Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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A 440 Microwave Beep

 Attaining perfect pitch one thawed morsel at a time
  (+15, -1)(+15, -1)
(+15, -1) 		  [vote for,
against]

Surely the annoying beep that my microwave sounds everytime the cheese on my turkey sandwich is melted has its own pitch. It sure would be helpful for ear training purposes is if told me what note it was playing, this way I might get a single pitch hammered into my music-and-turkey inclined mind. Therefore, a microwave or any beeping appliance that produces an electronically perfect whatevernote every time a normally annoying beep would occur.
—jellydoughnut, Jul 18 2008

The article I mentioned http://forteantimes.../lost-in-space.html
[imaginality, Jul 18 2008]

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       I sense downloadable ringtones for microwaves in the future.
—normzone, Jul 18 2008
   

       I rely on the nearly omnipresent 60 Hz hum (a slightly flat b natural.) UKers may prefer a slightly sharp G (50 Hz.)
—csea, Jul 18 2008
   

       The microwave could even test you. It gives you 3 beeps and you use the numeric keypad to guess which one was the true 440 A
—phundug, Jul 18 2008
   

       Well, that's a simple divide by 5,568,181.81 (recurring) from the magnetron. Doddle.
—AbsintheWithoutLeave, Jul 18 2008
   

       "Play the pipe tones ......"
—8th of 7, Jul 18 2008
   

       //Well, that's a simple divide by 5,568,181.81 (recurring) from the magnetron. Doddle.//   

       Slightly off-topic but this comment reminded me of this article about a couple of Italians who listened in to early US and Russian spacecraft transmissions. They figured out what frequency the US were transmitting on by calculating the length of the antenna in a photograph of a satellite. (Pretty interesting article.)
—imaginality, Jul 18 2008
   

       Nuclear, Microwave Song, x-ray, The Power
—Voice, Jul 19 2008
   

       + for perfect pitch products.
—xandram, Jul 20 2008
   

       Like pavolv's dog, evrytoime you hear something in A, you start drooling Microwave ringtones are next
—giligamesh, Jul 21 2008
   

       - for "perfect pitch" products; "perfect pitch" is a largely flawed, unhelpful, and mis-named concept, in much the way that rote-learning the ability to measure off whole numbers of inches up to 12 (but no other lengths) without a ruler does not give a sculptor "perfect proportion".   

       I wouldn't mind memorising one or two reference pitches, and this idea could help with that, but I would not like to be cursed with "perfect pitch".   

       See the idea Perfect Pitch Implants where I explain why.
—spidermother, Nov 13 2011
   

       + for a simple way to remember where an 'A' is. Relative pitch is pointless unless you have something to relate it to.   

       There may be some Pavlovian side-effects with using the microwave as a reference memory source though.
—FlyingToaster, Nov 13 2011
   


 

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