This Thread broadcasts in the 400 to 440 MHz range, thus making parts of it illegal in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago. I’ll let you figure out which.
In movie news, the Timberlake/Seyfriend sci-fi romp In Time survived an attempted injunction by Harlan Ellison to plop into theaters this weekend. You also have Johnny Depp playing a one-off Hunter S. Thompson in The Rum Diary and Antonio Banderas voicing a cat in Puss in Boots.
The Lou Reed / Metallica crossover album has not been drawing a lot of fans. Unfazed by that reception, Leonard Cohen announced a new album. Most importantly, Beavis and Butthead returned to MTV last night, reviving a dormant era of music criticism.
In TV news, The Walking Dead got renewed for a third season, where hopefully they’ll get more than seven miles from Atlanta, and Anya won it all on Project Runway, if you’ve watched enough PR to know who that is.
Comment of the Week goes to “Musician” (if that is his real name) in Justin Bieber, Beware the Transposition:
Most people who aren’t in the industry don’t know that autotune is more subtle than most people think. Everyone seems to just think of T-Pain sounding like a robot but autotune can actually be used as an after-effect to simply touch up a single pitch or even a part of a pitch. The effect becomes more and more disconcerting the further the autotuned interval is from the original pitch and the longer the effect is sustained. Bieber is autotuned but because of the excellent production, we don’t notice it; however, if Bieber was autotuned up a whole minor 3rd, which the writer of the article suggests is the interval his voice has dropped, we would definitely notice.
In terms of my own experience with changes of key, I have played in a number of groups that have played and recorded cover songs. It is very common practice to change the key of the song to match the vocalist but, in my opinion, the change is always a negative one. Songs are usually in their original key for a reason. The timbre of a particular person’s voice at particular frequencies has a lasting impression on the listener(s), as Levitin states in his book “This Is Your Brain on Music”, and it is a shame to have that aural memory erased. For karaoke, it can be as disconcerting as listening to a song autotuned the whole time. To the trained listener or someone with perfect pitch, there might not be a difference at all.
Insightful stuff! Glad we could drag you out of the woodwork.
What are you dressing up as for Halloween? Or is there something we missed? Sound off in the comments, for this is your … Open Thread.