Archive for January, 2008

Amazing endoscopy footage of voice singing.

Published by boz at January 30, 2008 in music and webage. 0 Comments

This amazing stuff popped up on MetaFilter - footage from Dr. Christopher Chang, an E.N.T. specialist who deals with various issues associated with the voice.

Start by having a look at this movie of a woman singing glissandi from low to high then high to low. If you want to see more footage, especially of people who have all sorts of issues with their voice - check out this page.

What amazed me is watching how the vocal membranes themselves change with pitch and how athletic the entire vocal mechanism is. Now all we need is to hook up David Lee Roth to the endoscope and get him to give ‘Running With The Devil’ another shot.

As a side note - I used Skitch to get the screen grab you can see above. Total genius - this app rocks and makes stuff like grabbing an image for things like this a total cakewalk!

David Lee Roth is on the mic

Published by boz at January 29, 2008 in music. 1 Comment

A bunch of people blogged this last week, but I thought that it could not go without being noted here. This is the raw, and I’d imagine ‘comped vocal* of Diamond David Lee Roth’s vocal take for ‘Running With The Devil’ from Van Halen’s first self-titled LP.

I don’t believe there is any fancy processing on this vocal, so all the overtones you can hear here are made by DLR himself.

It’s totally freakin’ awesome! I really need to go back and listen to this record again…

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Also, while we’re on the subject of Van Halen - you probably need to see Yacht Rock #9 as well.

via Chunklet

* ‘comped - short for compiled. This is audio nerd talk for when you take a bunch of recording takes and edit them together to make one final track to be used for mixing.

Great stuff about SONY/BMG’s MusicPass scheme/scam

Published by boz at January 9, 2008 in blogs, friends, opinion and the biznez. 0 Comments

My mate Jon, put me onto this great post from John Scalzi’s Whatever blog. Killer stuff.

Sony BMG spokesperson: We’re pleased to announce we are the final major music corporation to release electronic tracks without that pesky DRM! All you have to do is leave your house, go to a selected retail outlet, buy a special card there, go back to your house, scratch off the back of the card to find a code, go to our special MusicPass Web site, enter said code, and download one the 37 titles we have available, from Celine Dion to the Backstreet Boys!

Kid #1: Or, in the time it takes me to jump through all those hoops, I could just download all 37 of those albums off of Pirate Bay.

Kid #2: Or, I could just scratch off the back at the store, record the pin number, go home and download the album through a Tor connection, so you can’t trace my IP number.

Kid #1: Also, what’s with this first slate of artists? Celine Dion? Backstreet Boys? Kenny Chesney? Barry Manilow? Are you high?

Sony BMG dude: They appeal to the sort of mainstream consumer who will see the convenience of our revolutionary music cards!

Kid #2: Like my mom? Dude, she’s not going to buy a card. She’s going to buy a CD. Because she’s at the CD store. Where she can buy CDs.

Sony BMG dude: They also make lovely gifts!

Kid #1: If she gets one as a gift, all she’s going to do is ask me how the heck she’s supposed to use it. And then she’s going ask me to get the download for her. Like I’m not busy. And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to return the card for cash, and then I’m going to download the album off of Pirate Bay, because you’ve confused and upset my mom. And annoyed me.

Sony BMG dude: Uh.

Kid #2: So to recap, what you’ve got here is a system that makes people leave their house in order to download music at their house, and makes them go to a store to get music that they could get at the store, somewhere else.

Sony BMG dude: Er.

Kid #1: Why don’t you just sell non-DRM’d MP3s off Amazon, like every other major music corporation?

Sony BMG dude: Well.

Kid #2: You don’t actually want to sell unprotected MP3s, do you? You want to be able to say you’re doing it, but really, you want to make it so ridiculously inconvenient that people keep just keep buying CDs and DRM’d tracks off iTunes. Just admit it, bro.

Sony BMG dude (pointing): Look! It’s Celine Dion! And Barry Manilow! (runs away as kids avert their eyes in terror)

Poor, stupid deluded Sony BMG.

This MusicPass thing: six months at the outside.

Jon also sent me this gold - Vinyl Sleeve Heads