Peterik Chapter 8: Using Rhythm in Songwriting
Table of Contents
Introduction
Today we begin Chapter 8 of the Peterik book, on rhythm. This is one of the more important chapters for me, as I've been having problems with the rhythm part of my TI music generator program. So I wish to read this chapter and then rewrite the TI code based on what I learn in this chapter.
The Simpsons Live Action Project
As I've mentioned in many posts on both my old and new blogs, my favorite TV show is The Simpsons (as much as I've written about another favorite, Square One TV). I've quoted several episodes in my classes, most notably the first season episode "Bart the Genius," where Bart Simpson cheats his way into a Calculus class. In fact, we can find this conversation at the fan site Simpsons Archive:
https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/7G02.html
Ms. M: So \math y = r^3/3 \math. And if you determine the rate of change
in this curve correctly, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Class: [chuckles]
Ms. M: Don't you get it, Bart? Derivative \math dy = 3 r^2 / 3 \math,
or \math r^2 dr \math, or \math r\,dr\,r\math.
Har-de-har-har, get it?
Bart: [not amused] Oh, yeah. [forced laugh]
-- Making math fun, ``Bart the Genius''Anyway, a few months ago on a Simpsons fan site (nohomers.net), someone asked an interesting question about the show -- what would it have looked like had it been live action rather than animated? I've been wanting to give a full-detailed answer to that question for some time -- and naturally, I've been waiting for the summer to take the time to discuss it. And so I'm finally doing so in today's post.
This post, therefore, is a huge "What If?" -- what if The Simpsons had been live action, not animated.
The most obvious change, of course, is that the characters would have been played by actors -- and these actors would have gotten older. On the animated Simpsons, Bart is ten years old, Lisa eight, and Maggie one -- and they've stayed these ages throughout the series, which just ended it's 33rd season. Thus the show is technically older than all three children -- and now it's dangerously close to being older than parents Homer and Marge as well.
In a live action Simpsons, if Bart, Lisa, and Maggie were ten, eight, and one in the first season, then the older children would now be in their 40's, and Maggie in her 30's. It's unlikely that the show would have lasted that long -- though it's possible that the original show might have ended, and then a next generation reboot starts decades later, as in Roseanne and The Conners.
Instead, I like the idea of the show ending with Bart's graduation. This is similar to the endings of Boy Meets World and Malcolm in the Middle, with their finales being set at graduation. If Bart is in fourth grade at the start of the series, then he'd graduate at the end of Season Nine -- which roughly marks the end of the classic era of the show.
It's well-known that most long-running shows suffer a decline in quality. Many people on nohomers.net debate when the end of the classic era of The Simpsons was -- the most popular choices are Seasons Seven, Eight, and Nine. In fact, I suspect this is why some posters were wondering about a live action show -- such a show would have ended decades ago, and then we could have avoided the decline of the post-classic episodes.
Indeed, if I had to choose my own episode to mark the end of the classic era, it would be the Season Nine episode "Realty Bites," when Marge becomes a realtor. It's the first to air on my birthday -- December 7th, 1997 (my 17th). It's the last episode in which the classic era character Lionel Hutz appears, and the first in which the post-classic characters Gil Gunderson and Cookie Kwan appear (all of these are fellow realtors in that episode). Thus it definitely counts as a transitional episode. So ending the show with Season Nine means that we get to avoid the post-classic era, and has the bonus of graduating Bart.
Believe it or not, The Simpsons already has a graduation episode -- Season 16's "Future-Drama." While the rest of that season has Bart at his normal animated age of ten, "Future-Drama" flashes forward to Bart's graduation. Thus our live action show can start out like Season One, but then progress so that it ends up like "Future-Drama."
We keep all of the classic era plots that we know and love -- only the characters are older. By the last season, we head towards the graduation plotlines established in "Future-Drama." In particular, that episode shows that Lisa will skip two grades so that she can graduate at the same time as Bart. Which two grades she skips will be established later.
I know -- this is an education blog, not a Simpsons blog. But then again, much of the work of aging up the characters revolves around the children and their education -- at Springfield Elementary School and through high school. So in a way, today's post is still relevant to the blog.
Character Birthdays
In "Lisa's Rival," a Season Six episode, we have the following conversation:
https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/1F17.html
Lisa: Hi, Alison, I'm Lisa Simpson. Oh, it's great to finally meet
someone who converses above the normal eight-year-old level.
Alison: Actually, I'm seven. I was just skipped ahead because I was
getting bored with the first grade.
Lisa: You're younger than me too?
[look worried, starts breathing into her paper lunch bag]
Alison: Are you hyperventilating?
Lisa: No...I just like to smell my lunch.
-- No snouts and entrails there, "Lisa's Rival"But when this episode first aired, there were probably thousands of second graders who watched -- each of them seven years old, without any of them having skipped a grade.
How old is a second grader supposed to be anyway? There is no one-to-one correspondence between ages and grades because students have birthdays in the middle of the school year, so they are a different age before and after their birthday, yet still in the same grade.
I myself was seven years old as a second grader -- until my December birthday, when I became eight years old while still in second grade. Likewise, when Season Two aired, I was the same age as Bart -- but not the same age until December, when I turned ten. And I was the one of the oldest kids in my class, because here in California, the cutoff date (back in the 1990s) was December 2nd. This meant that a student with a September-November birthday was allowed to start kindergarten at age four.
And so, considering that "Lisa's Rival" first aired in September, there were six-year-old Californians in the second grade with fall birthdays at the time it aired. Even worse, there were seven-year-olds in the third grade -- again, having never moved up a grade -- who watched "Lisa's Rival," and wondered why a girl the same age as they were had to skip a grade just to make it to the second grade.
The problem, of course, is that cutoff dates depend on the states -- and Springfield, the hometown of the Simpson family, is famously in a indefinite state. California has (or had, back in the 1990s) one of the latest cutoff dates in the country. Most states have cutoff dates around September 1st or the first day of school (including California now).
We could assume that Bart and Lisa both have summer birthdays, so that the problem of being two different ages in one grade doesn't occur. But usually, a kid with a summer birthday can start kinder at age five, so they are seven for their entire second grade year and nine for their entire fourth grade year, and in general, in grade g they are g + 5 years old, not g + 6.
