2019 Harvard Undergraduate Science Olympiad Invitational

[Unome]

Hi Windu! I wasn’t at Harvard but my B team was. They did say they had some issues with in tune notes reading out of tune. Could you perhaps elaborate on what you mean by not practicing under testing conditions? Do you mean just not practicing playing the note for 5 seconds? Thanks

I think he means that most people only tune their instrument with a traditional tuner, which has a low refresh rate and always centers on the actual pitch. Google science journal (which is what was used) picks up the pitch continuously, including any overtones and points with no audible pitch. Those often create huge spikes and bowls in the pitch curve, messing up the average pitch.

Ahh okay thanks. So you can solve the silences by building an instrument that can play continuously through the five seconds, but aren’t overtones unavoidable?

I suspect (though am not certain) that any instrument which can sustain for 5 seconds continuously shouldn't have much of a problem.

[windu34]

Hi Windu! I wasn’t at Harvard but my B team was. They did say they had some issues with in tune notes reading out of tune. Could you perhaps elaborate on what you mean by not practicing under testing conditions? Do you mean just not practicing playing the note for 5 seconds? Thanks

I think he means that most people only tune their instrument with a traditional tuner, which has a low refresh rate and always centers on the actual pitch. Google science journal (which is what was used) picks up the pitch continuously, including any overtones and points with no audible pitch. Those often create huge spikes and bowls in the pitch curve, messing up the average pitch.

This is mostly correct - the thing that messed most people up were the silences during the pitch recording. That is one of the reasons the trombone was superior to other instruments (such as the resonant pipes that I thought would be the best, and were probably more accurate to the pitch if the reading hadn't been an average).

[antoine_ego]

Any idea when tests will be mailed to teams/released as pdfs?

[quantumk19]

Does anyone have the link to the test pdfs? Our team never received it online.