A set of twelve spoons, seven white and five black, increasing in length by the twelfth root of two from the smallest to the largest.

Beat out a tune as you are waiting for the soup.
-- neelandan, Mar 24 2004

you, too, can play the spoons http://www.spoonplayer.com/
[po, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Soundgarden's Spoonman http://www.lyrics00...ONMAN%20Lyrics.html
[theircompetitor, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

And now: "Chopsticks in Spoons." +
-- Detly, Mar 24 2004


Your 2¹², 2¹¹... 2 recipe for success is a bit unwieldy.
-- thumbwax, Mar 24 2004


It beats playing with your food.
-- FarmerJohn, Mar 24 2004


Thumbwax: the twelfth root of 2 is 1.059463, not, um, 2.
-- kropotkin, Mar 24 2004


So [neelandan] you use 12 spoons every time you eat soup?

Also, long ago, hillbillies learned how to use spoons as musical...instruments(?) by banging them on one's knee. But your idea is a major improvement on this, seeing as how you can get different notes. Croissant.
-- echo, Mar 24 2004


you're echoing my link, echo.
-- po, Mar 24 2004


And I'm echoing [echo]'s show of support. Croissant!
-- Letsbuildafort, Mar 24 2004


A spoonful of sugary confectionery to you for this one. Wouldn't a basic kit include two sets of 12, however, since they're used in pairs? Nasty dissonances if you co-clink two adjacent ones in the series.
-- phlogiston, Mar 24 2004


Doh! Thanks kropotkin - indeedly-do, "of" is the key word.
-- thumbwax, Mar 24 2004


I love musical ideas. But with what do you beat out a tune? Shouldn't the spoons be hung up for maximum vibration? perhaps on fishing line, and you could use a metal chop stick. or a wine glass only 1/3 full of water. Lets break out all the silverware and see what they sound like!
-- dentworth, Mar 24 2004


I have an issue with the term "chromatic" being used to describe things that are black and white. And like thumbwax, I think your sizing sounds off. But apart from that, yeah, croissant.
-- DrCurry, Mar 24 2004


The 12th root of 2 (or 1.059463) is exactly right for equal temperament tuning; if the first spoon is 10 cm long, the next one would be 10.594 cm (a half-step lower in pitch), then 11.225 cm, and so on, until the 13th spoon*, which is 20 cm (or one octave lower than the first.)

*You'd need 13 spoons to cover a full octave.

"Chromatic" is the term in music that refers to all 12 notes (the black keys and the white keys on a piano) as opposed to "diatonic," which relates to just 7 different notes (the white piano keys in the key of C Major.)
-- AO, Mar 24 2004


Top link, [theirC] - I was playing the album as we speak.
'Chromatic Death' is a track by Anthrax and very good it is too!
-- gnomethang, Mar 24 2004


I would bundle the spoons with a set of 12 (or 13) drinking glasses marked with a "fill to here" line for the appropriate level of fluid to get a chromatic scale. Package them in a sturdy paper or plastic box with areas of different thickness and you get a drum set, too. But wait, you also get....(sorry too many late-night TV commercials).
-- RooneDitoff, Mar 25 2004



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