When are the Simpsons' birthdays, anyway? I like to assume that a character's birthday is on the airdate of the episode in which their birthday is first mentioned. Following this pattern:
- Bart's birthday is on January 9th, the date that "Radio Bart" first aired. For his birthday, Bart received a radio and microphone, which he used to play a prank on the entire town.
- Lisa's birthday is on September 19th, the date that "Stark Raving Dad" first aired. For her birthday, Lisa received a birthday song from Bart and a Michael Jackson imitator (which led to the episode become controversial due to revelations after the King of Pop died).
- Maggie's birthday is on May 12th, the day that "Lady Bouvier's Lover" first aired. For her birthday, Maggie received a cake with extra candy letters that Homer ate. Marge's mother and Homer's father meet at the party and begin to date.
- Marge's birthday is on March 18th, the date that "Life on the Fast Lane" first aired. For her birthday, Marge received a bowling ball from Homer. She takes it to the bowling alley, where she meets a charming Frenchman named Jacques.
- Homer's birthday is on January 12th, the date that "The Springfield Files" first aired. For his birthday, Homer received -- nothing, because he shares with birthday with the family dog.
Notice that Lisa, born on September 19th, shares a birthday with Hermione Granger, the witch friend of Harry Potter. Both Lisa and Hermione are the "smart girls" of their respective franchises -- and yet both are the oldest of their classmates due to their September births. (JK Rowling confirmed that Hermione was almost 12 when she started at Hogwarts, and Lisa must have been almost eight when she started the second grade.) On the other hand, Bart's birthday is closer to the middle of the school year. He must have been nine years old for almost half of the fourth grade, since he doesn't turn ten until January.
That Homer and the dog share a birthday was a joke in that one episode only, but notice that our calendar places Bart's birthday within a week of both his father's and his pet's. It was pointed out that in reality, Bart shouldn't know the birthday of his dog, who ran away from a racetrack on Christmas Eve in the first episode (and where he received his name, Santa's Little Helper.)
But this calendar tells a different possibility -- Bart gets a dog for Christmas, but he doesn't know when his new pet's birthday is. Two weeks later, he celebrates his own birthday -- and then suddenly wants to give his dog a celebration too. So a few days later, he gives Santa's Little Helper a party -- not realizing that it was already his father's birthday. (D'oh!)
Now that our characters finally have birthdays, we can now map out their ages during the entirety of our live action series.
Springfield High School and Bart vs. Skinner
We all know that Bart and Lisa attend Springfield Elementary School in the animated series. But in a live action series, Bart and Lisa are aging, so they must eventually get to high school.
In "Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part I," Season Six, we learn that there is definitely a Springfield High:
https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/2F16.html
Skinner: Today Springfield Elementary embarks on a new era: an era of
unbridled spending where petrodollars will fuel our wildest
educational fantasies. These young minds will enjoy every
academic advantage [chuckles] till they enter Springfield High
School, which has no oil well.
Kid: [from audience] We got an air hockey table!But here's a key question -- is there a Springfield Middle School? Principal Skinner's statement here implies that there is no Springfield Middle -- the students progress directly from the elementary school (and its newfound oil) to the high school (and its, uh, air hockey table).
Ironically, the recently completed Season 33 actually referred to Marge's days at Springfield Middle School, finally confirming its existence. Another Season 33 episode also reveals that Springfield Elementary goes up to sixth grade, leaving only Grades 7-8 at that middle school. But our live action show is supposed to be based on classic era only (and flash forward episodes like "Future-Drama") -- and since this classic era episode tells us that there is no middle school, our live action won't have a middle school either.
Of course, if Bart ages throughout the series, then Mrs. Krabappel, his animated fourth grade teacher, can only be his teacher in Season One. Some people might be upset, since the Bart vs. Krabappel rivalry is one of the defining relationships of the series. Of course, we might consider Mr. Feeny, the teacher of Cory Matthews on Boy Meets World -- and how that show has several contrivances in order to keep Feeny as the teacher throughout the series. We might consider doing the same in order to keep Krabappel as Bart's teacher.
But I'd counter that Bart's true foil at the school is Principal Skinner, not Mrs. Krabappel. No episode makes this clearer than Season Five's "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" -- this episode is all about Skinner's (not Krabappel's) attempts to prove that Bart ditched school. To me, this proves that the Bart vs. Skinner rivalry is more important than Bart vs. Krabappel. And since Skinner is the principal rather than a teacher, we only need a single contrivance to get Skinner to be high school principal.
In Season Five's "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadassss Song," the principal is fired -- and of course, he gets rehired by the end of the episode (after spending time as Bart's friend -- more evidence that the key school relationship is Bart vs. Skinner). So in our version, he can say that instead of being rehired at the elementary school, he gets a new job as high school principal -- just in time for him to be the principal of Bart as he starts his freshman year in Season Six.
And so it suits our purposes for Springfield Elementary to be a K-8 school (just like my old charter school), so that Skinner can be Bart's principal for the first five seasons, get fired from elementary school, get hired at high school, and be Bart's principal again for the remaining seasons.
There are only three Season Five episodes left after Skinner is fired from elementary school -- but unfortunately, one of these is the aforementioned "The Boy Who Knew Too Much." I might switch some episodes around so that Skinner can catch Bart ditching before he's fired, though I like the idea of keeping Skinner's firing as the milestone 100th episode.
There are a few more episodes that can be moved forward. "Bart Gets a F" was the Season Two premiere -- in this episode, Bart is at risk of repeating the fourth grade. It should be moved up to become the Season One finale instead -- after all, it's a last day of school episode, and it features the tension of Bart having to repeat his Season One grade. It can serve as the last episode with Krabappel as Bart's teacher.
Likewise, "Kamp Krusty" was the Season Four premiere, but it's also a last day of school episode (as the titular camp is a summer camp). It should be moved up to become the Season Three finale instead.
Lisa and Maggie's Education
According to "Future-Drama," Lisa skips two grades before graduating with Bart. Let's now try to figure out which two grades she skips. Of course, I already mentioned a grade skipping episode -- "Lisa's Rival." In it, Alison, after revealing her age to Lisa, suggests that Lisa ask to be moved up to. So let's say that she actually accomplishes it.
In Season One, Lisa matches her animated age and second grade. So in Season Six when "Lisa's Rival" airs, she's now in seventh grade. She will work hard throughout Season Six, and if she's successful, she'll be able to complete eighth grade as well and move directly into ninth for Season Seven. Oh, and the principal she must appeal to is not Skinner, but his replacement according to that same episode -- Ned Flanders (who is also their neighbor).
One late Season Six episode in which school is prominent is "The PTA Disbands," where the teachers go on strike. Most students are happy that school is shut down -- all except Lisa:
Lisa: I've got some textbooks but without state-approved syllabi and
standardized testing my education can only go so far.
Marge: Honey, maybe you should relax a little.
Lisa: Relax? I can't relax! Nor can I yield, relent, or -- [groans]
Only two synonyms? Oh my God: I'm losing my perspicacity!
[runs off screaming]
Homer: Well, it's always in the last place you look.
-- Tautologies, "The PTA Disbands"This episode presents Lisa as a grade-obsessed nerd. But in our live action series, more is at stake -- the school is shut down right before the tests which would allow her to skip a grade. This gives a much more justifiable reason why she can't relax during the strike.
At the end of this episode, the teachers return to work, and Lisa passes her tests. She gets to go to high school with Bart in Season Seven -- only for one season do Bart and Lisa attend different schools.
OK, so that's one grade for Lisa to skip -- we need her to skip one more grade before she can join Bart at graduation. We might consider Season Eight and its finale, "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson." In this episode, both Bart and Lisa are sent to military school. Lisa rises to the mental challenge (though she struggles with a physical challenge). And so it's possible that she can skip another year during her time at the military school.
Season Eight begins with Lisa as a high school sophomore. She can be sent to the school midway through the season. At the end, she gets a medal, "For Satisfactory Completion of the Eleventh Grade," making her ready to attend senior year with Bart the following season.
By the way, I keep making Season Nine the year that Bart and Lisa graduate, in spring 1998. But deep down, I like the idea of having the show be ten seasons, so that graduation would be in 1999 -- the year that I myself graduated from high school.
It would also mean that Season Two (rather than One) is the year that matches their animated ages. It matters for Lisa because Miss Hoover, her animated second grade teacher, is only mentioned in Season One, and first appears in the Season Two episode "Brush with Greatness." The teacher's first prominent role is in the following episode, "Lisa's Substitute" (as Hoover is the regular teacher who gets sick and needs a sub). But if Lisa is only a second grader in Season One, then she'd be in third grade for those key Hoover episodes. Setting their animated ages to Season Two gives Bart and Lisa a full year with their animated grades and teachers.
But having ten seasons pushes our live action show past the end of the classic era. It also means that Skinner is fired at the end of Bart's seventh grade year, which means that Springfield Elementary would have to be a K-7 school (very rare) if we want Skinner as Bart's principal the entire series.
So, as much as I'd like to have a graduation episode around the time of my own graduation, it makes more sense for the grad episode to be at the end of Season Nine, in 1998.
There's one more thing to say about Lisa's age. The Season Four episode "Lisa's First Word" is a flashback episode -- it states that Lisa was born during the 1984 Summer Olympics. Her animated age is eight, and 1984 was eight years before the episode's airdate. The problem is that on the live action calendar, 1984 is no longer Lisa's birthyear. Instead, it's now 1981 (or 1982 if we give them a Season Ten graduation as listed above). It also means that we should keep September 19th as Lisa's birthday (rather than move it up to July or August to match the Olympics).
We've written about Bart and Lisa's childhoods so far, but there's one more Simpson child. On the animated show, Maggie is "the forgotten Simpson." But on a live action show, Maggie, in the final seasons, will approach Bart and Lisa's Season One episodes. So we expect Maggie to be as prominent in Season Nine as Bart and Lisa were in Season One.
Of course, Maggie's defining feature is that she doesn't talk. The aforementioned "Lisa's First Word" actually features Maggie's first word ("Daddy"), voiced by Liz Taylor. In all other episodes, Maggie never speaks -- not even in flash forward episodes, where a running joke is that Maggie is always interrupted just before she speaks. (Maggie is very different from Stewie on Family Guy -- that baby talks in nearly every episode.)
That joke would get old very quickly in a live action series. While it's possible for The Simpsons to develop Maggie as a mute (that is, disabled) character, it's more likely that a live action Maggie would eventually speak on the show.
I'm not sure which episode would be Maggie's first speaking episode, though. The first episode in which the youngest Simpson is prominent is Season Three's "Homer Alone" -- as the title implies, Homer is left alone to take care of Maggie, but she runs away. Her next episode is Season Four's "A Streetcar Named Marge," where Marge acts in a play and sends Maggie to daycare. And her next episode is the aforementioned "Lisa's First Word," with Maggie's first word "Daddy." (The only classic era episode with Maggie in the title is Season Six's "And Maggie Makes Three," a flashback. Her next title isn't until Season Twenty.)
By the way, we mentioned that Maggie's birthday in May. So in Season One, is her May 1990 birthday her first birthday, or her second? I'd rather let her be one for most of Season One and turn two at the end of the season. If instead May 1990 were her first birthday, then she'd be eight for most of Season Nine, which some people might wonder is possible. (The answer is that she'd be age zero for most of Season One, but many people forget that a baby under 12 months old is technically age zero.)
So Maggie is age one for most of Season One. If she doesn't have any speaking parts, then we could almost make it to "Lisa's First Word" without her talking. But I'd at least let her speak in "A Streetcar Named Marge." She'd be four years old at the start of this episode, and so we can let the school in that episode (The Ayn Rand School for Tots) be her preschool instead.
With her May birthday, Maggie would be five for most of her kindergarten year, not turning six until the end of the year. So she'd be in kinder in Season Five. This would be the only year when Bart (eighth), Lisa (sixth), and Maggie (kinder) all attend Springfield Elementary.
In Season Nine, Maggie would be nine for most of the year, turning ten at the finale. This would place her in fourth grade, so she could have Ms. Krabappel as a teacher. Marcia Wallace, the Krabappel actress, could have episodes in Seasons One (Bart), Three (Lisa), and Nine (Maggie). And Miss Hoover, which is now Lisa's third grade teacher (not appearing until Season Two), can also return for Maggie in Season Eight.
