What's unique about you?

[Alyanumbers]

Not so much what makes me unique, as much as "Random facts about Alyanumbers":

My birthday is on Valentine's day. I always whine about it.

I was named for a song.

I'm Egyptian, but my first language is French. My wonderful brother taught me to read and write in it when I was 3.

We didn't have TV when I was little. It was probably the biggest reason I read so much.

Like many here, I am a synaesthete.

I can belly-dance.

My grandfather, all his brothers, my father and several other members of my family have gone to jail for political reasons. I grew up hearing stories about jail visits. My brother and father have recently been arrested in a protest.

When I was 15, I spoke English with a British accent, because most of my spoken English came from Beatles songs.

I've switched educational systems 3 times already (French to Egyptian, then back, then back again), and I haven't even graduated college yet! If I get into grad school, whether in the UK or US, it'll be the third system I experience. (Although, having taking the SAT 5 years ago, and now the GRE, I have had some experience with the American system, I guess.)

I was among the top 10% in high school. My first year of college, I failed exactly half my classes. I still haven't really figured out why.

[Alyanumbers]

Wow, what an interesting thread! I must say that I'm jealous of the synaesthesiasts out there too. How many of you also have perfect pitch? (That's what I really want, I guess.)

I don't have perfect pitch either, but I'm a beginner violinist, and my teacher says I have a great ear, so I guess it does help!

[Bukharan]

I am "hair-blind". lol My friends discovered this recently. My memory can hold tons of useless wikipedia-inspired information, the entire pages with numbers, and 5+ languages but my brain does not record anything whatsoever related to people's hair. Say, if I talk to a person and then a second later close my eyes, I can visualise his/her face, think of his/her character, know his/her voice but I will have no clue what colour his/her hair is, how long it is, what his/her hairstyle is like etc. I know what kind of hair my family members have only because I learnt it by heart.

Edited December 19, 2010 by Bukharan

[Ludwig von Dracula]

Ludwig,

I have relative pitch. One of my friends in music school had perfect pitch and he thought it was a curse because nothing is ever really "in tune."

Yeah, I've heard a lot of similar complaints. I'm still jealous of them, although I feel like sight-reading choral music with perfect pitch would take all the fun out of it! When you say "relative pitch" do you mean that you can guess the general range of a note but not get it right on, or that once you know one note, you can figure out your other notes from there?

I don't have perfect pitch either, but I'm a beginner violinist, and my teacher says I have a great ear, so I guess it does help!

Cool. I was wondering because many people with perfect pitch tend to describe particular notes as being a certain colour.

[MoJingly]

I was the singer of a hardcore (punk) band called "Fuck Your Face" for almost two years. Our guitarist ended up bleeding at about 50% of our shows.

This literally made me laugh out loud. And I'm at work...

[TheDude]

Ludwig,

I can listen to as song and tell you things like:

The chord quality( Major, minor, dom, dimin, etc)

Tensions (#11, b13, etc.)

The motion of the harmony (I ivmin ii min)

The melody I can tell you how the melody moves in intervals and the "color" of each note (root, 9, 13, etc)

Anyone can teach themselves this though.

[psycholinguist]

Wow, what an interesting thread! I must say that I'm jealous of the synaesthesiasts out there too. How many of you also have perfect pitch? (That's what I really want, I guess.)

I have both absolute pitch and mild pitch-colour synaesthesia, and I have to say that it all really doesn't amount to much more than a nifty party-trick, and there are plenty of downsides to it. It's not a radically different type of musicality; I can't stand it when AP-ers get all elitist about it.

Advantages:

• Transcription is darn easy.

• You never need a pitch to prompt you before singing.

• Telling what key anything is in is automatic.

• Every key has a qualitatively different feel, meaning that using them in composing is very interesting.

Disadvantages:

• My sense of relative pitch is very underdeveloped; for instance, I'm not very good with intervals. What I mean by that is that if someone plays an A and an F, I hear...an A and an F...so I calculate that it must be a minor sixth. In other words, I don't have any good idea of what a minor sixth in general sounds like. An A and an F is something immensely different from a D and a B-flat.

• Similarly, any song (or cover) played in the key I'm not used to really gets to me.

• And listening to period-recordings while trying to look at the score drives me crazy. Hearing an F-sharp and looking at a G produces major cognitive dissonance.

• Also, the key that something is in can really make or break a piece. I, personally, happen to love F minor - can't get enough of it. But E minor I find irreparably boring. Consequence? When I'm listening to my collection of mp3s and a song in E minor comes up, I tend to alt-tab over to my audio-settings and notch the pitch-level up a semitone. Why? Because then I'm going to enjoy it one heck of a lot more. I can't love anything in E minor.

• Yeah, things that are a bit out-of-step with standard tuning can be very annoying. For instance, The Charlatans' song "Just Lookin'" is in...well, it's about halfway between B major and C major. This bothered me so much that I deleted the song from my hard-drive and avoided it for nearly four years. In fact, the only reason I re-downloaded it (just this month, actually) is that in the meantime I'd discovered that you can adjust the pitch of a track in Audacity by fractions of a semitone. * laughs *

[psycholinguist]

Psycholinguistic: I feel for you. When I was in music school an alarm bell would ring that was some kind of in between semitone and it would always drive our friend who had AP completely nuts. He also never found a piano that he could play because of the differences in tuning. Coincidentally, the school ended up putting him on the payroll as a piano tuner and he made some pretty good bank doing this.

Heh! I'm not sure I'm quite sensitive enough to be able to tune pianos, but totally understood. Nifty!

[OR_Dan]

I'm terribly afraid of fish.

I dislike going in the ocean for fear of meeting fish.

Taking me snorkeling is tantamount to torture.

