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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2056 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 30, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Is there a music sharing thread? Probably not, and I get it, people have varying musical tastes. Anyway I am throwing this out there:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5x-u7iw7W1Y

The faux-ballet is called "Ma Mere L'Oye" and was composed by Ravel, and this is called Le Jardin Feerique which translates, alas, as "The Fairy Garden." A more fey title does not exist. Yet I love this part, and this iteration, in particular, though you can find others on Youtube. Enjoy. Or don't, of course.

That’s a gorgeous piece! Also, I think this is the first male harpist I’ve ever seen. Certain instruments have a significant gender imbalance, and if there’s a more female-coded classical instrument than the harp, I’ve yet to discover it.

I would have guessed the flute would be up there as a female-coded instrument for reasons, and cursory research suggests it indeed is; the harp is generally a clear number one with flute a distant second. In my brief research, I stumbled across a bunch of articles to the… tune… of certain instruments being too male and so are orchestras and This is a Problem that We Need to…

I had a long conversation about this with a family member who often attends classical concerts with me, despite not being very knowledgeable about music nor having ever played an instrument past childhood. She was intrigued by the gender imbalances she’d noticed with certain instruments; like any good liberal feminist, she assumed it must be a result of girls and boys being socialized differently and, subtly or explicitly, nudged by music educators into picking up certain instruments rather than others, as a result of sexist stereotypes about which instruments are “supposed to” be played by each sex.

I explained that this doesn’t match my experience of being a musician in middle and high school. You don’t really see significant gender differences in, for example, the stringed instruments, with stand-up bass being a notable exception due to the fact that it’s a tall instrument which tends to be played by taller individuals. Wind and brass instruments are where you really see the biggest differences. (Other than, as previously noted, the harp.)

I chalked it up to the fact that when it comes to a wind/brass instrument, you’re using your actual lungs and voice to produce the sound. When you blow or hum into an instrument, you’re subconsciously expecting the sound to at least somewhat resemble your actual voice; if you’re a deep-voiced man, and you blow into an oboe or piccolo, the sound that’s going to come out is extremely different from the sound that your brain is used to your lungs and throat producing. I think that this produces a sort of cognitive dissonance that naturally drives people to prefer playing instruments that are more similar to their natural voices. Since stringed instruments don’t involve the use of the human voice, they don’t suffer from this same issue of needing to “identify” with the sound the instrument makes, and therefore you see less gender splits with those instruments.

Some disparate thoughts from me on the topic:

Harp - Needs a lot of fine motor control, so women are probably better at this. Plus it's very delicate and the player gets to show herself off to the audience, unlike something like the double bass or the drums where the player is behind the instrument.

Brass - Puffing your cheeks out is unflattering, teenage girls don't wanna look like this.

Flutes etc - High pitched tone and pursed lips, kinda girly so puts off the boys.

Drums - Big man hit thing hard with stick. Seems very masculine.

Guitar - This one I'm not sure about. My impression is that players are mostly male but the only reason I can see is that teenage boys think it'll impress the girls, maybe because it allows you to sing at the same time as playing. Electric guitar also means you can play in a band.

I don't know much about other instruments, but playing guitar is physically painful for a while. Less so with electric but if men go electric more than women by default do to tech bias or harshness bias then that cancels that out.

Harp - Needs a lot of fine motor control, so women are probably better at this. Plus it's very delicate and the player gets to show herself off to the audience, unlike something like the double bass or the drums where the player is behind the instrument.

Indeed. Given the low degree of straining involved and the high degree of visibility, the harp is a great instrument for women to look cUuUte while performing.

Funnily enough, here’s a Reddit thread on harpists and body image issues, started by a woman complaining that performing makes her feel self-conscious about her tattoo and looking “like a squashed dumpling sitting down.” Of course, the blame lies not with her choosing to get a garish tattoo or her being overweight, but rather “the current aesthetic stereotypes of harpists.”

The thread exemplifies Redditors in all their glory. I went between mentally eye-rolling and thinking “☕️” as I went from comment to comment.

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