Many late season episodes in which Lisa's age is significant can change Lisa to Maggie. For example, the penultimate episode would be "Lost Our Maggie" instead of "Lost Our Lisa." And many Season Eight episodes with Bart and Lisa away at military school (now a multi-episode plot rather than a season finale) should also have Maggie in place of Lisa (or Bart).
The final episode of Season Nine is "Natural Born Kissers" -- but Homer and Marge are undressed for much of the episode, and it would never work as a live action episode. Instead, we replace it with our graduation episode, with Bart 18, Lisa 16, and Maggie having just barely turned ten. (That episode should no longer be called "Future-Drama" as it's not in the future, but I can't think of a suitable name.)
Holidays: Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day
Halloween is the main holiday for The Simpsons. There is a special episode every year. The official name of these episodes is "Treehouse of Horror," named for its first special (in Season Two), when Bart and Lisa tell scary stories in a treehouse. Subsequent episodes are named "Treehouse of Horror" n (in Roman numerals), but since there was none in Season One, Treehouse of Horror n doesn't air until a year later, Season n + 1.
Aliens, vampires, and zombies appear in many Treehouse of Horror episodes -- but these would be difficult to show in a live action show. The nohomers.net poster who first came up with the live action idea never stated what to do about these Halloween episodes. An idea could be to start with Bart and Lisa in their treehouse (or some similar wraparound story in subsequent years), but then switch to animation for the three short stories.
As a young viewer, I thought was odd that there's been a Halloween episode every year, yet the same isn't true for Christmas. The series premiere is their famous Christmas episode, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," and yet the next holiday episode isn't until Season Seven's "Marge Be Not Proud." At that point, Christmas episodes appeared in odd-numbered years, from Season Nine's "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace" to "'Tis the Fifteenth Season" and beyond.
I suspect that on a live action show, Christmas episodes would be more frequent -- perhaps occurring in all nine seasons. Let's look at the episodes that aired in mid-to-late December in the seasons that lack a true holiday episode:
- Season 2: "Itchy and Scratchy and Marge" (December 20th)
- Season 3: "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk" (December 5th), "I Married Marge" (December 26th)
- Season 4: "Homer's Triple Bypass" (December 17th)
- Season 5: "$pringfield (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling"
- Season 6: "Fear of Flying" (December 18th)
- Season 8: "Lisa's Date with Density" (December 15th), "Hurricane Neddy" (December 29th)
Some of these episodes are very easy to convert into Christmas episodes. For example, in Season Six's "Fear of Flying," our favorite family tries to go on a vacation, only to cancel it because Marge has, well, a fear of flying. All we have to do is call it a "Christmas vacation" and we can keep the episode intact.
And Season Five's "$pringfield" has a Santa reference near the end of the episode:
https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/1F08.html
Homer: You know, Marge, for the first time in our marriage I can finally
look down my nose at you. _You_ have a gambling problem!
Marge: That's true. Will you forgive me?
Homer: Oh, sure. Remember when I got caught stealing all those watches
from Sears?
Marge: Hmm.
Homer: Well, that's nothing, because _you_ have a gambling problem! And
remember when I let that escaped lunatic in the house 'cause he
was dressed like Santa Claus?
Marge: Hmm.
Homer: Well _you_ have a gambling problem!In our Christmas version of the episode, after Homer mentions the burglar dressed as Santa, Marge could exclaim "That was last week!" indicating that it's near the holidays. Moreover, Lisa's pageant in the episode (or even kindergarten Maggie's) could be changed to a Christmas pageant (similar to the one at the start of the original holiday episode).
But other episodes won't be that easy to holiday-ize. Season Two's "Itchy and Scratchy and Marge" is about Marge complaining about violence in the kids' cartoons, forcing the studio to replace it with a bowdlerized version where the title characters "love and share" instead of "fight." We could say that they are sharing Christmas gifts. Bart could even make a metareference about what sort of lame show would have a Christmas episode as its first episode....
Season Four is an interesting case. The mid-December episode is "Homer's Triple Bypass," in which Homer needs a medical procedure:
https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/9F09.html
Marge: Homer, you shouldn't eat so much food. It's bad for your heart.
Homer: Oh, my heart is just fi-- aagh! [gags]
Marge: Homey, what's wrong?
Homer: [strained] Just-- working-- the turkey through...[pause]
[normal] There it goes.
OK, so we could just make it a holiday turkey and go from there. But Season Four also has the episode "Mr. Plow," which, though airing in November, has a winter theme with Homer's new snowplow. The fact that it's already contained on a holiday DVD where they try to pass it off as a Christmas episode makes me lean towards holiday-izing "Mr. Plow" instead of "Homer's Triple Bypass."
That leaves two more seasons -- Three and Eight. These seasons are unusual in that a new episode aired between Christmas and New Year's. So we must decide which episode to holiday-ize in these years.
In Season Three, we have "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk" (Burns sells the power plant -- to some Germans, hence the title) and "I Married Marge" (a flashback episode). Both episodes have merits -- when Homer learns that the prospective buyers are from Germany -- the land of chocolate -- he dreams about a chocolate-filled world. People eat sweets at Christmas, so we can add some holiday decor to that dream sequence. It also opens with Bart writing "The Christmas pageant does not stink," making this the holiday episode for the year.
"I Married Marge" might be more awkward here as it's a flashback episode. But it could make sense as a holiday episode -- we learn that Homer and Marge just barely got married before Bart was born. The next episode, "Radio Bart," establishes Bart's birthday as January 9th. So we could say that Homer and Marge have their wedding on Christmas (or maybe the next day -- December 26th, its airdate), just before Bart's January birthday. Then the next episode jumps to Bart's current birthday (his 12th, here in Season Three), and he pulls a prank on the town.
So we might likewise lean towards the after Christmas episode of "Hurricane Neddy" in Season Eight, though we might point out that hurricane season typically ends before Christmas. It helps that Ned Flanders has a manger scene up in the episode (but knowing him, his is out year-round).
Speaking of Christian holidays, let's look at Easter. No classic era episode takes place at Easter. But there is a spring break episode -- Season Seven's "Bart on the Road." It first aired on March 31st, 1996, which was Palm Sunday. So if Springfield takes the week before Easter off (Holy Week), then this would indeed be spring break.
