Ethiopian Jazz
I didn’t know this was even a thing, but it’s cool.
Apparently Jerry Wayne knows the proper etiquette for Ethiopian jazz
Two guys on the street sing you a song
Labyrinth of Time Speedrun
The Obscuritory has done a 12 minute speedrun of the classic obscure game “The Labyrinth of Time“. I loved Myst and saved up my money to buy this game – only to find myself utterly lost as to what to do. It’s an obscure, but ultimately bad, game. The idea is interesting – an adventure that requires collecting items or changing the past to affect the future puzzles. It’s an idea that is probably ripe for a remake or a part 2 (that was hinted at at the ending of the game, but never written)
Back in the day, I actually contacted and talked with one of the programmers. He said that they were running out of storage space to fit the game on one CD-ROM, so they kept compressing and re-compressing the audio until it was barely acceptable quality. I believe his exact words were that ‘It was criminal’ how much they compressed them.
I remember that the sound track was pretty good. Ironically, it was mostly stock audio that could be licensed very cheaply. Some of my favorites were ‘Intrigue‘, ‘The Killing Ground‘, ‘Pastoral colours‘, and many others. Fans on the playlist linked above seem to have identified all the songs.
Here’s a longer, slower playthrough for the curious:
Silent Night
Josephus Mohr was born 1792 from an unwed seamstress mother and a mercenary soldier in Salzburg. His father abandoned them before he was even born. The vicar of Salzburg cathedral took pity, saw that he was educated, and he began to show a talent for music. He became a priest and wrote the lyrics to Silent Night. 2 years later Franz Gruber put the poem to music and performed it at Christmas midnight mass at the church of St Nicholas in Obendorf. The song spread like wildfire around the world and into many of the languages.
The song is also famous for it’s appearance in the impromptu Christmas Truce of 1914 in which soldiers from the German side started singing Christmas songs – including Silent Night – which had by that point been translated to dozens of languages. The allied side started singing along in their language. As the night went on, they lay down their arms, left their trenches, shook hands, shared drinks/food, and even took pictures together.
It was an unprecedented development in the history of war. All brought about by the birth of a small child in a barn in the middle east almost 2000 years ago.
Opera voice types
The Original Good Idea Girl notes there are more than 30 voice types (Fach types) in opera. I certainly had only a vague understanding of types. She does a magnificent job describing them with great actual examples.
Mystery Supply Company
Enjoy the background sounds and music of the classic Scooby Doo episodes? The Mystery Supply Company creates lots of looped backgrounds of those classic episodes. Great if you need some background ambience.
Games done quick – on a saxophone
Dr. Doot does a speedrun of Elden Ring. That’s interesting in itself, but he is doing it using a Roland Aerophone as his controller.
Also musically inclined, there was a Crazy Taxi run that featured a real band covering all the songs:
Brit Floyd
If you get a chance to see Brit Floyd, I can 100% recommend it to any Pink Floyd fan. It’s not a cover band – Pink Floyd officially licensed and let them play their songs under the condition they are exactly as they played them. And boy do they deliver.
Falling down the stairs
Oscilloscope Music
Techmoan shows off some more oscilloscope music/art – and the problems he encountered while getting it working. This video is interesting because he shows how he debugged some issues he had.
More info at https://oscilloscopemusic.com
If you don’t happen to have hundreds of dollars in an oscilloscope and time to debug, you can watch the whole, clean version of N-SPHERES video here: