Carl Sagan Sings 183
gijoel writes "Someone with too much time on their hands and access to Auto-Tune has taken clips from Carl Sagan's Cosmos series to make this fantastic song. Watch for the Stephen Hawking cameo."
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none.
Question about the first clip (Score:3, Interesting)
What episode of Cosmos is the section where Sagan begins "I'm not very good at singing" ?
Re:Question about the first clip (Score:5, Informative)
Episode 11: The Persistence of Memory
Around the 10:24 mark.
Where is the Original Cosmos series??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone have any idea of how to get a hold of the very original Cosmos television series that aired on P.B.S. back in the early 80's ?
The Cosmos series was bought, remastered, and remade in the late 90's by Ted Turner, and that is the series that I own (the DVD set), however it is not what I watched as a child. I liked the original better. The original had much better ambient music, and in the transitions between scenes, worked much better I thought (more powerfully evoking). The remastered version may be more up to date scientifically, but the music has been replaced with mostly classical that doesn't fit the emotion, and is hacked up quite a bit.
I know the story is that Carl had a large disagreement with the way the original series was produced by KCET out of Los Angeles. Later the series was remade with the help of his wife, but some of the original music could not be relicensed (or was not even licensed correctly the first time) when the series was sold to Turner.
I have most of the episodes of the original 80's version on cassette, that I have now digitized. But the sound isn't that great since it was recorded by simply placing a microphone in front of the TV. There are other tape "abnormalities" as well, like the side A to side B change over.
I know there must be some remaining VHS or Beta tapes around of the original series somewhere, since they were sold as sets to schools and universities back in the 80's. I'd love to have a copy of those! Digital of course.
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That's the remastered series that he is referring to.
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According to YouTube, it's from "The Persistence of Memory". See here [youtube.com].
How is this less important? (Score:5, Interesting)
He inspired a generation to be interested in science. How many actual scientists today can trace their choice of career back to Cosmos?
Oh, and read Demon-Haunted World.
Re:How is this less important? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm certainly one of them (thanked him for Cosmos in my PhD thesis specifically).
And I agree with you about Demon-Haunted World. I think that should be required reading for all high school students.
Re:How is this less important? (Score:5, Informative)
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He inspired a generation to be interested in science. How many actual scientists today can trace their choice of career back to Cosmos?
Oh, and read Demon-Haunted World.
Read all his stuff. Pale Blue Dot is great for instance. His short essays were brilliant. Pity he was an arrogant man and so harsh on Sci-Fi though (especially Startrek) but that too is a lesson - don't idolize people.
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Meh. I'm also an arrogant man, and also quite harsh on Star trek. I'll watch it, but I'll argue with it in the process...
I think he would've liked Firefly.
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Except for being the guy who briefed the Apollo astronauts. And writing the book(s) on exobiology. And a bunch of other stuff that you haven't heard about, because you haven't cared to look.
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Not really a nobody, just a part of the rank and file of science without which, the few "big names" would get nowhere.
Advising astronauts, working on space probes, etc.
It just happens that those things are eclipsed in the public mind by his contributions in teaching and advocacy. He helped awaken students to scientific thought and to curiosity and a sense of wonder about the world. Without people like him, where would the next generation of scientists come from?
Question: (Score:2, Insightful)
Should this not be posted under idle?
Re:Question: (Score:5, Insightful)
No way! This was too beautiful for idle!
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I thought the processing made Hawking's voice sound raspy and unrealistic.
Autotune the News (Score:5, Informative)
Autotune the News has been doing this kind of thing for a while now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bduQaCRkgg4&feature=related [youtube.com]
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True, but this is actually the best use of Autotune I've heard yet, amatuer and professional alike.
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That you've noticed. If your pitch correction is noticeable, you're doing it wrong. Unless you think the effect is cool - in which case you're a retard.
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Unless you think the effect is cool - in which case you're a retard.
This is where art and profession differentiate. And why they need each other.
Opinion != fact
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Opinion != fact
Sadly, a vast majority of people, when faced with this argument, will reply (as Sheldon Cooper's mother did when discussing creationism) "..and that is your opinion!". Sad state of affairs indeed!
Re:Autotune the News (Score:5, Insightful)
That you've noticed. If your pitch correction is noticeable, you're doing it wrong. Unless you think the effect is cool - in which case you're a retard.
I could say the same about synthesizers: "If your synthesizer is noticeably different from a real instrument, you're doing it wrong. Unless you think synthesizer effects are cool - in which case you're a retard." Artists have always looked for new ways to create sounds. The repurposing of autotune is no different from the creation of synthesizers, or any other new instrument. Why is someone "retarded" for thinking that the use of autotune as a new musical tool is cool?
