effect, but the consistency suggests that the residents of Derry all kept their pianos in good tune.

[David Barnert]

 

Apparently, the answers varied considerably, but it emerged that they depended on where the pupils lived - more specifically, upwind or downwind of the Guildhall!

 

This not only validates the Doppler effect, but the consistency suggests that the residents of Derry all kept their pianos in good tune.

 

 

To be clear, this validates that there is such a thing as the Doppler effect, and that it behaves as Doppler described it. But it does nothing to support the suggestion, as has been made in previous threads on this subject (and that I do not believe), that the Doppler effect is responsible for the effect that fans have on the sound of concertinas.

[Mike Franch]

Interesting. Did every household of those Derry schoolchildren have a piano? Did the school serve predominately middle- or upper-class families?

 

Not a concertina related question, but one pertinent to the musical culture of the city.

[Ken_Coles]

Just a side note to everyone - management is asking that we not detour into a discussion of the physics of the "fan effect." Not once, but twice in the past this led to threads that became vituperative fights until we shut them down. Take that debate to physics.net, please, and here we will just acknowledge that it happens and laugh about it. Thanks.

 

Ken

[JimLucas]

Just a side note to everyone - management is asking that we not detour into a discussion of the physics of the "fan effect." Not once, but twice in the past this led to threads that became vituperative fights until we shut them down. Take that debate to physics.net, please, and here we will just acknowledge that it happens and laugh about it.

 

I think I hear that argument dropping in pitch as it accelerates away from this thread.

[JimLucas]

Interesting. Did every household of those Derry schoolchildren have a piano? Did the school serve predominately middle- or upper-class families?

 

FWIW, during my childhood in the US, it was a rare middle-class household that didn't have a piano, even if no one in the family could play it. And from stories I've read, I gather that in earlier times that might well have been true of even poor families in England or Ireland.

[Anglo-Irishman]

Interesting. Did every household of those Derry schoolchildren have a piano? Did the school serve predominately middle- or upper-class families?

 

Not a concertina related question, but one pertinent to the musical culture of the city.

Mike,

To clarify the anecdote, it wasn' a matter of music class at school, but rather private piano tuition.

 

We're talking about the time just after the Great War, when the old order of things was still prevalent. My mother's family (and those of other girls and boys able to pay for piano lessons) would have had pianos. They were part of the furnishings of a middle-class household, as they were a necessity in the days before radio and gramophone. The only access for most people to the world of music - at almost any level of sophistication - was through piano transcriptions of classical works and piano arrangements of popular songs. Christmas, birthday and house-parties would have been unthinkable without a piano. The guitar was unknown in Ireland at that time.

 

The above applies to city culture.

My father grew up in the country near Derry, and was more labouring- than middle-class. But he, too, had musical tuition. Only it was on the fiddle and the melodion (which my mother detested!), and the idea was to promote youngsters who showed some musicality, so that there would always be enough musicians for dances and the like. This was a community thing, apparently. The teacher was often an older neighbour, so of course a lot of "oral tradition" went on. I imagine the fiddles were passed down from old to young, and the melodions would perhaps have been cheap, German ones (like the Clare concertinas).

 

There were many ways to music in those days. My father even mentioned completely irreligious young men who professed to be convinced Christians, so that they could join the Salvation Army and get tuition on brass instruments!

 

Why bother with all that nowadays, when you can buy a CD of any kind of music you like for a pittance!

 

Cheers,

John

[Jack Campin]

An interesting extra wrinkle on the "Derry effect": the Doppler shift does not simply transpose pitches, but affects different frequencies by different ratios. The result is that chords will sound harmonically different depending on relative motion - if the wind blows fast enough, major changes to minor or the other way round. (Though the windspeed required would probably be high enough that you'd be more worried about the bell tower standing up than what it sounded like).