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The Grammy In Mathematics
An anonymous reader writes "A mathematician will receive a Grammy award for restoring the only known recording of a live Woody Guthrie performance — a bootleg someone made in 1949 using a wire recorder. Guthrie's daughter, who had never heard her father perform in front of a live audience, oversaw the restoration. The article links very cool before and after clips."
The title of the article says the mathematician was norminated for a grammy, yet the article itself says the recording was put forward, which sounds more plausible.
It's poorly phrased, but they mean the only known live recording of *that* performance.
plays fine under mplayer
Yes there is less hiss in the background, but to say that the vocals are unchanged is wrong. I don't know what you were expecting here, but the point was to get it to sound as close as possible to hearing him playing live. The tone and pitch is correct, the high nasal voice is common in folk music, and that is how other Guthrie recordings sound.
If you read TFA you would know that they used different mathematical approaches to compensate for kinks, and breaks in the original wire recording media, and various slow downs, and speed ups during recording which change the pitch when played back.
And I have to say... Banjo? WTF! If you can't tell the difference between a banjo and an acoustic guitar you have no business commenting on this article.
I want to shoot the messenger!
The 4-frame-per-second video recordings were made on 78-RPM lacquers by John Logie Baird in 1927 and 1928. Don McLean performed the restoration.