I mean, it annoys me too, but your point of view is really condescending. Let musicians play. Autotune is just a set of algorithms; there's no reason why it can't be used in a way that the original programmers didn't anticipate. And anyway, Stevie Wonder and Peter Frampton both used vocoders for a similar effect. Are they "retarded"?
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It used to be that vocalists wrote their own songs (Neil Diamond, Michael Jackson, etc); now it is not.
OK, fine. I can accept that. I understand having good vocalists being famous just for singing (Britney Spears, etc).
But if you're some commoner who can't write music AND can't hit a note, then what exactly are you? Not a musician in any sense of the word, and not a person with talent. You're just a BRAND at that point - a brand that the RIAA has picked to sell a product.
I have every right to be condesc
Re:Autotune the News (Score:4, Insightful)
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Ah, the classic "I'll start a pedantic flame war because I like to feel important" technique.
Any decent person would have taken my comment with the grain of salt that it's meant to be taken, and any legitimate musician would not waste so much time defending the "auto-tune fad".
Regardless, I said that people who are "doing it wrong" are retarded. That would be the "artist", not the listeners. The listeners are retarded in a uniquely different way not originally discussed! :)
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Regardless, I said that people who are "doing it wrong" are retarded.
OK, I'll take it for granted that's what you meant. You said that in the context of a post where a person made Carl Sagan "sing". Clearly he was going for effect, because he made Carl Sagan harmonize with himself. Your RIAA crap was just out of nowhere. You think, maybe, that the guy who made the Carl Sagan video is hoping to be the next T-Pain?
I am not defending the auto-tune fad. What I'm doing is defending people who experi
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Let's try this again.
1. Making Carl Sagan sing (along with Auto-Tune the news, etc) borders on parody, at the very least humor.
2. A lot of people out there have never heard of pitch correction outside of this context, where it is obvious that some processing has been done to the vocal track.
The intention of my post (snarky comment aside) was to point out to those less informed that there's pitch correction in nearly all of the music we hear these days.
Unfortunately, I had not anticipated the misinterpretati
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The difference being that autotuners attempt to use the same sound as the voice for a carrier, in order to keep it sounding like the singer. In this vocoder, the singer is only the modulator, and a synth is used as the carrier.
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Re:Autotune the News (Score:5, Interesting)
His tune-up of MLK's I have a dream speech [youtube.com] is pretty awesome. It's good enough to actually consider a mainstream artist doing a proper cover in the mode of the Obama "Yes we can" video.
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Agreed, I love their MLK song.
Autotune the News #8 was the best mix (Score:3, Funny)
Yo, I'm happy for Autotune #1 and all, but I'ma let you finish... the Autotune the News #8 [youtube.com] was the best news mix of all time.
Especially the lip-sync video editing was just too good. It had me singing along to Michael Vick ... that's gotta count for something :)
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"wake up, wake up, wake up dead..."
#6 is also my favourite.
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gotta say that the Sagan song was better though.
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Censored from youtube due to copyright violations (Score:1, Informative)
Censored from youtube due to copyright violations.
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It is perhaps unquestionably true that there is nothing more pathetic than the inheritors of the estate of great personages who choose to enrich their own endowments than carry on the work from which it came.
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perhaps unquestionably?
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You know it hasn't actually been censored, right?
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Cosmos is continually being removed from Youtube and re-added.
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Good point.
You can download both the mp3 and the high rez video from this page
http://www.colorpulsemusic.com/youtube.html [colorpulsemusic.com]
fuck autotune (Score:1, Flamebait)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8RqgDsO3c4 [youtube.com]
even the new skinny puppy album has autotune all over it. :( that shit was old from day one.
Re:fuck autotune (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but Carl Sagan is dead, so there aren't many other ways to make it seem like he's singing. If anything, this is the most appropriate use of autotune technology I've seen to date: Making the dead come back to life in a new way.
:)
I'm sure Carl would approve
Re:fuck autotune (Score:5, Funny)
Do you think he'd be for or against sounding like Kermit the Frog gone techno?
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Hey does that mean that you think Stephen Hawking sounds like Kermit the Frog gone techno? Because that guy normally talks like that!
Don't insult the H! Allright? ;)
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They seem to be objecting to artificial voices and a lack of originality...
I wonder where that music in the background came from? Synthesizer? Or sampled from someone else?
If you don't like how autotune sounds, fine. But that video was pretty hypocritical.
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but nearly every mainstream (especially pop, country, hip-hop/r&b, etc.) album that includes vocal parts in it these days has been "enhanced" through the use of auto-tune. Heck, auto-tune is even used in live concerts nowadays. Don't confuse the general usage of auto-tune, which is merely a tool for pitch correction, with the specific practice of feeding extreme parameters into auto-tune software to produce synthetic- or electronic-sounding vocal effects (some like to call th
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that shit was old from day one.
