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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 RIAA sues same gentleman for 100,000,000 USD over same infringement of Guthrie's works, especially by the current owner. DMCA invoked on compromise of special wire-based recording medium, daughter of famous singer fined and sent to Gitmo, Hail freedom! Homeland security mistakes old recordings as bombs and bans them from all flights. Shall I go on?
meh
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.
Congress declares that audio restoration is in fact nothing more than DRM circumvention and will henceforth be illegal under the NORESTORE act.
:)
Also: RIAA patents bad recording quality as a copy protection measure.
(couldn't be closer to the truth for your average CD...)
someone else take the torch from here
It's poorly phrased, but they mean the only known live recording of *that* performance.
plays fine under mplayer
Congratulations, "A Mathematician"!!
How awesome is that, to do some really interesting work, and finally get some world-wide recognition and even get your name on the front page of Slashdot!
Oh, wait...
Common people, let's give credit where credit is due. Thanks. The guy's name isn't even mentioned until the 11th paragraph of the story! Somehow when it's something cool like this it's enough to say, "mathematics did it!", as if this restoration technique of identifying the hum of a 1949 power supply to help guide a dynamic warping and interpolation technique just dropped out of thin air.
(It's Kevin Short by the way, although if I understand the article, this sound engineer Jamie Howarth played a large part as well.)
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!
""I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you."
"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that."
"Yes, as through this world I've wandered I've seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen"
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."