Suzanne Vega, “The Mother of the MP3,” Records “Tom’s Diner” with the Edison Cylinder

in Music, Technology | February 16th, 2012

An oft-repeat­ed piece of sound engi­neer­ing apoc­rypha holds that the cre­ators of the MP3 for­mat geared it specif­i­cal­ly to repro­duce, as faith­ful­ly as pos­si­ble, Suzanne Veg­a’s “Tom’s Din­er.” You might know the song in the orig­i­nal; you prob­a­bly know the song in its DNA remix; you could even know the song in that ver­sion Bil­ly Bragg and R.E.M. put togeth­er, or in any of the count­less trib­utes, falling in unusu­al places on the spec­trum between remix­es and cov­ers, that oth­er artists have paid. Alas, that sto­ry isn’t quite true: when we lis­ten to MP3s, we aren’t lis­ten­ing to music com­pressed by a pre­ci­sion-tuned “Tom’s Din­er” deliv­ery sys­tem. But the song did influ­ence the tech­ni­cal­i­ties of what MP3s do to turn songs into small, man­age­able dig­i­tal files. Karl­heinz Bran­den­burg, a key con­trib­u­tor to the MP3 com­pres­sion algo­rithm, did indeed put MP3 tech­nol­o­gy to the test ear­ly in its devel­op­ment by using it to com­press Veg­a’s hit. Upon play­back, he heard enough dis­tor­tion in the singing to per­form some seri­ous tweak­ing.

Evi­dent­ly such a “warm a capel­la voice,” in Bran­den­burg’s words, does­n’t take com­pres­sion well. So how does it stand up to the brute rig­ors of one of the old­est record­ing media in exis­tence? In this video Vega sings “Tom’s Din­er,” with­out ampli­fi­ca­tion, into the horn of a vin­tage Thomas Edi­son phono­graph machine as its nee­dle digs the song straight into wax. Not “wax” as in the vinyl we’ve all played music on — wax as in wax. The tech­ni­cian then read­ies the cylin­der for play­back, winds the crank, and releas­es “Tom’s Din­er 1890”: a speed- and pitch-incon­stant war­ble beneath a car­pet of sur­face noise, but unmis­tak­ably the same stark, haunt­ing­ly jaun­ty melody that worked its way into our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness for decades, touch­ing even those who lack the audio-geek enthu­si­asm to get excit­ed by this bridge between the first era of imper­fect son­ic repro­duc­tion and our own era of imper­fect son­ic repro­duc­tion.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

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Peter Sellers Reads The Beatles’ “She Loves You” in 4 Different Accents: Dr. Strangelove, Cockney, Irish & Upper Crust

in Film, Music | February 13th, 2012

Back in the late 1950s, George Mar­tin record­ed two albums with the late, great Peter Sell­ers. When Mar­tin start­ed work­ing with the Bea­t­les a few years lat­er, he put the actor in touch with the musi­cians, and they became fast friends. This rela­tion­ship paved the way for some good com­e­dy. As you might recall, Sell­ers made a cameo appear­ance on “The Music of Lennon and McCart­ney” in 1964, and read A Hard Day’s Night in a way that com­i­cal­ly recalls Lau­rence Olivier’s 1955 per­for­mance in Richard III. (Watch the spoof here.) And then, also dur­ing the mid 60s, Sell­ers record­ed a com­ic read­ing of She Loves You — once in the voice of Dr. Strangelove (above), again with cock­ney and upper-crusty accents (both right below), and final­ly with an Irish twist (the last item). The record­ings were all released posthu­mous­ly between 1981 and 1983 on albums no longer in cir­cu­la­tion.

Cock­ney

Upper Crust

Irish

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig

 

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Neil Young on the Travesty of MP3s

in Music, Technology | February 8th, 2012

Neil Young made head­lines last week when he appeared at the Wall Street Jour­nal’s “D: Dive Into Media” con­fer­ence and voiced his dis­ap­proval of the way music is being heard these days. “We live in a dig­i­tal age,” Young said, “and unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s degrad­ing our music, not improv­ing it.”

Young is deeply dis­sat­is­fied with the sound qual­i­ty of com­pressed MP3 dig­i­tal files, which he said car­ry only five per­cent of the data from the orig­i­nal vinyl or mas­ter record­ings. “It’s not that dig­i­tal is bad or infe­ri­or,” he told the Jour­nal’s Walt Moss­berg and Peter Kaf­ka. “It’s that the way it’s being used is not suf­fi­cient to trans­fer the depth of the art.”

The full 32-minute inter­view is now avail­able online, and can be seen above. Through­out the dis­cus­sion, Young’s com­mit­ment to his cause is clear. “My goal,” he said, “is to try and res­cue the art form that I’ve been prac­tic­ing for the past 50 years.”

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Philip Glass Composes Music for a Sesame Street Animation (1979)

in Art, Music | February 1st, 2012

Last night, Philip Glass cel­e­brat­ed his 75th birth­day at Carnegie Hall, attend­ing the US pre­miere of his Ninth Sym­pho­ny. His long and illus­tri­ous career con­tin­ues. But today we’re bring­ing you back to 1979, when Glass wrote a com­po­si­tion to accom­pa­ny “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles,” a four-part series of ani­ma­tions that aired on the beloved chil­dren’s show Sesame Street. A strange detour for an influ­en­tial com­pos­er? Not real­ly. Not when you con­sid­er that Glass came out of a 1960s tra­di­tion that made mod­ern music more play­ful and approach­able.

