Palace Posy analysis [11 minute video]

JESUSANDHOES · Post by **JESUSANDHOES** » Sun Mar 23, 2014 9:46 pm

So after seeing that two users MrMessiah and Isopod mutually exclusively discovered the same potential sample source for the vocals in "Palace Posy":

http://www.twoism.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11881

I decided to spend some time looking at the song in a DAW and recorded an 11 minute screencast talking about what I found.

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGlXQ5eynak

TL;DW:

- The first note of the song is at 0.067 seconds. Which seems fitting, given their use of six, thirty-six, and 666.

- The hi-hat rhythm that 'sucks' over the top of the beat is added at 66 seconds. This rhythm adds sibilant "s" sounds into the track, in a skittering rhythm that trails off.

- I found evidence supporting the hypothesis that some of the lyrics at the end of the song are "digitally synthesized" quasi-words. This is due to the precise interweaving of the vocal interjections and the aforementioned skittering hi-hat rhythm. At one point during the vocals part, the skittering hi-hats are muted, and you can hear the vocals bare.

- This idea of planting ideas that aren't there goes along with Telepathy, and it also connects to the "Uncanny Valley" hypothesis in a Tomorrow's Harvest interview:

http://www.kanyetothe.com/forum/index.p ... 324963.306

A few notes about the video:

- HEADPHONE USERS BEWARE!! I suggest a cautious volume level. I had to use my laptop's internal speakers and when I played back a few times, the resulting audio is pretty brutal. Sorry!

- At one point I show a text file. Unfortunately the left side of the text file was cropped so there's a bit of missing data. Not a huge deal but did want to mention this, in case it looked confusing.

- The 'phase-processing' that I refer to in the video is the same function that must have been executed in order to create the Record Store Day audio clues 'AAAA.wav' and 'BBBB.wav'. Long story short, you can execute a function on a stereo signal in order to output only the non-mono signals, IN mono. This helps to de-clutter the audio from generally more mix-center objects such as snares and kicks. (There are also some cool easter eggs in the album related to this process - for example, when performed on "Telepath", the vocals disappear completely because they were mixed mono. When I first played it back and heard no vocals, I flipped!) Anyway it mainly just serves as an isomorphism, a copy that I can use to more correctly "triangulate" by A/B-ing between that version, and the normal one.

- I would love to hear what others think about this.

Hitecherous · Post by **Hitecherous** » Mon Mar 24, 2014 3:41 pm

I'd love to hear that Telepath with no vocals.

JESUSANDHOES · Post by **JESUSANDHOES** » Mon Mar 24, 2014 7:49 pm

Hitecherous wrote:I'd love to hear that Telepath with no vocals.

Cool, here you go:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_MujWB ... oxNXc/edit

arvy · Post by **arvy** » Mon Mar 24, 2014 8:40 pm

JESUSANDHOES wrote:
Hitecherous wrote:I'd love to hear that Telepath with no vocals.
Cool, here you go:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_MujWB ... oxNXc/edit

Wow, that's great !

Isopod · Post by **Isopod** » Mon Mar 24, 2014 9:10 pm

Hah, good job with this, glad I could contribute!

North by North · Post by **North by North** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:50 pm

arvy wrote:
JESUSANDHOES wrote:
Hitecherous wrote:I'd love to hear that Telepath with no vocals.
Cool, here you go:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_MujWB ... oxNXc/edit
Wow, that's great !

Yes, thanks.

Mexicola · Post by **Mexicola** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 8:16 pm

Bugger - the download limit has been reached. ARGH!

JESUSANDHOES · Post by **JESUSANDHOES** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 9:47 pm

Mexicola wrote:Bugger - the download limit has been reached. ARGH!

Oh whoops, I've never encountered that before! Well, this shouldn't run out:

https://soundcloud.com/swrl/t3l3p-th

OverTheHorizonRadar · Tue Mar 25, 2014 10:02 pm

I've always wondered, if you can remove sounds present in both channels, I'd think there would be some way to only listen to sounds present in both channels. If you could then wouldn't the vocals be a lot clearer?

Hmmmm....*thinking hard*

Mexicola · Post by **Mexicola** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 10:58 pm

JESUSANDHOES wrote:
Mexicola wrote:Bugger - the download limit has been reached. ARGH!
Oh whoops, I've never encountered that before! Well, this shouldn't run out:

https://soundcloud.com/swrl/t3l3p-th

Thanks. Didn't work either though!

Getting the old 'Sorry - track might have been removed' message.

JESUSANDHOES · Post by **JESUSANDHOES** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 11:13 pm

OverTheHorizonRadar wrote:I've always wondered, if you can remove sounds present in both channels, I'd think there would be some way to only listen to sounds present in both channels. If you could then wouldn't the vocals be a lot clearer?

Hmmmm....*thinking hard*

Unfortunately I don't think it works both ways. Mono signals are taken out by duplicating a stereo signal, switching the L/R on the duplicate signal, and performing a NOT function on the phases of each channel of the duplicate track. Since any mono signal will be equally in the left and right channels, except phase-swapped in the duplicate, the mono signals will perfectly cancel out.

However if a signal is at all panned to the left or the right, then it does not have equal values in both channels. And when you convert a stereo signal into mono, you take the average of both channels at that point in time. So any signal that is more left, but still some right, will pass through into mono, in an amount that is proportional to the difference between those channels.

