Re: FYI re: Greenberg's Universals

On Wed, 4 Oct 2000, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:

> > From:         Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
>
> > As for drum codes...<sigh>  I wanted them to be gong codes at first, but
> > then I realized I had no clue how well gong-sounds carried over distances
> > as opposed to drum-codes.  (I've heard both, but neither in a
> > message-sending situation).  I scoured the web with no success.  Someday
> > I may actually figure out musical traditions and the actual drum-codes,
> > though.
>
> I've seen a description of a drum language once (on this list even, I
> think). From what I remember, the people using it spoke a tonal
> language, and they basically just drummed the melody of various
> phrases.
I've heard of that one, though I can't remember where.  <remembering with
delight>  I've even *heard* it!  Some visiting speaker at one of the many
schools I attended.  Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

> And to make sure it was understood correctly at larger distances, they
> repeated the whole message a lot of times.
<sigh of relief>  I did put that in the tentative military drum
protocols: play message 5 times, hope for confirmation from the next drum
tower.  Not to mention a longwinded "this message has come to you from
towers X, Y and Z before this one" thing at the beginning.

> Gongs: I don't know about those, but church bells seem to be audible
> quite far away. I guess that anything loud that's unlike the sounds of
> local nature will do.
I know the modes of vibration of bells and gongs are different, but it's
been so long since I've heard a Really Large Gong that I don't know if it
would penetrate as well as an equivalent bell.  You're right about bells,
though; we can hear McGraw Tower's bells from bloody off-campus up to a
mile away.  (Well, maybe that's not that far...but it seems far to me!)

Hmm.  Would drums be used for communications rather than bells because
drums are (more) portable?  <pondering>  How portable are gongs?  And
would it matter for a fixed drum/gong/bell-outpost?

I've got to find some book on communications that talks about this.  <G>

YHL