Category Archives: Audio

by Wombatilim

Lateralus

I have been thinking about numbers a lot in the past week.  Prime numbers, the Fibonacci sequence, polygons.  Why my Bucky Balls work best in multiples of six.  How our culture might be different if we had evolved thinking in base 8 instead of base 10.  I was introduced to the concept of modular arithmetic on Thursday, quite by accident; while we obviously use it in daily life, it had never previously occurred to me how one would express it mathematically.

Numbers are, of course, inextricably related to music.  Scales (there’s our modular arithmetic again), beat structure, tempo.  Few musicians seem to call this relationship out, but Tool’s “Lateralus” is, among other things, about the Fibonacci sequence, with an apparent nod to the Golden Ratio.  The references are not within the lyrics; rather, it is a part of the music itself.

I am curious to know whether there are other artists who have explicitly explored mathematical concepts in the rhythmic and melodic structure of their music.  I am aware of some that explore math in their lyrical content (Jonathan Coulton and Tom Lehrer come to mind), but I suppose the nature of what I am looking for makes it more difficult to find.

by Wombatilim

Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 10

Nope, didn’t forget about this.  I can’t record voice with my air conditioner running, as it is noisy and right next to the computer, and it’s been warm, so I haven’t felt like turning it off long enough to get a good voice recording.

I’d gotten it into my head for some reason that Alice has 12 chapters, but it only has 10.  So this is the last one.  I’m still planning on doing Through the Looking Glass eventually, and probably at some point will attempt to put these all into a single Audiobook file.  This is assuming, of course, that my vocal levels were relatively consistent, which is not a given.  Something happened between 10.6.2 and 10.6.3 that made the computer not save the settings for my USB mic between unplugging it and plugging it back in again, so I had to set the input levels every time I wanted to record.

Anyway.  Here’s the final chapter.  The ID3 tagging has changed during the course of the project, and I haven’t uploaded updated files on prior entries, so if you’re picky about such things, you’ll want to go in and fix those.  The image to the left, which would normally link to the file, links to the album art instead, should you want to keep a copy of that.

Audio MP3

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Chapter 10

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