Tangents: January 2013

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Why rage against the machine when you can unplug it?

- Phonte

Whale Songs

This story is really the culmination of a few seemingly random events.

The first is my discovery of Dr. Roger Searle Payne's Songs of the Humpback Whale on the internet late in my freshman year. This album quickly became a staple as sleep music and as ambient accompaniment while doing homework.

The second is the spilling of a beverage of unknown composition or ownership into my old stereo amplifier. The replacement, acquired at minimal cost from a local pawn shop, was supposed to be a temporary fix until I could prescribe treatment for my ailing amplifier. The original, however, was diagnosed with more problems than could be treated economically and had to be euthanized. This turned out to be a stroke of luck which cannot be very well understood until the last, and perhaps most astounding part of the story is revealed.

Last month, during my break at home, I was at Angry Mom Records and I discovered a LP of the same recordings for $2.50!

This astounding find has led me to where I am now. A few days ago I started playing the whale songs LP on the turntable while playing other music on my computer. This mashup was only made possible by the fact that my new stereo has a super strange design as seen below:

The number 3 and 4 inputs are my computer and turntable respectively. They both have a volume knob and can be played simultaneously--a bit of a unique design for a cheap, old amplifier.

So it was a strange series of events that led me to start listening to whale songs with everything but it has sort of changed the way I see whales, and possibly music, forever. The whales are always right in key and always sing at the perfect moments throughout any song. Even when they are not singing, the ambient openness of their submarine concert hall is lent to whatever song they accompany (or accompanies them). Whale songs make literally any music better and I encourage you to integrate them into your life and see if it isn't better also.

Here's a random sample of whale songs mashed up with a Steve Reich piece:

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Barn Circle, Freeville, NY

Liam and I shoveled a very roughly circular path around our barn. I used the lightning rod at the North end of the barn's roof as the approximate center for each shot.