[Strangefox]

I'm terribly afraid of fish.

I dislike going in the ocean for fear of meeting fish.

Taking me snorkeling is tantamount to torture.

Wow, that's much cooler than my mundane fear of spiders!

[Zouzax]

I'm terribly afraid of fish.

I dislike going in the ocean for fear of meeting fish.

Taking me snorkeling is tantamount to torture.

this is so funny, im terribly afraid of fish, too!! i will NOT go in the ocean, lake, or any other natural body of water they may contain fish, or in my opinion, *sharks* - even though I'm assured that sharks cannot possibly live in a lake, that water is too clear & calm for there to be no shark activity. I don't take any chances.

@strangefox -- don't even get me started with fear of spiders. just writing that word makes the hair on my arms stand up. i am so afraid of them, im afraid of the very thought of seeing them, and avoid channels/shows/movies that I believe hold a high probability of just POPPING one out at me with no warning. (ex. Salt, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Fear Factor, and some reality talent shows, especially German ones). The worst is how they're always just SURPRISING you with them, they should most certainly have a disclaimer before showing such a thing on television.

[Strangefox]

@strangefox -- don't even get me started with fear of spiders. just writing that word makes the hair on my arms stand up. i am so afraid of them, im afraid of the very thought of seeing them, and avoid channels/shows/movies that I believe hold a high probability of just POPPING one out at me with no warning. (ex. Salt, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Fear Factor, and some reality talent shows, especially German ones). The worst is how they're always just SURPRISING you with them, they should most certainly have a disclaimer before showing such a thing on television.

The other night when I was lying in my bed I noticed that a spider was descending from the ceiling and the beast fell almost on me!!!! After that I looked carefully at the ceiling and noticed another spider, who was seemingly hesitant as to where to descend. It was wandering to and fro right above my bed and instead of peacefully falling asleep I had to lie there looking at the doubtful creature!

[Zouzax]

The other night when I was lying in my bed I noticed that a spider was descending from the ceiling and the beast fell almost on me!!!! After that I looked carefully at the ceiling and noticed another spider, who was seemingly hesitant as to where to descend. It was wandering to and fro right above my bed and instead of peacefully falling asleep I had to lie there looking at the doubtful creature!

Im not joking ... I would move immediately. And by 'move', I mean change apartments.

[OnceAndFutureGrad]

When I first read this thread about a week ago I was like "Aw man, I got nothing". Then I've been realizing since then, what the hel, yes I do! When I studied abroad in Ireland I picked up Viking combat re-enactment and did several public demos in former Viking cities like Cork and Waterford. When I moved back to the States I was very fortunate to find Dr. William R. Short, the leading expert in Viking combat experimental archaeology, and have been working with him and his group at Higgins Armory in Worcester, MA. Recently, we did a film shoot with the Discovery Channel, so look for us in March or April!

[OR_Dan]

this is so funny, im terribly afraid of fish, too!! i will NOT go in the ocean, lake, or any other natural body of water they may contain fish, or in my opinion, *sharks* - even though I'm assured that sharks cannot possibly live in a lake, that water is too clear & calm for there to be no shark activity. I don't take any chances.

@strangefox -- don't even get me started with fear of spiders. just writing that word makes the hair on my arms stand up. i am so afraid of them, im afraid of the very thought of seeing them, and avoid channels/shows/movies that I believe hold a high probability of just POPPING one out at me with no warning. (ex. Salt, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Fear Factor, and some reality talent shows, especially German ones). The worst is how they're always just SURPRISING you with them, they should most certainly have a disclaimer before showing such a thing on television.

hahahaha, I have thought of the shark connection, but I think there is more to it, otherwise, why the fear of lakes? anyway, it feels great to know I'm not alone.

[Strangefox]

Im not joking ... I would move immediately. And by 'move', I mean change apartments.

Oh. I can't move, so I have to live with my spiders... I believe that one can (and probably should) fight one's phobias (it's my humble opinion, of course). And I think that spiders have much more reasons to be mortally afraid of us than we - of them

I have mentioned earlier that I had an intense phobia of darkness when I was a child and even yet feel somewhat uncomfortable at night without lights on (and I am 27!). But I make myself sleep in the darkness sometimes, because I believe that fighting my fears makes me stronger.

[Strangefox]

When I first read this thread about a week ago I was like "Aw man, I got nothing". Then I've been realizing since then, what the hel, yes I do! When I studied abroad in Ireland I picked up Viking combat re-enactment and did several public demos in former Viking cities like Cork and Waterford. When I moved back to the States I was very fortunate to find Dr. William R. Short, the leading expert in Viking combat experimental archaeology, and have been working with him and his group at Higgins Armory in Worcester, MA. Recently, we did a film shoot with the Discovery Channel, so look for us in March or April!

Cool!

[zjwah]

I can sing with my mouth closed. I look like a chipmunk, but you've never heard "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" sound so adorable.

[sputnik]

I have three superhuman powers, or at least, that's what I call them.

1. I can figure out how to work any cell phone within minutes. This is particularly handy around "older" folks.

2. I get rockstar parking, all the time. Doesn't matter when/where.

3. I remember the words to (pretty much) every song I ever hear. Rap, country, oldies, pop, you name it.

My curse: I can't carry a tune to save my life.

[apieceofroastbeef]

I'm unusually non-buoyant.

I loled! Really.

[kotov]

I speak Romanian.

[kotov]

I speak Romanian.

[agatheringrose]

Sorry, with all the talk of spiders I feel I must share this

I'm also afraid of spiders. I can also wiggle my ears and love to cook for large groups of people.

[kotov]

I have a horrible fear of papercuts.

[Strangefox]

Sorry, with all the talk of spiders I feel I must share this

:D:D