Then again, since we aged Bart up, he is now 16 years old in this episode -- old enough to drive, so he doesn't need a fake ID to drive. But most states don't let 16-year-olds drive cars -- and he ultimately ends up flying all the way to Hong Kong, so this is still more plausible at 16 than 10 with a fake ID.
That leaves us with Valentine's Day. There's been only one true V-Day episode -- Season Four's "I Love Lisa," where the class dullard Ralph Wiggum has a crush on Lisa. This episode is notable for stretching out to the next holiday, Presidents' Day.
The only problem is that this doesn't fit the actual 1993 calendar. That year, Prez Day was on its earliest possible date, February 15th -- the day after V-Day. So there's not enough time for all the events of the episode to happen between V-Day and Prez Day -- Ralph taking Lisa on a date to a clown show, then practicing for the Prez Day pageant. (In fact, when that episode aired, I was a sixth grader. Our school had Lincoln's Birthday on Friday, Prez Day on Monday, and a student free day on Tuesday, thus producing a five-day weekend. We handed out our valentines on Thursday -- a few hours before this episode aired -- and by the next time we saw the classroom, both V-Day and Prez-Day were over.)
I almost would rather delay this episode to Season Five. In 1994, Prez Day was on February 21st, so there's a full week between V-Day and Prez Day, enough time for the events of the episode. Lisa and Ralph are fifth graders in February 1993 (and sixth graders in 1994.)
Even though "I Love Lisa" is the only true V-Day episode, there's been a few other mid-February romantic episodes. In Season Two, "Principal Charming" actually aired on the 14th -- in that episode, Skinner goes on a date with one of Marge's sisters. The following year, "Bart the Lover" has Bart playing a prank on his teacher by pretending he's a man interested in her. Of course, in Season Three Krabappel is Lisa's teacher, not Bart's, so we might need to change the teacher in this episode.
As we approach the later seasons, Bart and Lisa become old enough to think about dating. Some viewers find post-classic "Bart gets a girlfriend" episodes annoying because Bart is supposed to be only 10 years old (as opposed to "Chris gets a girlfriend" on Family Guy, where Chris is actually the proper age for dating).
The original "Bart's Girlfriend" episode is in Season Six. He ends up dating Jessica Lovejoy, a preacher's daughter. On our timeline, Bart is a high school freshman in this episode. The original "Lisa gets a boyfriend" episode is "Lisa's Date with Density" -- she goes out with class bully Nelson Muntz, and in that episode, she's a sophomore.
But if we're working towards "Future-Drama" canon, then Bart and Lisa must ultimately date their partners in that episode -- Jenda (for Bart) and Milhouse (for Lisa). Another future episode, Season 23's "Holidays of Future Passed," establishes their "Future-Drama" partners as the parents of their children, and so if we see "Holidays of Future Passed" as a pilot for a possible live action rematch (with the family at their new ages), then we should work towards having Bart and Lisa date their "Future-Drama" partners during Season Nine.
Many viewers dislike Jenda as a partner for Bart, despite Bart being older than ten in her episode. That's because she appears out of nowhere in "Future-Drama," and then is only referred to as an unseen mother of Bart's sons in "Holidays of Future Passed." Thus Jenda is seen as an unbelievable partner.
In "Future-Drama," Jenda pushes Bart too far on prom night. This is similar to Artie Ziff pushing Marge too far in the flashback "The Way We Was." While I like this parallel, notice that Artie never marries Marge -- so in a true parallel, Jenda should never marry Bart.
Meanwhile, Milhouse is mentioned in "Lisa's Date with Density." Nelson is the bad boy whom girls like Lisa want to date, while they end up setting down with nice guys like Milhouse.
Again, the "Future-Drama" pairings could be established early in Season Nine -- for example, they might go on a double date on Valentine's Day. (The actual February 15th episode, "Das Bus," has Bart and Lisa getting lost on an island -- this could be switched out for Maggie, and then Bart/Jenda and Lisa/Milhouse can go on their double date.)
Before we leave The Simpsons, it might interesting to consider actors to play these characters. While Dan Castellaneta can still play Homer and Julie Kavner Marge, it obviously won't work to have Nancy Cartwright (a grown woman) play Bart.
We could consider child actors, but any 1990's child actors famous enough for us to know their names are too busy for them to work on The Simpsons. For example, Macaulay Calkin plays a very Bart-like character on Home Alone -- but since he's working on Home Alone, he can't play Bart Simpson.
If you're thinking about young actresses for Maggie, the most obvious parallel is on Full House (which overlapped with the classic era) -- young Michelle Tanner was played by the Olsen twins. I'm not sure whether we'd want our Maggie to be played by a single young actress or by twins, or perhaps have only extras play her until Season Four's "Streetcar Named Marge."
This completes my live action project for The Simpsons.
Rapoport Question of the Day
Today on her Daily Epsilon of Math, Rebecca Rapoport writes:
Find the missing area.
All the relevant data is in an unlabeled diagram, so once again, I must come up with the labels.
ABE is a right triangle with the right angle at A. Congruent squares are drawn on sides EA and AB, outside the triangle. On ray AB, draw D so that another square can be drawn with side ED and sharing a side with the square on AB. Draw another square on side EB outside the triangle. Finally, G is the point where BD intersects a side of the square on AB. If the square on CB has area 45 square units, what is the area of triangle BEG?
When I first solved this problem, I used a little Trig. As it turns out, Nick Kalapodis on Twitter was able to come up with a purely geometric solution, so as usual that's the one I want to post. (The point labeling in this post comes from Kalapodis.)
To solve this, we note that ABCD is a rectangle (where C is the vertex of the square on side BE that is directly opposite of B -- the vertex opposite E is labeled F). A proof that it's a rectangle goes back to the fact that ABE and BCE are both isosceles right triangles.
Thus P, the point where AC and BD intersect, is the midpoint of AC (as the diagonals of a parallelogram including a rectangle bisect each other).
Also, E is the midpoint of AD (as A, E, D are collinear and AE, ED are the sides of congruent squares).
It follows that G is the centroid of Triangle ACD (from the definition of centroid -- the point where the medians CE, DP meet).
So, EG = (1/3)CE = (1/3)BE (centroid formula).
