Wang Xiaolong has set the new Guinness World Record for the "highest vocal note by a male." His E in the eighth octave is a half step higher than Adam Lopez Costa's record set in 2008.
Enjoy this unusual performance of Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi and Mikhail Matusovsky's Moscow Nights. Then enjoy the video again, muted. Then enjoy a nice, hot, cleansing shower. Read the rest
At the Under the Radar Festival in New York City earlier this month, a crowd of soon-to-be singers rehearsed "back ups" for David Bowie's "Heroes." After an hour, they were performing the song with David Byrne as a Choir! Choir! Choir! tribute to Bowie.
According to Consequence of Sound, Byrne gave his thoughts on working with the choir group, in a press release:
"There is a transcendent feeling in being subsumed and surrendering to a group. This applies to sports, military drills, dancing… and group singing. One becomes a part of something larger than oneself, and something in our makeup rewards us when that happens. We cling to our individuality, but we experience true ecstasy when we give it up. So, the reward experience is part of the show.”
Byrne is beginning an ambitious tour in March for his new album, American Utopia. The album is his first solo LP in 14 years. Read the rest
You've seen it done before. Some soprano sings a high note and it shatters a wine glass. What I didn't know is that most anyone can learn to do it. It seems you need a thin glass next to your face and a long, loud (over 100 decibel) note to start. That's dangerous. This video shares an alternate way using a microphone, amp and a drinking straw.
The Neural Parametric Singing Synthesizer is a voice synth with a difference: it soars! It's perfectly uncanny; any better and you'd not even suspect it might be a robot, any worse and it would just sound bad.
Previously: I feel fantastic. Read the rest
Kulning, or herding calls, is a form of singing traditionally used to summon livestock. Depicted here by Jonna Jinton, it has peculiar acoustic properties dependent on the uniquely reverberant landscape of Scandinavia. And cow magic, obv. [via]
I made this for you, dear readers.
YouTube Doubler Read the rest
A tape has emerged of David Bowie doing impressions of other singers, apparently on-demand.
Slate made a playlist.
Here’s the order of the impressions, as best as we can tell:
0:00 Bruce Springsteen 0:49 Bob Dylan or Marc Bolan? 1:45 Tom Waits 2:29 Lou Reed 3:25 Anthony Newley 4:13 Iggy Pop 5:14 Neil Young
"I'm just fuckin' about now."
They're pretty good, but they're all David! Read the rest
No, really. Read the rest
White Rhino entertained his sister on a seven-hour road-trip with some damned fine lip-synching to tunes ranging from the Spice Girls to Enya to Daddy Yankee to Keyshia Cole. Read the rest
The liner notes say it was recorded in: "Mongolia and Buriatia in 1967, 1968, and 1970 in the course of field work organized in the frame work of the Protocole d'Echanges Culturels between France and Mongolia, and as part of an exchange program with the Academy of Sciences in the USSR."
"In Mongolian tradition, neither music nor singing can strictly-speaking be described as specialist activities. In the past, everyone was expected to be capable of singing and playing the fiddle at festivals..."
Imitation Of The Flute (with the nose)
From the liner notes again: "The player flutes with his nose. Some air really does pass through the nose. The player's lips are slightly parted but do not move: only the corners of the mouth tremble sightly and the cheeks are tensed. This tension brings him out in a sweat. The melody comes from the movements of the tongue. Anyone who possesses this technique is able to reproduce any melody"
Both of these tracks just blow me away with how much the singers sound like birds:
For you die-hard record sifters, the info is Vogue Records LDM 30138 (recorded in 1973). Here's a full track-listing. You might be able to download it somewhere if you peek around the internet. ;-) I call for a re-issue!
This post is part of a series about music that disorients the senses. I've found that some of the most amazing and jarring auditory illusions are not the usual scientifically distilled or synthesized ones, they're often found in folk music and made by people's voices. Read the rest
