Alia Sheikh| 14:21 UK time, Thursday, 24 December 2009
In the first of our "R&D Christmas Lectures", Quentin Cooper explores the amazing Audio Navigation tool described in the Collaborative Archive Navigation post last week.Ìý Andrew McParland, head of the Audience Experience section, explains the genesis of this experimental way of exploring sound, and how it could potentially be made use of in future. We have published a white paper that explains this work in more detail.
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A touch of deja vu all over again. I used to be a DJ on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and in the days of vinyl you could judge what happened during a disc by looking at the patterns on the surface. The patterns varied depending on the tonal make-up of the sound such that high frequency rhythmic sounds (such as a hi-hat or cymbal) would show as a lighter pattern, often spiralling across the surface (especially on reggae discs I remember). Since bass notes had larger excursions of the groove they were also apparent due to larger areas of 'blank' plastic.
I recall seeing a guy on a TV program years ago whose party piece was recognising a classical symphony just by looking at the disc. I didn't get that far (other than some Mahler with strong tympani) but I used to skip across the surface of an album, checking out each of the sections that showed changes in the music, before coming back and re-listening to anything that had grabbed my attention.
I have often wondered whether a similar technique could be applied to a digital recording as an aid to analysis and now I've seen it.
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Comment number 1.
At 25th Dec 2009, Briantist wrote:Nice work, very interesting. Love the comment.
Doesn't Andrew McParland look like Daily Mirror hack Kevin Maguire?
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Comment number 2.
At 6th Jan 2010, lawendel wrote:Any chance this interesting clip can also be made available as a download in "no availability" areas such as mine (Italy?)
Thanks, Andy
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Comment number 3.
At 10th Jan 2010, Andy Finney wrote:A touch of deja vu all over again. I used to be a DJ on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and in the days of vinyl you could judge what happened during a disc by looking at the patterns on the surface. The patterns varied depending on the tonal make-up of the sound such that high frequency rhythmic sounds (such as a hi-hat or cymbal) would show as a lighter pattern, often spiralling across the surface (especially on reggae discs I remember). Since bass notes had larger excursions of the groove they were also apparent due to larger areas of 'blank' plastic.
I recall seeing a guy on a TV program years ago whose party piece was recognising a classical symphony just by looking at the disc. I didn't get that far (other than some Mahler with strong tympani) but I used to skip across the surface of an album, checking out each of the sections that showed changes in the music, before coming back and re-listening to anything that had grabbed my attention.
I have often wondered whether a similar technique could be applied to a digital recording as an aid to analysis and now I've seen it.
Complain about this comment (Comment number 3)