I want to make this random off-topic comment: For years I've been collecting various audio clips, where "environmental" sound (voice, noise, etc.) transitions into music, or vise versa, in songs, movies and TV shows. I've searched the web and the closest term I can find is "diegetic switch", but not quite. Here's the (short) list:
Wow, growing up in the 80s and thoroughly indoctrinated with musical theatre by my parents... how have I never heard of the Brave Little Toaster until now?
I'm not sure whether I should thank you or curse you. Let's see what my 6yo says.
The article reminds me of Pepe's Burningman operas from the mid 90s... "Devil's Delight, The Fire Tonight" blended into "Devils Do Light The Fire Tonight""
The Brace Little Toaster is a great film, but you might want to preview it yourself before watching it with your kid. There are some scenes of peril and (machine) death that are surprisingly intense for a kids' film and your kid might not handle them well.
Oh man, you're bringing the flashbacks. My siblings watched that movie constantly when I was a kid, and some of those scenes traumatized me for years (I was a sensitive kid).
It's a video game, but Yoshi's Island's title screen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkbxyPl83yI) has sound effects which fade out into a musical theme (which adds instruments after the noises stop). It fits cleverly into the SNES's 8 channels of audio which might not have been able to play ocean spray, birdsong, and multiple overlapping xylophone/melody lines at once.
Waves on the shore transitioning into song: Luke the calf - Iona https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLx2bKdQIJA - though I'm not sure that one counts as the waves are all through to the end.
>Open the song Aerodynamic and fast-forward to 2:28, start listening to the passage. I hear the higher pitch on my right and the lower one on my left ear. What about you?
tbh I'm not sure which notes they're referring to here. There are a couple overlapping high/low pairs in that segment, and I'm not sure which is the octave/those frequencies.
One seems like higher is more in my left, but it clearly follows the left speaker on my headphones. The others warble around for me, though I'm pretty strongly right handed.
left ear right ear
-------------------------
high (nothing in right ear)
low
high
low
or something else? I mostly hear:
left ear central right ear
--------------------------------------
high low low
low low high
high low low
low low high
I'm definitely hearing "low" while hearing "high" on the opposite ear, though it feels like there's a basically constant central "low" as well. The high tone clearly moves between sides.
Maybe worth mentioning: I've had a hearing test in the past year and I'm essentially completely balanced, so there likely isn't a tone-deafness issue on one side that could cause a reception imbalance. Could the illusion just be hearing damage? And then handedness just follows which ear takes more damage due to more noisy things happening / less protection on that side? That could also explain why left-handed people are less strongly sided, as they're forced to do things more balanced due to right-hand-only stuff existing.
It's the Shepard tone effect running in the background of the actual notes, which produce a mild illusion that they're ascending when they're not, but nevertheless they're moving up and then down in pitches so it's not a brilliant example. I think the author is a little confused in this short essay about a few things. His "talking piano" effect is just standard vocoding, which has made me think this is all fairly new to him and he's not an expert.
I'm pretty sure the blog author is referring to 2 hard panned synths, the sort of plucky one in the right and more smooth one on the left. There's also a 3rd more "nasal" synth voice in the center which is playing the same pattern with the high/low notes inverted except for the quicker 4 note run that happens on the 4th count of every bar, where it synchronizes again. I don't think it's octave effect, but it produces a similar result and all 3 synths seem to occupy their own separate frequency space while also sounding like one unit.
This article has a decent recreation of the left and right synths in Aerodynamic. It does not include the center sound though.
There is no shephard tone running in the background, that's a phaser effect running over an otherwise plain pad playing chords.
You can hear from 2:52 to 2:55 it's descending and from 2:56 to 2:59 it's rising. Descending again at 3:00 to 3:03 and etc.
Here's a video of someone replicating that phaser fx tone very well. Though they use it in the guitar solo. Listen to the resonant sweep that seems to be in the background, it's a phaser on the guitar.
The tone I'm referring to is the alternation between F#3 and F#4. I think your observation about the Shepard tone is valid. For the talking piano effect, I remember trying to play it on guitar to make it sound like "Robot Rock". I suspect this is in relation to Tethard's example of accentuation by spectral contrast, but that was a long shot to include.
Well, the audio area is full of masters and experts. I make no claim to be an expert, so you can ignore this writing as you prefer.
