We need a player for every note in the score(tied notes can be played by a single musician). On the conductor’s downstroke everyone plays their note. Every note of the 9th played simultaneously. I want to hear this, but I don’t think that my poor old computer would function if I opened that many individual instruments in Reason.
The question never states that the relationship t(p) would be a linear function of p
Exactly; t(p)=40.
Let’s say you put like 1000 violinists all in a big, long row. Then, have the first violinist play a note, then the second plays the very same note, then the third, and so on. Let’s say you could also time it so that at the very moment the sound wave from one violinist hits the next is when that one plays the note. Brrrrrrump! All the way across. Let’s also say you could time it perfectly so that the waves don’t cancel each other out. What would happen?
Like when Bart taped all those megaphones together?
I think eventually you reach a point where previously played notes would lose all of their energy, meaning there’s probably an upper limit on how loud it would get for an observer at the end. Something something Doppler effect.
Not the Doppler effect, as that only applies to moving objects, but instead the inverse square law, where the energy of the sound wave decreases by the square of the distance from the origin, since it spreads in a sphere with the energy being spread across the surface of the sphere, resulting in a very quick dropoff in the loudness.
The sound source is moving in the above scenario relative to a stationary object. I’m not saying you’re wrong but that was my thinking.
40k Noise marines in a nutshell.
20 minutes, because the symphony only needs to be played by half as many players
Most speedrunners know about the glitch in Beethoven’s 9th where if you have the entire brass section make a quarter turn to the left at just the right moment of the open fifths the whole symphony freezes for a second and then drops you straight into the Ode to Joy.
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The premise is already wrong. No orchestra can play Beethoven’s 9th symphony in 40 minutes, this piece is longer than an hour.
Maybe it’s longer than an hour if only 80 players play it. This is 120!
I read that as one hundred twenty factorial. That’s a LOT of players!
More players than atoms in the known universe
More players than you could shake a stick at!
…wait, ask the conductor first.
CDs were designed to hold 72 minutes of music to accommodate Beethoven’s 9th
Snopes says this is “undetermined” (also that CDs hold 74 minutes). Honesty pleasently surprised by how plausible it is from the given evidence though, I was expecting this to turn out to be definitively a myth.
Yeah, just checked and the Wikipedia says it’s a myth!
It also requires a chorus
I prefer a flanger and a 200 ms delay
Like a traveling bard army
Give the conductor amphetamines? Shave 3-6 minutes of the time
Look up “Leo P at the proms” for a great example of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BARAHLk-8dk
It’s actually really good. Thank you for sharing this gem!
WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY*
The line is “WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!”
I remember, because I say it a lot.
Shoot, you’re right. I knew it felt off when I typed it.
That’s OK, memory is weird like that.
How many players does it take to play Beethoven’s 36th symphony in 60 minutes?
Undefined
Assume a spherical oboist…
I see you’ve met my oboist