Curiouser

22 November 2010 19:31
soukup: Tiki heads are coming to mug you! Flee! Fleeee! (srs bsns Tiki heads)
[personal profile] soukup
  • current mood Wagga Wagga! Eeeeee.
Remember the old dot-matrix-style printers? Remember how much noise they used to make, and how odd and rhythmic it was? Did you ever wonder what it would sound like to get a whole bunch of the enormous industrial-sized ones all in a room together and get them going all at once?

I know you did. Well, wonder no more, because so did someone else. The following video is about a person who has done just that, and used the weird screeching/thumping/stuttering/groaning/thudding sounds to make music. Even weirder than that, it's actually kind of good.


Wow. I'd almost compare it to Animal Collective, especially the album "Person Pitch."
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Date: 23 November 2010 12:08 (UTC)
needled_ink_1975: A snarling cougar; colored pencil on paper (Default)
From: [personal profile] needled_ink_1975
What I find great about this is that it's the image/lettering being printed that creates the sound. So that renders down to image-made-sound– literally 'this picture sounds like this', as opposed to sounds making images (like this). The latter is a whole lot more common than the former.

Ta for this! Hope you have a good day.

More from me a bit later.

-Nic

Date: 23 November 2010 17:04 (UTC)
soukup: Stephen Fry with text "and I mean this in a pink, slightly special way" (pink)
From: [personal profile] soukup
That video you've linked is really something. I don't know why it's provoking such ambivalence in me. It's not very pretty, but it's certainly interesting as a tool. Hmm. *ponders it*

You know something? I think this is why I can't read scores: because I always want them to be a faithful visual representation of the music, instead of a code.

Date: 23 November 2010 17:21 (UTC)
needled_ink_1975: A snarling cougar; colored pencil on paper (Default)
From: [personal profile] needled_ink_1975
I know what you mean. I've spent quite a bit of time talking to musicians who learnt to play whichever instrument by ear. When some of them have attempted to learn how to read music (or it's been suggested that they should), their reactions have been, "But it doesn't look like what I'm playing!"

I think my view might have been the above, if I'd started out playing by ear. That option wasn't open to me. When I read score, yes, it's a code, but I also mentally 'hear' what I'm reading, and in that way the code becomes sound.

Date: 23 November 2010 17:30 (UTC)
soukup: flower-ish mandala doodle (orange doodle)
From: [personal profile] soukup
I also mentally 'hear' what I'm reading

I think this is the piece I'm missing -- it's just not a habit for me (the way that the Roman alphabet is, for example). Did you learn to read music as a child?

Date: 23 November 2010 17:51 (UTC)
needled_ink_1975: A snarling cougar; colored pencil on paper (Default)
From: [personal profile] needled_ink_1975
Yes, learned to tell crotchets from semiquavers before I learned the difference between adverbs and adjectives.

And it might interest you to know that many instrumentalists don't mentally 'hear' the score they're reading. It's more commonly a skill or ability of vocalists. Some opera coaches insist that, as instrumentalists learn to play a brand new piece of music only by sight-reading the score, their students to should learn to sight-read and sing, without accompaniment.
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