I've heard of an effect where brain synthesises lower tone from the higher harmonics, might that be reason why I hear the low tone in both ears at once?
people are hearing what you hear. It's the simultaneous tones, one low, one high, low in the left, high in the right. It's not that it's panning (one at a time), it's together (or within ms of each other when mixed with other techniques). Once you understand this, then the concept of just flipping it makes even more sense. Then get creative and flippity floppity the high/low left/right dance.
the illusion is it's perceived as the "same" note/tone. It's not, and when you dig, you can tell it's not, but when you're casually listening, your brain here's a "fuller" note for some reason. The "fuller" comes from the two octaves being played simultaneously in your seperate ear holes.
Like sleight-of-hand, you know it's there but you can't quite discern it at the time and are gladly surprised by it but you know it's not real magic.
This sounds like it might be conflating stuff like vibrato (human-fast variation in pitch) or even faster. The illusion in the post and on the Wikipedia page involves changing the tone only four times per second, there's no claims at all about both tones blending together or producing only a single note.
Both are quite clear about different ears hearing different things, and hearing two or more tones.
I’m referring to the perceived sounds. They aren’t blended together. I’m fully aware of what vibrato is and what the post is talking about in terms of changing tone, half tones, auditory phantoms, trichords, and the octave illusion. The Wikipedia page details the phenomenon with stepping and alternating but it’s not the end of it. Various intervals have been tested. Us musicians have been playing with this for a while now.
I don't hear that. I hear constant low tone in both ears with only high one bouncing around (i.e the ear where high is is perceiving low one even if it is not there)
With the Wikipedia sample, I kinda suspect the central low note is the same phenomenon as binaural beats - 400hz and 800hz constructively interfere to produce 400hz. There is no 400hz on the high side, but we perceive interference even though there is none.
Which means it should disappear or produce a third tone if it wasn't an exact doubling. I haven't hunted down a sample to test though.
But I heard the lower tone in the middle of my head and higher tone bouncing from left to right. Not the "low on one side, high on the other side" article mentioned.
Kinda interesting to think some people might hear completely different thing in same song...
One that mix engineers use a lot and that is not mentioned is the Haas Effect. (micro delay between left and right channel that gives a stereo sensation to a mono source)
First off, I love Daft Punk and I’ve heard all of these song countless times.
But, sorry, I don’t buy it. I am aware of the talking piano effect, but even the wiki page [0] says it’s a vocoder, which is something entirely different.
Similar to other commenters here [1], I don’t hear the pattern described for the octave effect either.
I wonder how many folks that spend thousands of hours in front of a synthesizer or making electronic music or beats have identified similar illusions but don't really think of it as something 'interesting'. Like, 'oh yeah if you do this it kind of sounds like that'. Probably a whole catalog of tricks.
Happens all the time. Most common one for me is when you're making a patch on a synth and by chance dial in those frequencies that align with formants (similar to the Robot Rock effect the post mentions).
Yesterday I was working on a bass drum beat, and after adding some synths playing on top of it, I started to hear the bass drum echo. So, my first thought was I had accidentally enabled some kind of reverb or echo effect on it while I was setting up the synths. After confirming I hadn't and isolated the track to ensure the bass drum was sounding as intended, I chalked it up to some weird illusion between the synths and drum that was making it sound like an echo. I know it's not there in reality, but I can't unhear it.
In this case, I went back and added a little echo to the drum to make the effect intentional, which turned out to sound good, but sometimes I'll try to make the illusion reality and it doesn't have the same effect.
I always wonder if it's some odd thing going on in the DAW.
Would you be willing to export that track as two tracks--one with drums and one with synth? Then listen to them solo, then run them together (with WAV files instead of instrumentation)? Would be neat to have that illusion confirmed rather than it being a DAW artifact.
My setup's DAWless (this was two synths and a drum machine plugged directly into a mixer that was outputting to speakers) and I didn't end up making any records of this session, so I can't provide WAVs, but I can rule out DAW artifacts :)
unfortunately as I said in an adjacent comment, I didn't end up making any recordings of this session, but will keep it in mind if I can make it happen again in the next couple of days!
When I was 14 years old, I noticed how pure saw waves make fast transient sounds go "whooshy".
1. Play a pure saw wave sound for several seconds, it has to be loud (use headphones), then
2. hit the keyboard keys, or snap your fingers, or make other sounds with fast transients, and the transient is no longer snappy, it "whooshes". It's hard to describe but there is like a flanging effect on it.
I guess there is some scientific name for this phenomenon, but I don't know what.
There's entire books and blog posts and youtube channels that go into all of this. Music production is all about creating a "space" and a lot of what producers do is create the illusions that sounds are coming from particular places, and that sound like they're from a "big" source or whatever.
A common thing to do is to pan a synth to one side, then add a very short (milliseconds) delay panned to the other side, which makes it sound like a very large sound played from a large distance away.