And speak­ing of approach­able, don’t miss Philip Glass get­ting inter­viewed by his friend­ly cousin Ira Glass. You know Ira as the host of This Amer­i­can Life. The inter­view took place in 1999, and NPR final­ly brought it back yes­ter­day, at least for a lim­it­ed time. You can lis­ten here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on the Art of Sto­ry­telling

A Min­i­mal Glimpse of Philip Glass

Philip Glass & Lou Reed at Occu­py Lin­coln Cen­ter: An Art­ful View

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Paul McCartney’s New Album, Kisses On The Bottom, Streaming for Free

in Music | January 31st, 2012

Kiss­es On The Bot­tom — it’s Paul McCart­ney’s 35th post-Bea­t­les album, his most provoca­tive­ly-titled album to be sure, and a great stroll down mem­o­ry lane. The album fea­tures cov­ers of jazz stan­dards, most­ly writ­ten dur­ing the 1920s and 1930s. It’s the music that McCart­ney’s father loved to play on the fam­i­ly piano, giv­ing the younger McCart­ney his first intro­duc­tion to music. Diana Krall, Ste­vie Won­der and Eric Clap­ton make guest appear­ances. The new album goes on sale next week (pre-order it here), but you can stream it for free (in its entire­ty) on NPR or via The Guardian. Lis­ten quick­ly, because the free stream will only last for a lim­it­ed time.

P.S. Leonard Cohen’s lat­est album, his first in sev­en years, is still stream­ing online too. More here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig

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The Lost Guitar Solo for “Here Comes the Sun” by George Harrison, Discovered by George Martin

in Music | January 27th, 2012

Here Comes the Sun — it’s one of George Har­rison’s con­tri­bu­tions to Abbey Road (1969). And, among the many great Bea­t­les’ songs, it’s my sen­ti­men­tal favorite. While we’re feel­ing sen­ti­men­tal, let me bring you this — Dhani Har­ri­son, the son of the late gui­tarist, returns to the record­ing stu­dio (pre­sum­ably at Abbey Road) with George Mar­tin, the Bea­t­les’ leg­endary pro­duc­er, and Mar­t­in’s son Giles. Togeth­er, they play with the mix of “Here Comes the Sun,” and then the won­drous lit­tle moment of dis­cov­ery hap­pens. They stum­ble upon the long lost gui­tar solo that nev­er made the final cut. It’s a plea­sure to see.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

H/T @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele, With Words and Music

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

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Wilco Rehearses ‘The Weight’ Backstage in Chicago with Mavis Staples and Nick Lowe

in Music | January 26th, 2012

In Decem­ber, the alter­na­tive rock band Wilco played a spe­cial series of home­town shows called the “Incred­i­ble Shrink­ing Tour of Chica­go.”

The tour kicked off on Decem­ber 12 at the majes­tic Civic Opera House and con­tin­ued over the next four nights, mov­ing to suc­ces­sive­ly small­er and more inti­mate venues: the Riv­iera, the Vic, the Metro, and final­ly Lin­coln Hall, with a capac­i­ty of only 500 peo­ple.

At the opera house on open­ing night, Wilco played a 24-song ret­ro­spec­tive of the band’s 18-year his­to­ry, fol­lowed by an extend­ed series of encores fea­tur­ing Mavis Sta­ples and Nick Lowe. The grand finale was a stir­ring ren­di­tion of The Band’s clas­sic “The Weight.”

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Zoran Orlic caught a spe­cial moment before the show (above), when the musi­cians gath­ered in the dress­ing room to rehearse “The Weight.” You can see ama­teur footage of the on-stage per­for­mance of the song here, and learn more about the con­cert (plus see a clip of the band per­form­ing “One Sun­day Morn­ing”) on the WXRT web­site.

And for an inter­est­ing com­par­i­son, watch The Band’s per­for­mance of “The Weight” (below) from Mar­tin Scors­ese’s film The Last Waltz, which also fea­tures a guest appear­ance by Mavis Sta­ples, along with her father and sis­ters in The Sta­ple Singers. Although the film con­sist­ed most­ly of footage from The Band’s farewell con­cert on Novem­ber 25, 1976, Scors­ese filmed “The Weight” after­ward, on an MGM sound­stage.

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Leonard Cohen’s New Album, Old Ideas: Stream It for Free Online

in Music | January 24th, 2012

Fans of Leonard Cohen, you’ve wait­ed patient­ly. Sev­en long years. Now it’s final­ly here. Cohen’s new album Old Ideas offi­cial­ly hits the streets next week. But it’s now stream­ing online for free cour­tesy of NPR. It will only last a lim­it­ed time. So set­tle in now and lis­ten to the ten tracks, which as Guardian crit­ic Kit­ty Empire puts it, are not about “death, betray­al and God, juicy as these are,” but rather “the stuff that has made Cohen indis­pens­able for six decades: desire, regret, suf­fer­ing, mis­an­thropy, love, hope, and ham­ming it up.”

The poet­ic lines of the first track, “Going Home,” have been pub­lished in The New York­er. You can pre-order the album here. H/T @opedr

More Leonard Cohen Videos & Movies:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen (1971 Doc­u­men­tary)

Leonard Cohen Recounts “How I Got My Song,” or When His Love Affair with Music Began

Leonard Cohen Reads “The Future” (Not Safe for Work)

Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. Watch the Film

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