ClassicalCode

After talking about the Shepard Tone, an audio illusion that can create an endlessly rising or falling scale, with my friend Ben Pender, I decided to try to create one using Lilypond. The result is quite interesting:

Chromatically rising Shepard Tone:

The midi file created by Lilypond: shepard_tone.midi

The Lilypond file used to render the above midi file: shepard_tone.ly

A wav file generated from the midi file above: shepard_tone.wav (43M)

An mp3 file generated from the wav file above:

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I was at home with my parents and my girlfriend Chelsea, and my dad was singing “Take Me Out To the Ball Game” off by one word. He then proceed to sing it again off by TWO words. Eventually the evening was reduced to repeating the song over and over and trying to shift the words one note back each time. We soon realized that this was a sort of phase music. If the number of words is one fewer than the number of notes, the words shift father and farther from their original position in the melody creating various interesting word stresses and pairings.

I decided to take this idea to it’s logical extreme and found a short enough song that, within a reasonable period of time, it can be repeated enough times that the words eventually make the full journey back to their original position. Here is a video of me singing “Row Row Your Boat”:

In order to actually sing this, I had to create sheet music for it.
Here it is: row_row.pdf

My birthday was a few days ago, and two different people, knowing my love of barbershop, sent me a Youtube video of a quartet singing “Happy Birthday”. This got me thinking about barbershop arrangments of the song.

Today is my friend Amanda Ortmayer’s birthday and I wanted to give her something, so I decided to arrange and multitrack “Happy Birthday” for her in the barbershop style.

Happy birthday Amanda, thanks for being such a constant, caring friend.

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The arrangement as a printable pdf: birthday.pdf

Update:
The Lilypond file used to render the above engraving: birthday.ly

I know I am stretching this backwards-alphabet-songs thing, but I am at home in Petaluma and had time to kill.

Here I sing the alphabet song with the melody backwards, the words backwards while showing solfegge hand signs and conducting.

Inspired to further acts of nerdome by the encouraging comments on my last post, I decided to learn to do something I have been thinking of doing ever since I saw Paul Kim do it at a party. Sing the alphabet song backwards. Not just sing the letters backwards, but the notes as well. So last night I sat down, figured out how it would go, and started memorizing it. This morning, to nerd it up just a little bit more, I leaned to sing it while showing the solfege using hand signs. I then took my new camcorder into Golden Gate Park and recorded myself doing it. The park has the advantage of having actual sunlight while still having some privacy and quiet. Also, it’s pretty. Here are the results:

Due to a bug in iMovieHD I was unable to reverse the video so you could here the original melody, but here is the audio reversed:

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My girlfriend is sick, so I arranged and recorded her a song. I hope this helps you feel better Chelsea.

For Chelsea:

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This is my first doo-wop arrangement, and the first full song that I have multitracked. Unfortunately with five tracks at once, the noise on the recording becomes rather annoying. If anyone could help me reduce the noise, I would greatly appreciate it. I plan to write up the arrangement in the next few days (as an exercise) so you can expect to find that soon.

Update:

I typeset the arrangement using Lilypond, a wonderful open source program for engraving music. Here are the results:

The arrangement as a printable pdf: earth_angel.pdf

The Lilypond code: earth_angel.ly

My friend Joachim Luis came over tonight and started reading though the beginning piano book that was resting on my keyboard. Being the jock party animals that we are, we decided to try to sing a few of them as two part vocal pieces.

First we sight-read “Rondino” by Jean Philippe Rameau on movable “doo” with Joachim on bass and me on treble (this one is for my dad):

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Then out came the solfeggio. “A Farewell” by Henry Purcell with Joachim on treble and me on bass:

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And then out came the video camera. “Sarabande” by Arcangelo Corelli:

Apologies and thanks to David Xiques.

This tag from the seminal book of tags seemed quite fitting to multitrack. This is “All By Myself Alone” number. I found that the lead part was actually easier for me to sing a whole step higher because the C was right in the middle of my passagio, and it was pushing sharp. So this one is in D.

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Biggest challenges:

• Fan noise from my server and laptop
• Giving the music emotion without going out of tune

I multitracked a new tag from the ubiquitous book o’ tags. This is “Sleepy Time Down South” number 33.

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Biggest challenges:

• Aligning diphthongs
• Tenor part in a difficult range

My mom recently sent me a link to a Youtube video of a great tongue twister segment from Pinkey and the Brain:

Searching for a transcript of this segment I came across a page of tongue twisters which contained a great story about “Shrewd Simon Short” in which every word started with the letter “s”. In order to best appreciate it I attempted to read it aloud. It sounded amusing enough that I decided to record it. So, donning my best book-on-tape narrator voice, I made the following recording:

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Share your favorite tongue twiseter is in the comments below.