Another is stacking up a bunch of oscillators that are slightly detuned from each other, which again, makes the sound "big", because it sounds like many sources playing together, rather than one source.
Just using a "reverb" is generating an illusion of being in a large, echo-y space.
I do think that most producers don't really think of it as creating illusions, and more as making "cool" sounds.
Would someone please send him a tweet telling him that you can start videos specific timestamps on YouTube by adding "&t=0s" where 0 is the desired number of seconds to the URL? I'm not making a new Twitter acct just to contact a person who has "Contact
Follow me at Twitter: @ugu_rs" as the only means of such on their blog
for the Robot Rock one, the author should've clarified that it's not referring to the actual `rock. robot rock` voice part, but the part where the guitar chords sound like that. skip to about 1:50 in the linked video to hear the robot voice, then listen to how similar just the guitar chords after 2:00 sound like the robot voice saying `rock. robot rock.`
I would bet money there's still a vocoded guitar in that section, but about 18db below the regular guitar. It also sounds like they're running it through a resonant filter, probably their MS-20, which is probably helping the formants sound like it's speaking compared to a regular guitar.
Also, in that particular example, I don't think they made the guitar emit the voice-sounding sounds, but rather generated it electronically. It's not even obvious that the voice comes from guitar sounds... it actually sounds like a plain voice with effects.
Sure, but it’s worth mentioning that this isn’t just a Daft Punk thing. Electronic music and especially House music going back to its roots was shaped by sampling great moments or vocals of tracks into loops and mixing them together into new tracks on top of a 4/4 kick.
The funky/disco/french house era was particularly prolific with sampling though.
I wouldn't call this an illusion as much as an interesting effect. Put on a good pair of headphones and listen to the intro at moderately high volume. There's a buzzing note in there that seems to resonate in a way that feels like it's coming from inside your head or maybe even your throat.
When my fiancee showed me this, it took me almost a dozen watches to finally hear the one I didn't initially hear. I don't remember for sure which one I could hear at first, but I think I only heard "green needle", which was higher pitched, and it took me a lot of concentration to block that out and focus on the lower pitch enough to be able to parse out some semblance of speech. If my recollection is correct, my troubles with the lower pitched sound is a little ironic because I play bass and often try to point out bass parts I like to my fiancee, but she sometimes has trouble parsing out exactly what I'm referring to due to not having had any musical training and it not being as obvious to her which part is the bass when I'm showing her a song with lots of different guitar and keyboard tracks and lots of heavy bass drum.
I’ll have to figure out which Daft Punk song I’m thinking of, but there was this segment where I swear there’s this really swingy chord progression but when slowed down to study it turns out to be the same chord repeated over and over. It’s the other voices that are progressing.
it sounds like you're referring to Daft Punk's "Giorgio by Moroder" from their album "Random Access Memories." The segment you're describing involves a repetitive chord progression, but the perceived variation comes from the evolving layers and elements surrounding the chords. This technique creates a sense of progression while maintaining a consistent base.
There's one weird thing that I've noticed with Daft Punk's The Brainwasher, my brain has two different interpretations for the main loop offset:
If starting here, I hear a loop that starts with fast notes and then has a silence.
(warning: loud) https://youtu.be/RdVEQbWjaTE?t=91
If starting a few seconds earlier, the previous melody seems to fuse with the part that starts at 1:30, and it sounds different, like a bit slower.
(warning: loud) https://youtu.be/RdVEQbWjaTE?t=80
Not sure if that makes sense, hopefully some one else also hears both versions! I'm assuming it may have to do with interpreting the last note of the loop as part of the next one, but it could be something else too. It really is a brainwash :P
One of my favourite comments on Youtube I saw was on some RATATAT song (probably Wildcat?), AFAIR:
"Those guitars are definitely trying to tell me something. I can't get a word but they do sing!"
And if you enjoy Daft Punk but never heard of RATATAT then you def should try, first albums for a more raw and hard sound, later ones for more electronic sound.
I have a weird auditory illusion that happens to me ; I have tinnitus, and a super weird auditory response thing that happens to me occassionally:
So when I cant hear the high-pitched tinnitus squeal (very low volume, but still hear it) - there is something weird that happens which is that I can "hear" some sort of radio station - which plays music in the really faintest and far away sounding volume...
The other thing that happens, is that when laying in bed, attempting to sleep - there are times that when the house makes a "creak" sound of settling or whatever (you know how your wall may 'pop' or 'creak' at times - but the weird thing is that it simultaneously coincides with a pop and a flinch of my body, or 'sound' in my head.