Then the desired area of Triangle BEG = (1/2)EG * BE (triangle area formula)
= 1/2 * 1/3 * BE * BE (substitution)
= BE^2/6 (simplification)
= (AE^2 + BE^2)/6 (Pythagorean Theorem)
= (45 + 45)/6 (as AE^2 is the area of the given square 45, with the square on BE congruent)
= 90/6 = 15
Therefore the desired area of Triangle BEG is 15 units -- and of course, today's date is the fifteenth. And once again, it never would have occurred to me to use centroids before reading Kalapodis -- thanks!
Peterik Chapter 8: Using Rhythm in Songwriting
Chapter 8 of Jim Peterik's Songwriting for Dummies is called "Using Rhythm in Songwriting." It marks the start of Part III, "Creating the Music." Here's how it begins:
"Have you ever noticed how, in certain songs, the words seem to dance across the music like they have 'happy feet'?"
It's time for us to focus on the rhythm of our songs -- an important component of our tunes:
"In this chapter, we'll look at how rhythm impacts your song -- the rhythm of the words, the meter of the notes, and the underlying groove of the drums, by using some very basic examples from which you can expand upon as you write your song. When you listen to someone talk, you'll notice a natural rise and fall in the voice as they express themselves in words."
As Peterik explains, we must look for the accented and unaccented syllables. He considers a simple example, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and compares the syllables in lines one and three:
"They match because the first line is missing the first unaccented syllable, starting out with the accented MA syllable instead."
This is called common measure. The author now quotes David Pomeranz -- writer of "Trying to Get the Feeling Again" -- who in turn cites Leonard Bernstein ("West Side Story") and other composers who play around with rhythm:
"Burt Bacharach, of course, is the master of this and, to me, this is why he and Bernstein are among the finest pop composers of our time."
In addition to accented and unaccented syllables, we can also look at the lengths of the syllables:
"Short, fast words and syllables followed by long, slow words and syllables create interest by adding dynamics to a line and giving the ear some variation. In the lines 'We really NEED TO see this through' and 'We never WANTED to be abused' from Blink 182's 'Anthem Part II,' we can see good examples of syllable length variations."
At this point, Peterik moves on to the meter of the music. He explains what this is:
"Beats are arranged into sections called measures or bars -- with a particular number of beats in each bar. Even the silences between notes help create the pulse of what we hear."
In a sidebar (or is it side-measure), all the notes are defined -- whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, as well as dotted notes. The symbols for rests are listed here as well.
"Applying musical meter to lyrical rhythm is one of the most important facets of songwriting. The pattern of four beats to a bar and eight bars in a section is the most commonly used of all beat structures."
And of course, this is where the name common time for 4/4 comes from:
"Sometimes the beat will give you just the needed direction for you to create a new song. Now we take a look at how notes and rests can be used to rhythmically notate music -- with seven bars of common (4/4) time shown in the figure."
I can't post the author's figure here, so I'll just write out the notes in each of his seven bars:
- whole note
- half note, half note (tied to bar 3)
- (tied from bar 2) quarter note, quarter note, two eighth notes, four sixteenth notes
- half rest, half note
- whole rest
- dotted half note, quarter rest
- quarter note, dotted eighth note, sixteenth note, dotted quarter note, eighth note
Which notes are accented depends on the style of music. Traditionally, the accents were on the first and third beats (the downbeats), but this has changed in modern music. Quoting musician Don Robertson, the author writes:
"'Rock popularized the heavy emphasis on beats two and four -- the backbeats.' We've shown how lyrics have accents and syllables."
The next example is Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are":
"You, the first word in the song, has a nice vowel sound (ou), therefore creating a nice effect when extended for a whole measure (which wouldn't have happened if the first word in the song was zeke)."
Again, I won't put the figure, but describe it with notes and lyrics:
- whole note (YOU)
- dotted half note (ARE), quarter note (the)
- quarter note (PRO-), quarter note (-mised), quarter note (KISS), quarter note (of)
- quarter note (SPRING-), half note (-time), quarter note (that)
- quarter note (MAKES), quarter note (the), quarter note (LONE-), quarter note (-ly)
- quarter note (WIN-), half note (-ter), quarter note (seem)
- whole note (LONG)
"In the next figure, the phrase is actually written and sung, with the word hat anticipating the downbeat by half of a beat as it swings into the next measure."
Again, I won't put the figure, but describe it with notes and lyrics:
- eighth rest, eighth (The), eighth (way), eighth (you), quarter note (wear), eighth (your), eighth
- (tied from bar 1) whole note (hat)
"The word hat now appears a half-beat in anticipation of the downbeat. This syncopation helps give the melody a swing feeling."
We learn that syncopation makes songs more interesting:
"Consider if each word of the opening line from 'Dance Hall Days' written by Jack Hues and performed by Wang Chung, 'Take your baby by the hand,' had landed squarely on the beat -- sounds pretty boring, doesn't it?"
In Peterik's next figure, we see the song "Genie in a Bottle" (by Pamela Sheyne, performed by Christina Aguilera) with syncopation on every beat. This is too complex for me to write out here, but most beats go sixteenth-eighth-sixteenth, with the last sixteenth tied to the first sixteenth of the next beat.
The author now show us how we can also be getting our groove on:
"For example, listen to how the group UB40 added their reggae feel (the backwards-sounding Jamaican rhythm that often puts the kickdrum on the backbeat instead of the snare drum) to the Elvis Presley ballad "Can't Help Falling in Love With You" (written by Luigi Creatore, Hugo Peretti, and George David Weiss), or the way Joe Crocker and his arranger, Leon Russell, changed the 4/4 feel of The Beatles' "With A Little Help From My Friends" (written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney) to a gospel-influenced 6/8 feel.
Peterik ends the chapter by quoting drummer Ed Breckenfield:
"Shows like Blue Man Group and Stomp that feature intricate rhythms performed on unorthodox instruments like the lengths of PVC plastic, hubcaps, garbage can lids, and brooms, demonstrate that rhythm transcends traditional instruments and cuts right to the soul."
This takes us to the next "Practice Makes Perfect" section -- it's time for me to write a song now.
A Song for March
In our last post, we looked at what Math 8 Unit 6 would have looked like at the old charter school with these songs. Let's look at the ideal Unit 7, spanning Weeks 25-28 of school. The math standards to be covered are the G standards on geometry.
