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“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video
by nyolfen 11y ago
“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
--Brian Eno
- guelo 11y agoGreat quote. "Too momentous for the medium" reminded me of the intensity created by Sleigh Bell's purposefully overblown beats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSHJjYwGJNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSHJjYwGJNA
- kremlin 11y agoThat was something I thought of immediately as well. And Times New Viking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQJvAXOohoU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQJvAXOohoU
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- broken 11y agoSpeaking of that 8-bit sound, check Rob Hubbard's outstanding composition for 'Monty on the Run' (1985) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EcgruWlXnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EcgruWlXnQ
- pestaa 11y agoA friend of mine composed a great list of chiptunes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtCIrnpefsWr_nJJENh9oiVm0b10pMxZE https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtCIrnpefsWr_nJJENh9o...
- zimpenfish 11y agoCheck out Tim Follin's N-channels-through-1-bit on the Spectrum's piezo-electric buzzer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42WuUpBuHE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42WuUpBuHE (AgentX) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9hPOUvgKTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9hPOUvgKTA (AgentX II)
- biot 11y agoEven if everybody moves to FLAC or other lossless music format, musicians will still likely add in MP3 compression artifact sounds. After all, like with vinyl, it makes the music sound warmer.
- TylerE 11y agoNo it doesn't, that's BS. No one prefers the sound of MP3. Vinyl sounds better not because of some alleged "distortion", either.
- robotresearcher 11y agoIf the artifacts of vinyl pressing and playback are not distortion, what are they?
- jay_kyburz 11y agoI thought people prefer the sound of vinyl because it's analog and has a much wider range that digital music. (Not because it's distorted)
- TylerE 11y agoExactly. And also that it can't be loudness-warred to death.
- enneff 11y ago"Loudness wars" has everything to do with mastering and very little to do with the actual medium. Yes, the onset of the loudness wars coincided with the rise of digital distribution, but you can master a record to be just as loud as a CD. On the other hand, you can't master a record to have as much dynamic range as a CD. That's why classical music enthusiasts tend to prefer CDs.
- TylerE 11y ago
- angersock 11y agoThis is how I feel every time I work on a decent-sized chunk of Javascript...designs so grand they break through mere weak typing and floating-point.
- technomancy 11y ago2025 startup idea: an app that seeds your inbox with dubious pharmaceutical offerings and impassioned pleas from exiled Nigerian princes.
- marvy 11y agoAre you predicting an end to spam in 10 years?
- rzendacott 11y agoPersonally, I haven't received spam (with Gmail) in years. My university outlook account still receives a lot though.
- NamTaf 11y agoPlease take some from my inbox. It's still most certainly a problem, even with Gmail.
- vanderZwan 11y agoAs a teacher I've had the opposite problem: students whose email (sent from university email addresses) got caught in the SPAM filter. All of them had Russian names.
- danieltillett 11y agoThis. Gmail and co (Microsoft I an looking at you) have "solved" spam by classifying everything as spam until proven innocent.
- pron 11y ago> ... is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them. I think the reason is that the effort these limitations assign to us -- the imagination we need to activate in order to overcome them -- is what attaches us to them.
- ferongr 11y ago>CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video Too bad for him that such things do not exist.
- trobertson 11y ago> jitteriness of digital video Not the same thing, but "film grain" is a thing.
- clinta 11y agoSome CDs are distorted because the mixers boost the volume until it clips. No doubt this could end up influencing a music style in the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
- Udo 11y agoThis reminded me of Ludum Dare right now, because the rankings for the most recent jam are just in: the top 100 is almost exclusively comprised of faux 8bit games. I don't mind the graphics so much, usually, because they are only retro to a point, and they do tend to cheat in places that enable the end results to be pretty. But if you look at the top 100 of sound/music rankings, almost all of those are absolutely jarring cacophonies.
- oconnor0 11y agoYes, the same thing is present in Android games. It's "pixel art", but the "pixels" aren't all the same size - like some parts the art is clearly 4x compared to some other bits - and then it's intermixed with high-res effects (lighting, gradients, flares, etc.)