There are times when this happens and I get a bright flash in my closed-eyes...
Anyone know what this is? Sodium defficiency? or aliens?
Uhm is there a community of "us that we hear about"
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EDIT HOLY FN SHIT:
>* A similar occurrence is seen with strokes of the visual cortex where a visual field defect occurs and the brain conjures a piece of visual data to fill the spot. *
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When I turned 45 (I am 48) - I began seeing "floaters"
Could micro-floaters in vison (in my right eye) perhaps indicate micro-strokes? or future-strokes...
I don't hear radio stations, you might want to get your antenna checked. But I get the same sounds when I am laying in bed before I fall asleep and they also coincide with twitches or flinches and sometimes visual flashes.
EDIT: I said "radio station" only because thats what most would recognize... its not a radio station its just a really really faint sound of music playing - like jazz or something. its too dim to make out.
ALSO - eveyone should checkout mynoise.net
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Yes!
This literally usally happens right on the cusp of falling asleep...
I equated it to what I had read a long time ago that "in order for one to fall asleep the body shuts down the sensory systems, and the last one to turn off prior to sleep is hearing"
So I thought that it was caused by the creaks hitting my ears at time of turning asleep -- but it happens when even I am not fully asleep.
But the body twitches really freak me out. I'll basically hit 'asleep' and Ill have a flash in my internal vision (white light looking like an iris of an eye is best way to say it) - and a full body twitch, it jolts me back awake.
The morbid thought in my head is that this may be associated with sleep apnia and my body twitching back 'alaive' after stopping breathing ; however - this happens when I am not even fully asleep...
So I am at a loss - I presume it is a vitamin defficiency, so I just bout some multi-Vs this week...
The twitch right as you are falling asleep is known as a hypnic jerk. The flash of light may be related to exploding head syndrome. The faint "music" could be tinnitus, some electric device (speakers, guitar amp, etc.) picking up an AM or shortwave radio station, or just your brain making up (or playing back) music as you drift off to sleep.
Hypnic jerk is my thing, and im male - and have all the halmarks such as chronic insomnia, but just started melatonin.
But wow - yeah it scares the heck out of me, yet the wiki says "benign" so that is thankful...
A morbid dark, intrusive thought that has happened to me when these occur is that my heart stopped due to sleep apnia and that I was startling myself back alive...
however these occur even when I am not yet asleep and in twilight mode.
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SIDS ;;
This reminds me of what the believe the cause of SIDS to be: a pocket of co2 around the infants breathing-bubble where they are just recirculating the CO2.
So, I wonder if the infants dont yet have the ability to startle themselves back awake... but adults do.
I have had two people close to me who have had SDIS babies, and its horrifying.
Not sure if it counts as an illusion but one that comes to mind is Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood. There's a line "remember that it's all in your head" that was mixed in a way that phase cancellation will make it inaudible on mono playback.
> was mixed in a way that phase cancellation will make it inaudible on mono playback.
That’s just what happens to the surround channel in audio tracks produced using Dolby Stereo, when, as you say, they are naively mixed to mono. This happens all the time.
Funny about them: I can hear the words either as "Mexican lucky" or "to get lucky" (the correct lyrics) depending on what I want to hear. Usually, once you know the right words, you can't hear anything else.
I've always liked the incorrect lyrics "we're robot Mexican monkeys". Not sure who first came up with that. I remember reading it on reddit back when the short preview clip of Get Lucky was released to great excitement.
This article is horribly written and executed for many reasons, but the primary one being that the vast majority of the music credited as Daft Punk is just sampled music from other artists. You can eloquently see this broken down here: https://youtu.be/lBSWw7RdZLk
You seem to have a bone to pick with the idea that artists who sample can be colloquially credited as the songwriters of the songs they wrote. It's a surprising position to take; most people get by just fine saying that MC Hammer wrote You Can't Touch This, as one of many examples.
i have always felt some unexplained effect while listening to Veridis Quo [1].
the melody start sounding different from the 0:38 mark, just as the kicks come in. it seems like some supporting keys are added with the kicks, to make the sound more full, but at the same time it could be my brain getting tricked.
sorry for botching the explanation, i have never studied music.
- https://youtu.be/9j9bVl3rfNk?t=29 In The Defenders, repeated piano note transitions into background music.
- https://youtu.be/isZyX1xd1VQ?t=159 (The Great American Nightmare - Rob Zombie)
- https://youtu.be/pU_mZ1X69Ho?t=364 (Out of Control - Miraculix)
- Justice League the movie where the song "Everybody Knows" transitions into the ambulance siren. Sorry I can't find this footage.