Archive for October, 2010

Were Robert Johnson's recordings sped up?

22 October 2010

A post over on Boing Boing ("The last mystery of the blues: were Robert Johnson's recordings sped up?") drove me right to my sound editor to see how Robert Johnson's performances may have sounded different from his recordings. Here's the result:

Robert Johnson Speed Demo

The audio is a 30 second clip of "Sweet Home Chicago" played once at normal speed (i.e., the recorded speed) and then a second time about 20% slower (2 semitones lower). (Note: I didn't labor over the crossfade between the clips.)

Pretty interesting, if you ask me.

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Optimal Browser Status Update

10 October 2010

I've been extremely annoyed with and concerned about Optimal's usage pattern that I've observed in the server logs. I had shut it down for a while to see if anyone noticed. No one did -- except me. I wanted to see this OPML of all the BBC's news feeds, so I turned Optimal back on. But I will be blacklisting spammers and malware purveyors from now on.

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