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If you never seen some of what audio restoration people do with a spectrograph view in Izotope RX, you should check it out. They clean up audio using a process

If you never seen some of what audio restoration people do with a spectrograph view in Izotope RX, you should check it out. They clean up audio using a process somewhat akin to photoshopping images. The ears are still involved, but it's a very visual process. I suspect doing it a lot leads to some purposeful synthesia where you can hear things and know what they would look like in a spectrograph. Here's the first example I could find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKNYYR-uUEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKNYYR-uUEo

TheRealPomax 4y ago
Heck, if you don't even know that modern editors come with a "why would I look at an amplitude when the information we care about is in the spectrogram?" view, you're going to learn something pretty special. The audio is a landscape, and anything that isn't a "global" operation (like normalizing, noise reduction, cross-fades) ranging from from just touching it up a but literal sound-from-nothing is about sculpting that landscape. Rather than Photoshop, it's more like 3D Modeling for your audio. (while using a top-down view in RX, although some tools will let you toggle between 2d and 3d because seeing the landscape is quite valuable)
- samstave 4y ago
  >"The audio is a landscape..." Joy Division Logo is the signature of the audio of a Pulsar https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/joy-division/cover-joy-division-unknown-pleasures-meaning/ https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/joy-division/cover-joy-divi...
  - samstave 4y ago
    *1979... from a punk band, lest we not forget _QUEEN_ Brian May* [.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May Would love a podcast with Lex Fridman, Brian May and DeGrasse Tyson. (Michio can sit this one out, as he as transparent. I see plans within plans. I see yc, venture backing behind it.) I did not post this. I was not online.
dekhn 4y ago
The guy who solved voice recognition at Google years ago told me that after looking at enough spectrograms with human speech he could tell exactly what was being said. "Oh, that shape- it's an 'ooo' noise." Armed with that knowledge I started looking at more spectrograms of birds (I record birds around my house and pass through bird.net's model. Amusingly, I kind of learned eveyrthing in this article just by looking at lots of spectrograms- they are far, far easier for me to parse than any other musical representation. I just found 'demucs' and am really enjoying doing source separation and then looking at the resulting spectrograms, then back at the original full musical spectrogram- it helps me parse out the instruments a lot better when they overlap. There is also a product called 'Celemony DNA' which can do some editing in spectrogram space to remove individual notes.
- gregsadetsky 4y ago
  Everyone should absolutely at least once pronounce every letter from the alphabet and look at a spectrogram, it’s fascinating. Try a rolled “r”, vowels, consonants, “p”, “f” (“eeeffff”) etc. Also try whistling if you can. —— Online spectrogram options: Sort of works on mobile, go to landscape and tap the mic button: https://spectrogram.sciencemusic.org/ https://spectrogram.sciencemusic.org/ Doesn’t work on mobile anymore? But should be good desktop option: https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Spectrogram/ https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Spectrogram/
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    Spectrograms are used in speech therapy to help with pronunciation. I remember using one such program to correct my own speech, at elementary school in the 90s. It was even a game: I moved a cursor through a maze and it would only move in the correct direction when my sound I made was correct. The game had a spectrogram for additional visual feedback -- my speech therapist could point to an area on it and tell me that I was placing my tongue incorrectly or whatever. Its a really cool example of the power of biofeedback.
    - abrookewood 4y ago
monetus 4y ago
On that note, I've been told Beethoven painted his music.
tpmx 4y ago
Here's a 3d visualization of a dial up modem handshake sound apparently made using iZotope Ozone 5 (from 2011): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvr9AMWEU-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvr9AMWEU-c

TheRealPomax 4y ago

Heck, if you don't even know that modern editors come with a "why would I look at an amplitude when the information we care about is in the spectrogram?" view, you're going to learn something pretty special. The audio is a landscape, and anything that isn't a "global" operation (like normalizing, noise reduction, cross-fades) ranging from from just touching it up a but literal sound-from-nothing is about sculpting that landscape. Rather than Photoshop, it's more like 3D Modeling for your audio. (while using a top-down view in RX, although some tools will let you toggle between 2d and 3d because seeing the landscape is quite valuable)

samstave 4y ago
>"The audio is a landscape..." Joy Division Logo is the signature of the audio of a Pulsar https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/joy-division/cover-joy-division-unknown-pleasures-meaning/ https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/joy-division/cover-joy-divi...
- samstave 4y ago
  *1979... from a punk band, lest we not forget _QUEEN_ Brian May* [.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May Would love a podcast with Lex Fridman, Brian May and DeGrasse Tyson. (Michio can sit this one out, as he as transparent. I see plans within plans. I see yc, venture backing behind it.) I did not post this. I was not online.

dekhn 4y ago

The guy who solved voice recognition at Google years ago told me that after looking at enough spectrograms with human speech he could tell exactly what was being said. "Oh, that shape- it's an 'ooo' noise." Armed with that knowledge I started looking at more spectrograms of birds (I record birds around my house and pass through bird.net's model. Amusingly, I kind of learned eveyrthing in this article just by looking at lots of spectrograms- they are far, far easier for me to parse than any other musical representation. I just found 'demucs' and am really enjoying doing source separation and then looking at the resulting spectrograms, then back at the original full musical spectrogram- it helps me parse out the instruments a lot better when they overlap. There is also a product called 'Celemony DNA' which can do some editing in spectrogram space to remove individual notes.

gregsadetsky 4y ago
Everyone should absolutely at least once pronounce every letter from the alphabet and look at a spectrogram, it’s fascinating. Try a rolled “r”, vowels, consonants, “p”, “f” (“eeeffff”) etc. Also try whistling if you can. —— Online spectrogram options: Sort of works on mobile, go to landscape and tap the mic button: https://spectrogram.sciencemusic.org/ https://spectrogram.sciencemusic.org/ Doesn’t work on mobile anymore? But should be good desktop option: https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Spectrogram/ https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Spectrogram/
- tomc1985 4y ago
  Spectrograms are used in speech therapy to help with pronunciation. I remember using one such program to correct my own speech, at elementary school in the 90s. It was even a game: I moved a cursor through a maze and it would only move in the correct direction when my sound I made was correct. The game had a spectrogram for additional visual feedback -- my speech therapist could point to an area on it and tell me that I was placing my tongue incorrectly or whatever. Its a really cool example of the power of biofeedback.
  - abrookewood 4y ago

monetus 4y ago

On that note, I've been told Beethoven painted his music.

tpmx 4y ago

Here's a 3d visualization of a dial up modem handshake sound apparently made using iZotope Ozone 5 (from 2011): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvr9AMWEU-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvr9AMWEU-c