We have a winner! A few days ago we posted the question in our newsletter asking if anyone could tell us what a schisma is. Some good internet searchers turned up the right answers and we’re going to recognize 2 winners - Mike Sherman and Mike Benton. The web has a lot of articles discussing the musical term “schisma”. It is something I understood about tuning musical instruments for long time, but never knew it had a name.

Simply speaking, it is the difference between tuning the D above a G so the two sound great, and tuning that D to sound good across all scales and keys. In other words, today’s instruments tune every note an equal distance from each other and that even distance is slightly smaller than the distance your ear wants to hear a perfect fifth. This distance is a SCHISMA.

Want to try it ?? Want to hear a schisma ?

You’ll need a tuner, and a guitar (or any other tunable instrument). Play a G and verify it is in tune with your tuner. Now play the D above that G at the same time and tune the D to sound perfect to your ear. This is a perfect fifth and it ought to sound good to the ear. Now check that D against your tuner. It will be sharp - by just a schisma ! What? Crazy.

Congratulations Mike and Mike ! You will be one of the first to recieve the new Safari CD once it is available !

Ben Joe

Recently, I received an e-mail from a fellow citizen of Soundzania (we’re all citizens actually, read the citizen’s motto). In the e-mail, Claire (6-years old) shared her drawing with me. Here it is:

I think its a wonderful coloring of Cory Net. Thanks a bunch for sharing Claire !

Print out some of our coloring pages, color them in and send them our way !  We’ll share what you share.

Are you a citizen of Soundzania? Want to become one? Its pretty simple. There are only 2 responsibilities for citizens and they are spelled out pretty clearly on the Soundzania Certificate of Citizenship (shown below). What ? You don’t have one of these wonderful cards? Well, they come with any purchase from Soundzania (CD, t-shirt, whatever).

Everyone is an honorary citizen if they can follow the motto. One more thing we’d like is to have you share some of your music back with us - drop us a line.