“The LightSound device was designed and developed in 2017 as a tool for the Blind and Low Vision (BLV) community to experience a solar eclipse with sound. As the Moon eclipses the Sun during a Solar Eclipse the sunlight begins to dim and the LightSound device will output a change in musical tone.” Brilliant!
via Kottke
Lyrebird has created a voice imitation technology that uses deep learning and artificial neural networks to create fascinating and somewhat scary results. It relies on deep learning models developed at the MILA lab of the University of Montréal.
Lyrebird will offer an API to copy the voice of anyone. It will need as little as one minute of audio recording of a speaker to compute a unique key defining her/his voice. This key will then allow to generate anything from its corresponding voice. The API will be robust enough to learn from noisy recordings. Lyrebird will offer a large catalog of different voices and let the user design their own unique voices tailored for their needs.
Users will be able to create entire dialogs with the new or mimicked voice. Inflection, emotion, and content can all be tailored as necessary through a developer API. The demos are fairly impressive but still distinctly robotic. Check out some Trump/Obama examples below.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/318022504″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=true&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”300″ iframe=”true” /]
I’m interested to find out how accurate this will be for non-english and non-human verbal communication.
Videos of starling murmurations are numerous yet always enchanting. However, but this clip from Jan van IJken’s documentary short film The Art of Flying is exceptional because of the sound. From the video’s youtube page:
We know a lot of factual information about the starling—its size and voice, where it lives, how it breeds and migrates—but what remains a mystery is how it flies in murmurations, or flocks, without colliding. This short film by Jan van IJken was shot in the Netherlands, and it captures the birds gathering at dusk, just about to start their “performance.” Listen well and you’ll be able to hear how this beautiful phenomenon got its name.
Michael Ridge does all sorts of interesting sound experiments. In this video he plays Poison’s classic 7″ vinyl single of ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn‘ through a mic’d up branch of dried rose bush amplified by a contact microphone connected to a Marshall MS-4
“But he who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose” – Anne Brontë
via Dangerous Minds
UPDATE: Attempting to play the 7″ vinyl single ‘Ice Cream’ by New Young Pony Club using an ice cream cone and attempting to play track one and two from Side A of the 1966 LP ‘The Band I Heard In Tijuana Volume 3’ by Los Norte Americanos using a lightly salted tortilla chip.
If you take Dolly Parton’s song about temptation and slow it down to 33.3 RPM it sounds a lot like Bruce Springsteen. Dolly Parton – Jolene Slowed 33 RPM
If you take Bruce Springsteen’s song about temptation and speed it up to 45 RPM it sounds a whole lot like Dolly Parton. Bruce Springsteen – I’m on Fire 45 RPM
There has to be some sort of secret meaning here but I haven’t been able to figure out yet.
A matryomin is an unusual instrument. It’s a cross between a miniature, pitch-only, theremin and a matryoshka doll (a Russian nesting doll). The instrument has a cult following in Japan.
This video shows a matryomin ensemble called “Da” at the auditorium of Jiyugakuen Myonichikan in Tokyo on 22 Jan. 2011. The ensemble consisted of 167 musicians playing Amazing Grace. It sounds wonderful – in a strangely creepy sort of way.
Recently the ensemble group Da broke a world record for the “Largest Matryomin Ensemble” by gathering over 277 musicians in concert.
via youtube
Here is a link to the mp3 if you want it: Amazing Grace by Da
I love the idea of saving sounds from extinction. Marybeth Ledesma, Phil Hadad and Greg Elwood (under the guise of Brendan Chilcutt) have created and curated the online Museum Of Endangered Sounds. It’s an audio archive of yesteryear’s gadgets and electronics. Without the museum the sounds of analog cameras, dot matrix printers, dial-up modems, Speak & Spells, and floppy disks would have died a silent death. But now I have them archived for my own nostalgic musing. We would have failed as a generation if we didn’t try to preserve and then force our past on the youth of today. Long live Museum Of Endangered Sounds.
(via Alan Cooper)
Every Godzilla soundtrack you can imagine. The Mothra related ones have the Peanuts, and are therefore a million times more awesome.
Mr. Double Talk sounds like he is saying something but makes no sense at all. These videos are a good laugh on a slow Sunday.