Bottom line being, if my armchair theorizing is true, the vocals will be as clear as they are in the official version because they're mono, but a signal mixed just a tick to the left would still pass through almost completely. And I imagine BoC probably did just this in order to forever "encode" the vocals.

JESUSANDHOES · Post by **JESUSANDHOES** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 11:14 pm

Mexicola wrote:
JESUSANDHOES wrote:
Mexicola wrote:Bugger - the download limit has been reached. ARGH!
Oh whoops, I've never encountered that before! Well, this shouldn't run out:

https://soundcloud.com/swrl/t3l3p-th
Thanks. Didn't work either though!

Getting the old 'Sorry - track might have been removed' message.

K I think it should work now -- changed access to public and made it downloadable. DUUHHH

Mexicola · Post by **Mexicola** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 11:21 pm

JESUSANDHOES wrote:
Mexicola wrote:
JESUSANDHOES wrote: Oh whoops, I've never encountered that before! Well, this shouldn't run out:

https://soundcloud.com/swrl/t3l3p-th
Thanks. Didn't work either though!

Getting the old 'Sorry - track might have been removed' message.
K I think it should work now -- changed access to public and made it downloadable. DUUHHH

Nice one! Thanks

You know something? Without the vocals it reminds me of one of those old website blips they put up years ago.

Post by **Aesthetics** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 12:08 am

I thought this was common knowledge but the vocals are from this jingle and it is saying: Metro-media-television-eleven-eleven-eleven where BoC used the 11-11-11 part of.

JESUSANDHOES · Post by **JESUSANDHOES** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 12:58 am

Aesthetics wrote:I thought this was common knowledge but the vocals are from this jingle and it is saying: Metro-media-television-eleven-eleven-eleven where BoC used the 11-11-11 part of.

Yeah, I mean, that's the first thing I mentioned in my first post: that I thought it was an interesting coincidence that multiple people noticed the same connection.

However I also think it's a bit myopic to assume that every vocal at the end of the song comes from that single source. I agree that at the end of all three times that the vocal part happens at the end of the song, especially the second time when the sucking hi-hat is muted, the resemblance to the Metro-media 11-11-11 jingle is quite apparent. Of course maybe they re-recorded that stuff on their own; we know they are capable of re-creating "collective unconscious" type sounds like the jingle in '84 Pontiac Dream for example.

And regardless, I hear other sounds in there that are simply not accounted for. I hate to just point to a subjective matter and say "I disagree", and leave it at that, so here's a link to a part of the phase-swapped version I've been talking about:

https://soundcloud.com/swrl/p-lp05-phase

All I'm saying is that there seem to be other sounds in there beyond "eleven" -- and moreover, it seems to me that because of the precise rhythmic placement of the sucking hi-hat, there seem to be words in certain places that are "conjured" but aren't actually spoken.

North by North · Post by **North by North** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 1:37 am

Mexicola wrote:
JESUSANDHOES wrote:
Mexicola wrote: Thanks. Didn't work either though!

Getting the old 'Sorry - track might have been removed' message.
K I think it should work now -- changed access to public and made it downloadable. DUUHHH
Nice one! Thanks

You know something? Without the vocals it reminds me of one of those old website blips they put up years ago.

Ha. Same here, like a darker, colder "Trails", which I put on repeat at work today after listening to this for awhile.

OverTheHorizonRadar · Post by **OverTheHorizonRadar** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 6:24 pm

Revisiting the whole Telepath mono vocals thing...

So I managed to write a crappy program that can kinda eliminate sounds that are only in stereo left or right. Thing is the panned sounds generally have some mono component to them so I can't completely isolate the vocals with this method or anything, but I think it's interesting nonetheless. It actually works better with other songs, like some of the Beatles' stuff. Maybe I'll post my results later.

JESUSANDHOES · Post by **JESUSANDHOES** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:09 pm

OverTheHorizonRadar wrote:Revisiting the whole Telepath mono vocals thing...

So I managed to write a crappy program that can kinda eliminate sounds that are only in stereo left or right. Thing is the panned sounds generally have some mono component to them so I can't completely isolate the vocals with this method or anything, but I think it's interesting nonetheless. It actually works better with other songs, like some of the Beatles' stuff. Maybe I'll post my results later.

Nice, what'd you write it in? Mind if I could have dat source code?

OverTheHorizonRadar · Post by **OverTheHorizonRadar** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:51 pm

JESUSANDHOES wrote:
OverTheHorizonRadar wrote:Revisiting the whole Telepath mono vocals thing...

So I managed to write a crappy program that can kinda eliminate sounds that are only in stereo left or right. Thing is the panned sounds generally have some mono component to them so I can't completely isolate the vocals with this method or anything, but I think it's interesting nonetheless. It actually works better with other songs, like some of the Beatles' stuff. Maybe I'll post my results later.
Nice, what'd you write it in? Mind if I could have dat source code?

Sent you a PM

ZosoCon · Post by **ZosoCon** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 11:11 pm

North by North wrote:
Mexicola wrote:
JESUSANDHOES wrote: K I think it should work now -- changed access to public and made it downloadable. DUUHHH
Nice one! Thanks

You know something? Without the vocals it reminds me of one of those old website blips they put up years ago.
Ha. Same here, like a darker, colder "Trails", which I put on repeat at work today after listening to this for awhile.

i second that. very trails-like. pretty neat that one can take out a of layer of a song like that. what other BoC songs can be done is now the question