Saturday, February 12, 2011

The Honeyed Sound Of The Shred

In the periodic array conversing to makers and hackers, Tech Know visits and talks to a few of the who wed technical ability with low-pitched virtuosity.

All the hours outlayed alone, in a back room or a basement, surrounded by costly equipment. All that time outlayed learning, creation mistakes and improving, anticipating out what to do and how to do it.

Who does that describe? Geeks, hackers, makers? No. Musicians.

Combine them and what honeyed song they make. Sometimes. At other times they use technology to make something ample funnier.

Take The Gregory Brothers. The four-piece plays all kinds of song when gigging but on the web have tied together their low-pitched and lyrical skills with auto-tune program to make the headlines more interesting.

In a array of videos, the assorted members of the Gregory Brothers sing along as auto-tuning is practical to the difference of people in the news.

Auto-tuning began as a utilitarian apparatus for record producers to make sure the voices of their stars strike all the correct records by artificially editing pitch. The Gregory Brothers use it in a more impassioned way to spin debate in to singing.

The results engage President Obama singing about knowing whose "ass to kick" but their many important work was the Bed Intruder Song that came out of the lively talk Antoine Dodson gave to headlines programmes after an attempted assault on his sister.

Then there are the who barter the sonic stylings of stone and cocktail stars for something more discordant.

You might be forgiven for considering that it would be easy to simply overdub the audio and make any one sound similar to they couldn't bring a melody in a paper bag. And it is.

But the people perpetrating these "shreds" are not meddlesome in what's easy.

The key to a great fragment is creation it sound genuine - and that can engage a lot of time, technology and tinkering.

Perth-based Tom Mitchell, aka allergonoise on YouTube, has deconstructed the functions of Radiohead, Coldplay, Kings of Leon, Sigur Ros and many others.

Why the specific bands?

"It's often nothing to do with my personal taste," he mentioned "I find we collect the bands that may be take themselves a bit more severely than others."

Explaining how he got started, he said: "My flatmate showed me a couple of the initial patches of Eric Clapton and others, and we think it was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen."

"I was unequivocally tender and shocked by them," he said.

At the time he was study audio prolongation and had been personification the guitar for over a decade. Watching the initial shreds, he remembers thinking: "I might be able to do that."

At first it was a joint bid with his flatmate and friends and the first few patches were put together using Apple's Garage Band program. Soon it incited in to a piece for one person plan and his patches became more intricate.

"I try to use a microphone that's similar to their microphone," he said, "and fake I'm the sound man at that gig and how we would make it sound similar to that. we attend is to acoustics at that venue, for every singular component that creates that sound."

Poor patches insufficient that reality, he said, adding that they sound as well "roomy" - by that he means they sound similar to they are being available in someone's back room rsther than than a cold and damp club, gaping unison gymnasium or alfresco stadium.

The song Mr Mitchell swaps is to initial moreover cannot be any aged strumming or plucking. What you hear, he said, has to tie in what you see.

"I watch the video shave a few times and pick up how to fool around the song properly," he said, "and then only do something to put me off similar to fool around it upside down but whilst I'm carrying out so I'll attend to the initial song.

"I know what I'm carrying out but we do not fool around it right," he said.

The results are eerily authentic.

A successful fragment is one in that the listener honestly wonders if what they are conference is real. For the dedicated shreds-maker an e-mail asking if it is fake, or from someone who says they were at that gig and do not recollect it sounding similar to that is as great as a round of applause.

In that clarity Santeri Ojala, aka StSanders on YouTube, is a chief of the art of the shred.

Watch his deconstructions of The Beatles, Queen, The Rolling Stones and Kiss and it becomes hard to recollect the lyrics of the initial so keenly are the unsteadiness difference suited to the mouth and mouth movements of Lennon, Mercury, Jagger and Simmons.

"The first one was unequivocally hard to do," mentioned Mr Ojala, "I outlayed many of the summer only rewinding the video to obtain it right."

Mr Ojala was stirred to fragment by a video of guitar fable Steve Vai.

"I was examination a video of him without sound and we beheld how nonsensical he looked," he said. "I only motionless to make it even more goofy."

For Mr Ojala a fragment contingency do more than make people laugh. It contingency moreover offer something to the who know their way around a guitar.

This means, he said, that the crippled records and crashed chords he swaps is to actual records contingency be genuine and resemble the kinds of mistakes everybody creates when learning to play.

"I think that's because they similar to it," he said, "because they know that segment is hard to play."

Although Mr Ojala is very well well known on YouTube for his shreds, it will remain, he said, a pastime until he can make it pay.

Also, he said, anticipating great targets is tricky. Though he has an opinion about who might be next.

Justin Bieber.

"It'll be a hard one because we honestly think we could not do worse," he said. "It's going to need something not similar from me. we might endeavor to make him look unequivocally cool."

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