Mistery Noises
If fate had worked itself all wrongly, and had made me into one who makes music (I thought) then I would definitely, definitely write a piece for foghorn. Foghorns are sexy. And intimidating. They are the roars of our largest artificial animals. Here is a fun foghorn fact: it is impossible to find a video on youtube of one which does not involve one of (a) wind static, (b) ADD cameramen, (c) some dude who attached one to the roof of his ScionxB. Well, there might be a few others:
I can see from your eyes that you have a great desire to learn more about foghorns. Let me share with you a few secrets unraveled in the Great Internet Foghorn Adventure of the last half hour. It turns out that the “classic” foghorns — diaphones — are an endangered species. They are all getting replaced by electronic diaphragm style ones. This is sad as the diaphone has a rich and exuberant (well, maybe not exuberant) history. Check it out:
Air comes in from the left, and that piston in the middle is cut away on its left side: that’s why it looks weird, it’s actually symmetric and shaped like a top-hat. It starts with the piston in the top position. Air pushes the rim of the top-hat down, until this exposes the channels which let the air escape up through the hollow center of the piston and out of the top of the cone. In the process the piston is forced back up again, causing it to vibrate up and down.
This is kind of like a half flute/half reed type mechanism for producing a noise. There is a column of vibrating air (like a flute) but instead of this being due to purely the dimensions of the device, it is due to being actively oscillated by a mechanical, err, thingy (like a reed). This mechanism originally came from a (rarely used) stop on an organ, invented by the same guy who created the Wurlitzer. I think it’s really cool that there is a little piston in there. It’s like a half instrument/half machine.
Still not convinced that foghorns are sexy? Perhaps this will change your mind:
I’ve GOT to get me one of these bad boys.
They are available from the store at gamewelldiaphone.com, if you are interested. This is also the site where I found that awesome animation up there. For further foghorn-based entertainment (and I know you know that’s the best type) check out the wikipedia entry on diaphones.
Off Sabbatical
Hello world. I’m still existing, see? Just being a tad slack and regrouping. A break is always useful, in almost every pursuit (except maybe for things like air traffic controlling, or life-support machine running, or other such hundred-percent essentials) in order to function properly and not go crazy and caught up the wrong way around. Beside the standing back aspect, it’s been another particularly crazy, stuff-filled week featuring (but not limited to) giving two presentations and taking an ultra-short/ultra-intense course in biochemistry.
I also got a well-fancy new phone, which brings up an interesting dilemma. The ringer one. Do I destroy for all time my appreciation of a piece of music, by using it as a ringtone? Because it’s all fancy and not three years old, I can stick whatever piece of music is desired into the ringtone slot. This is not only a privilege but a necessity, since all the built-in ones are annoyingly noodly. However, from past experience, whichever piece of music undergoes this will cease to have certain musical properties in the future. It will forever be a ringtone, a harbinger of the “reach for the pants pocket” move.
In the end it was decided (by a large and ineffective committee consisting of me) that we could sacrifice a ballet to the ringtone gods, since those movements are brief and independent of each other (so the whole piece won’t be destroyed even if one movement is). The “winner” of the competition is:
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Which is fairly obscure, I think. Anyone recognize it…?
Now I’m feeling guilty about using it as a ringtone. Eugh. I feel dirty even typing that word. Ring-tone. Maybe I’ll switch back to using the one that sounds like an old fashioned telephone, in order to preserve my classical karma.
Hot Pre-Retreat Thursday Type Linkage
Well, my presentations are sort of done and I am half packed. And we are leaving tomorrow morning. Clearly this is an excellent time to be blogging! I dunno how internetty it will be out in the Catskills, so there might not be anything new up here until Sunday. In the meanwhile, get your teeth into the following morsels:
- There’s a piece in the Guardian about what makes a good riff (From Beethoven to Deep Purple) which seems particularly relevant given the comments in one recent post.
- Also related to that post (the bit about classical music relying on scores whereas pop/rock relies on performances) is this story about a band called Deerhoof deciding to “leak” the sheet music in advance of the actual recording. The video is kind of annoying, but the idea is kind of interesting.
- Speaking of Deerhoof, NPR has a stream in which a performance of theirs was paired with “The Rite Of Spring Remixed” by the Metropolis Ensemble. The concept behind this Rite of Springing is that the sound from a live orchestra is altered in real-time via laptops. Although I think the idea is really neat, I have to admit that on the whole the sound seems a bit too spiky and unbalanced. There are some stand-out moments though (like around 8:40-9:30, and 18:00ish). You can listen to a stream of it on NPR here.
- The Chicago Sinfonietta are doing a concert-by-vote. What if everyone writes in 4’33″ and the helicopter quartet?
See write/you all again soon…!
The Further Demise of Physical Media
Continuing the saga of the slow demise of CDs is this poll of the online readers of Stereophile magazine, indicating that only 45% use CDs or SACDs as their primary method of listening to music, compared to 50% who use either an MP3 server or iPod.
I was previously unaware of Stereophile magazine, but it’s one of those magazines targeted at people with more money than sense audiophiles, which reviews things such as these $2999 interconnects using language like:
Silences and spaces between notes and sonic “images” weren’t even black: They were just dead-empty. Tunefulness, rhythm, and musical flow were all superb.
Although to be fair, the author does blatantly point out that it is a ridiculous price.
Regardless of how prodigal the publication is with their praise for expensive audio, the point is that their readership is well-biased toward the audio snob — not the casual top-40 downloader — and these guys are now more inclined to play via hard-disk than CD. I think with both of these ends of the audio listening spectrum covered, storable-audio is well on the way to completely wiping out physical formats.
In fact, the only time I use CDs these days is in my car stereo… and those are only for storing MP3s on. I kinda miss the collection browsing, but don’t miss the dust and taken up space. How about you? Do you still have a collection of CD jewel boxes cluttering up the shelves?
Hot Wednesday Linkage
Whoah there tiger, we haven’t had Wednesday before. Are you excited yet?
- Nintendo announced the impending arrival of Wii music. Well, impending in about 5 months. I know some of you are pretty familiar with the system, but for those living in caves and under rocks and stuff, the Wii lets you control stuff on screen via the motion of your hands and (recently) feet. This will allow you to virtually “play” various instruments, or more accurately, as one commenter put it: “you can just spaz around, and the game makes it into music”. If it’s anything like Wii sports it’ll be completely unrealistic, but hugely fun. Did I mention that there will be a conducting game in there as well?
- There’s a new (?) classical music video site in town. The styling looks very sexy and Web 2.0, but after discovering that everything costs a very un-Web 2.0 sum of money I promptly ran away. Those of you who aren’t stingy graduate students might be interested, though.
- We’re proud to be number 29