As I wrote earlier, this time of year corresponds to Unit 7 at the old charter school and Chapter 6 in my Calculus class.
But on the original timeline, this is when I succumbed to the Big March -- the class became too difficult for me, and I ended up leaving the old charter school. We're assuming that on this new timeline, things would have been much better for me. The class would have been more organized as I follow the definite pacing plan above. And the interactive notebooks would have helped the students out in learning the material -- and they would have aided me in classroom management as well, as the student would know what they're supposed to be doing at all times. Thus I'd like to believe that on this timeline, I survive the Big March and thus get to sing the songs mentioned in this post.
This stretch also marks the transition from second to third trimester. Because I left the school on the original timeline, I'm not quite sure what the end of the trimester really looked like. I know that my successor gave the students a big math test, which might have been considered second tri Benchmarks (though she didn't use that term).
Week 27 is the first week of the third trimester. It's also Parent Conferences Week for the just concluded second tri, with school out early everyday (just like Week 14 in November). This would normally mean that there should be no songs at all that week -- except that Tuesday of that week is Pi Day, which is an automatic music day. So I perform Pi Day music that day and nothing the rest of the week. While the Math 8 lesson isn't related to pi, Math 7 has a pi lesson very close to that day -- and I'd likely juggle the lessons around so that the pi lesson lands on Pi Day, just like my Trig class this year. (On the original timeline, I bought a pizza for my sixth grade class on a quick Pi Day visit.)
Meanwhile, science is also making a transition at this time. We move from PS2 to PS3, on energy. But this is also around the time when the Green Team project started. Once again, I'm not quite sure how Green Team worked, since it began in earnest right around the time I left the school. Notice that both PS3 and Green Team are related to energy, but they are also different. PS3 focused more on the physics (or mechanics) of energy, including potential and kinetic energy, while Green Team is all about how to save energy and keep the planet green.
Since I'm not exactly sure when (or how) Green Team begins, I can't completely plan for science. The PS3-1 project has the students measure mass, time, and distance and graph their data. The PS3-2 project is more interesting -- the students get to design and create a (tiny, of course) roller coaster. But we switch to Green Team as soon as it begins -- for example, if Green Team begins right at the new tri in Week 27, then we do PS3-1 in Week 26 but then Green Team in Week 28.
Notice that on the original timeline, I had planned a science song for Week 25 -- "When the Scientists Go Marching In." It's an obvious parody of "Saints" for Mardi Gras (Tuesday Week 25). But due to my leaving the school, it was years before I posted the lyrics to "Scientists" on the blog. For Week 26, it might be tempting to go back to Square One TV and "Triangle Song," even though this isn't exactly related to the Week 26 topic (G4). Once again, Week 27 only needs Pi Day songs.
Before we start working on the new song, let's look at some established songs to learn more about the topic from today's Peterik chapter. Among Square One TV songs, there's one song that's obviously related to rhythm -- and that's "Rhythm." I've never performed the Rhythm Song in class, though. This tune teaches kids about quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes. They hear ways to count beats in a bar -- using quarter (1, 2, 3, 4), eighth (1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and) and sixteenth (1 e and a 2 e and a...) notes.
Interestingly enough, we can find other terms from this chapter by analyzing "Rhythm" alone. Pickup notes (that occur before the downbeat of a bar) can be found through the song -- for example, we see in the pre-chorus the first line "I never though I'd realize," the downbeat is on the word "never," and so "I" counts as a pickup note.
And there's even some syncopation in the chorus. It may be difficult to discern, but pay close attention to the second chorus (around the 2:00 mark), when the three ladies count the rhythm on their fingers. It appears that on the first line "Counting out the rhythm," the word rhythm starts just before the ladies touch their third finger and extends through it. This counts as syncopation on the third beat.
Now let's get back to our TI rhythm program and figure out why, based on this Peterik chapter, why my rhythm program isn't satisfactory. I'll reproduce only the rhythm-producing code here:
Here's what this code does. We enter in the time signature T (where 4 means 4/4 time, 3 means 3/4, and so on) and a number of measures, Z. Then for each measure, the calculator randomly divides the bar into note, where L is measured in beats (or quarter notes), then subdivides each note into shorter note into fourths, where M is measured in fourths of the note being subdivided. Since (L/4)(M/4) = LM/16, LM is measured in sixteenth notes. The LM values are placed into the generated list L1, where we include them in our DATA lines and feed it to the SOUND command as the second argument. And since one time unit in Mocha is approximately a sixteenth note, the units should work out correctly.
Unfortunately, this often leads to nonsensical music. For example, suppose in 4/4 time, we get L = 3 and M = 1, which means that Mocha will divide a dotted half note into four equal notes. Then each note is technically a dotted eighth note, but we have four of these in a row. Of course, since none of the dotted eighths (save the first) start on a beat, we could call this "syncopation." But syncopation is more complex than simply having four dotted eighths in a row -- and indeed, no real song would actually have this sequence of notes.
Moreover, sometimes Mocha plays the notes too fast. (It might depend on how quickly the server is running at a given time.) Earlier this summer, I decided to solve both problems at once -- use cut time (2/4) instead of common time, but then double the note lengths in Mocha so that the new sixteenth note is as long as the old eighth note. By using cut time, L can never equal 3, and so we don't have four dotted eighths in a row.
Of course, we can also dispense with L and M and have the calculator fully choose the note lengths as a random number of sixteenths. But then we might have monstrosities as a 5/16 note (technically a quarter tied to a sixteenth), or a 7/16 note (a double dotted quarter note), and so on -- and these notes almost never appear in real music, not even in highly syncopated music.
And besides, I'd much rather enter 4 for 4/4 time and 8 for the number of bars, so that the songs follow the common measure as described in the Peterik book. Entering 2 (as in 2/4 time) to mean 4/4 time (or playing around with alla breve) doesn't match how we want the song to be written.
And so here's my solution -- we use 4 to mean 4/4 time, but then divide the bar into eighth notes rather than sixteenth notes. Then we only add in sixteenth notes after writing the lyrics. This also goes back to what Peterik said about short and long syllables -- we only want our short syllables to land on the sixteenth notes. The author also mentioned how the longer notes, like half and whole notes, should correspond to long vowel sounds that we want to emphasize in the song.
