I was listening to a bee buzz while it feasted on the thyme yesterday. I thought it sounded like a C flat, but apparently a pollen collecting bee hums closer to 246 hz, which is B below middle C. Is my hearing off today or are my bees a little sharp? Who can say? I thought it was kinda interesting, anyway.
Last night we caught The National at the 9:30 Club (the midnight show). Then we got up early for an Artomatic coffee-meeting at the site before we opened to artists for the final two days of installation (read: bedlam). Then I came home and went back to bed for a couple hours. Now I’m going to drool and finish knitting this sweater and watch the Land of the Lost marathon my Tivo, Overlord 2, scooped up for me from SciFi.
I might get really crazy and go stare at the flowers in my garden. (currently: 5 types of roses, several thymes, lavender, some sort of iris that blooms all summer, amazing carnations, daisies, pansies, lamb’s ears, and gerbera daisies).
I’m sad to report that you can’t check yourself in and out of the Federal witness protection program like it was some sort of day-spa or rehab center, so I’m just going to settle for turning off my phone for the afternoon. See you tomorrow….
*That was a joke, I was just guessing the bees were buzzing at around a middle C and was surprised to look it up and see that it was probably true.
Your hearing must be very finely tuned if you can hear the difference in a bee buzz between a C flat and a B. On the piano those two notes are exactly the same.
That’s a really useful chart by the way, and I printed it out for future reference. Thanks for posting it. I’ve always wanted to be able to tell the sound guy something other than “it sounds boomy – take out more of the very bottom end.” Now I can say “take out everything below 50 Hz.” Cool! It’ll be interesting to see whether they actually pay any more attention to me – HAHA!
I studied your comment for the longest time wondering what on earth you were talking about, then I looked at my post and realized I didn’t include the postscript to the post that I was kidding about telling the difference in the frequency. Sorry about that – tho do continue to believe in my audi-brilliance. lol.
There’s a rather good textbook about the acoustical properties of different musical instruments – Rossi’s The Science of Sound. Nice section on pianos. It’s a ridiculously expensive book, but many libraries have it. Fun reading. (um, if you’re a music nerd).
um, I am a music nerd! And my husband has perfect pitch. At first I thought you might be kidding, but the fact that you went to the trouble to put in that excellent link made me think that maybe you were serious. Either way, I enjoyed stumbling across your post.
I’m jealous of his pitch. Seriously.
Music nerds are always welcome here, Husband and I have been audio technology profs and both have advanced degrees. We love math and music and musical math. (I need some coffee :-).