Pickup notes and syncopation should also naturally follow the lyrics. For example, if a line begins with the article "a," then this is a great time for a pickup note for "a," so that the downbeat falls on the word after "a." Syncopation is a bit trickier though -- indeed, the code is set up so that the bar is always completed, with no notes extending beyond the end of the bar. The old code would often choose L = 1 with M = 1, 2, 1, which used to produce sixteenth, eighth, sixteenth. Notice that this is the exact pattern of the highly syncopated song "Genie in the Bottle" mentioned by the article -- but when it was generated on my calculator, it almost never fits this syncopation pattern.
Fixing the two problems listed above produces the following code:
This code still divides the bar into beats, but now the notes can only be divided in half. If L = 3 then we can still have two dotted quarter notes in a row, but this pattern can occur in real music. LM is now measured in eighths, and so we multiply by two to convert it to a Mocha length. We can always fix the Mocha code and add sixteenth notes after the lyrics have been written.
There's one thing that this code still can't generate though -- rests. Unfortunately, there's no way in Mocha to denote a rest (such as Sound 0, so that SOUND 0, 2 would give an eighth rest, SOUND 0, 4 a quarter rest, and so on). We could use an empty FOR loop to make the computer be silent, but it's tricky to time the FOR loop exactly (For example, does FOR X = 1 TO 100: NEXT X generate an eighth rest, or a quarter rest, or even a dotted eighth rest? We'd have to use trial and error to time it.)
OK, so let's write the song now, but which standard should we choose? Our pattern so far has been to write about the fourth standard of the unit, so we'd need a Pythagorean Theorem song for G6 (and yes, we used the Pythagorean Theorem in today's Rapoport song today). But recall that hardly any geometry standards have any songs yet -- and I've really been meaning to write a song for some of the angle properties in G5. And admittedly, some students have more trouble recalling the angle properties than the Pythagorean Theorem -- and the purpose of the songs is to jog their memory.
I'm not sure whether I would sing the following song during Week 28, or try to squeeze it in on the minimum days of Week 27. All that matters is that I have a song for G5:
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.G.A.5
Use informal arguments to establish facts about the angle sum and exterior angle of triangles, about the angles created when parallel lines are cut by a transversal, and the angle-angle criterion for similarity of triangles. For example, arrange three copies of the same triangle so that the sum of the three angles appears to form a line, and give an argument in terms of transversals why this is so.
Now that we have the rhythm, let's start the song:
20 FOR V=1 TO 2
30 FOR X=1 TO 52
40 READ A,T
50 SOUND 261-N*A,T
60 NEXT X
70 RESTORE
As usual, click on Sound before you RUN the program.
This time, I ran my new TI program twice, for a verse and the chorus. This time, the music I generated on the first run sounded better as a chorus, so I made the second TI run the verse. I decided to use the simplest EDL, 10EDL again. (Once again, we'll get back to EDL scales once we hit Chapter 9.)
As for the Peterik rhythm elements that I included, notice that the first word of the verse, "The," is a pickup note, as the first half note is on the second word "lines." "Are" near the end of the verse is also a pickup note.
Notice that the two verses are identical except I changed "corresponding" to "alternate interior." The code generated by the TI produced five notes in this bar, but the lyrics switch from four to seven syllables at this point. This is where our new sixteenth notes come in -- even the syllables seems to go from accented to unaccented: AL-ter-NATE in-TER-i-OR. So we can sing these as dotted eighths for the accented syllables and sixteenths for the unaccented syllables.
The last element of Chapter 8 is syncopation. To me, this is difficult to plan out on the TI -- instead, it can appear organically after I perform the song a few times. A possible spot for syncopation could be in the chorus. I couldn't resist rhyming "my angles" with "triangles," and I ended up making "My Angles and Lines" the title. The code produced four eighths and a half note, and I didn't want the unaccented syllable "-gles" on the half note, so I added in "yeah!" at the end of the line. But instead, I could drop the last half note and instead, syncopate the last eight note into the half note. That might work, except it would still place "-gles" on that eighth note/half note tie.
A few elements of this song depend on how I teach the lesson. For example, the song doesn't mention same-side interior angles, but I'm not sure whether that's included in G5. If we wanted, we might insert a bridge to discuss same-side interior angles. (It's better to make it a bridge rather than a third verse, because we want it to sound different -- after all, these angles are supplementary, not congruent.)
Another thing that I made a big deal about on the old blog is whether the parallel consequences should be taught using transformations (for example, using translations to demonstrate corresponding angles, or 180-degree rotations for alternate interior angles). Once again, it all depends on how these topics are taught in the textbook -- only after planning such lessons would I attempt to incorporate this somehow into the song.
Conclusion
There are a few sports-related topics that I wish to mention briefly here.
First, as a loyal UCLA Bruin, I was shocked to learn that my school and USC will not longer be members of the Pac-12, but will join the Big Ten in two years. The motivation for the move definitely appears to be money. It's uncertain how this will affect a possible college football playoff -- we might go back to the old BCS days with a single championship game between the Big Ten and SEC winners, since these appear to be the only conferences that matter, unless more moves are made. (This matters to me only because I mentioned a football playoff in my Calendar Reform posts -- but even if the college playoff collapses due to the rise of the two super-conferences, the Usher Calendar can still arise due to the changes in the NFL schedule.)
Major league baseball is about to have its All-Star Game, right here in Southern California. The date July 19th is unusually late for the Midsummer Classic -- but the game is late this year due to a combination of reasons, including the pandemic (indeed the 2022 schedule is actually the 2020 schedule pushed back two years and five days) and the offseason lockout.
And this year, the World Athletics Championships (Track and Field) are being held now. For the first time, the USA is hosting them, up in Track Town, Oregon. This is also a pandemic delay -- normally Worlds are held in odd-numbered years, but the Olympics delay caused a domino effect. Some people believe that the Olympics should be abolished (due to the costs of hosting the Games, etc.) -- and if that were to happen, Worlds will become the biggest track meet. The only problem is that many casual sports fans don't pay attention to Track unless it's the Olympics, so if the Games were to disappear, what would happen to our sport? At any rate, I hope the home team does well at Worlds this week!
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