Mod parent insightful.
A Still More Glorious Dawn (of some sort) (Score:2, Interesting)
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Since the US finally has a president who is talking about getting rid of all nuclear arms, even our own, I think there may just be a galaxy rise in our future :-)
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Nobody thinks that. You think there are people thinking this, but I think you're wrong.
Re:A Still More Glorious Dawn (of some sort) (Score:4, Insightful)
Those guys are smart. Those guys never said the universe needs or wants us to survive. That's the ramblings of some moron posting things on the internet, rather than a top physicist.
Why do *we* want to survive? Probably because most of us (other then the aforementioned moron) still have the desire to survive, procreate, and pass on our genes to a future generation. That's been hard-wired in most life on the planet for quite some time now.
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What the hell are you even talking about? This is about as coherent as an episode of Teletubbies.
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This is about as coherent as an episode of Teletubbies.
Oh yeah ?
"Laa-Laa sent out for one of those short, plump little breads called Tubby Toast, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of The Noo-Noo's hose. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the Tubby Custard in which I had soaked a morsel of the toast. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the e
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Tele-Proust? Marcel Tubby?
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Some people like to believe that our accomplishments mean something. The longer they or the follow-ons they enable endure, the better. If we wipe ourselves out all of that goes to zero instantly.
Nobody thinks that a colony will magically erase all of the anti-survival habits of humanity. The thinking is that is that if enough colonies exist, perhaps one or two might beat the odds.
If you believe none of that, shoot yourself in the head now. It's not like you'll exist to miss anything! If that doesn't strike
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No, I'm not going to shoot myself in the head, I'm living my life now the best I can. I *do* have an impact in my local social and family circle. But really, not much beyond that. Extrapolated out, we do have an impact on our own existence and our extended human family, but not much beyond that.
Any interest in the survival of the younger members of your local circle? Any interest in THEIR children and their children's children (who you may never meet) surviving?
Then I suggest they use their great minds to solve the causes of self-destruction hear-and-now
Perhaps the future space utopia (or at least it's planning) is part of the answer? Perhaps instead of telephone sanitizers, we should send the corrupt and greedy after the untold riches to be found in space? It's less ethically questionable than roasting them on spits to feed the poor.
Perhaps it's a play for time. We don't have a frontier a
Amazing... (Score:4, Insightful)
New Slashdot meme? (Score:5, Funny)
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(Jostles for microphone) I'm sorry Carl, but Beyoncé had the best music video of all time!
Heh. I just sent this link to someone with the title "Something to think about the next time you hear a song by Kanye West or Akon"...
Apparently, those little transformers voice boxes they use now are a good substitute for talent.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not a Carl Sagan fan, but there's something I noticed about this song: when was the last time you heard a "serious" composition dedicated to something in science? It seems that most songs are about love, or how life sucks, or something equally mundane. In the 60s and early 70s you heard a lot of protest songs or other political ones and before that you did hear some from people like
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_(song) [wikipedia.org]?
There's probably a Weird Al song that qualifies, but I can't think of one. ("White & Nerdy" could be considered to be about *scientists*.)
Expurgated version (Score:3, Funny)
Is there a version edited for rednecks?
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Yip! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Ug-dJrdmc [youtube.com]
Interesting piece of work! (Score:2)
I genuinely enjoyed this! A very clever and imaginative work of art, I'd say. Lyrics, music, and visuals... two thumbs-up, for sure!
Cosmos (Score:2)
---
Astronomy Feed [feeddistiller.com] @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]
Carl Sagan is amazingly inspiring (Score:3, Informative)
I was given the book Comet which he co-authored with Ann Druyan, and while you might think the subject matter smaller, the vision it showed for how we could travel to space and spread life between the stars was amazing. It showed there's more to do out there than invent a spaceship to go from world to world at - how we do not know - speeds far greater than light's. We can be the ancestors of life made to be out there. Panspermia might not be a fact now, but we can make it so. I think that's a beautiful goal to pursue.
Very nice (Score:4, Insightful)
To me though, that had the privilege to watch the original "Cosmos" series in my early teens, this video brings back found memories of a man that inspired me and planted the seed of curiosity in me.
I like this video. Not for the music or technical achievement, but for it's spirit.
It's still missing something (Score:2)
Yup. (Score:2)
This is absolutely fantastic.
Will it sell millions and millions? (Score:2)
I can't watch it yet (at work), but I hope (and expect) it has his "whoooop..... GAAAAAAAW" whale impression.
Need more Cowbell! (Score:2)
And some more "Billions and Billions"...
Too much time on my hands (Score:2)
"Someone with too much time on their hands..." quoth the Internet denizen with time enough for a Slashdot submission and a snarky comment.
It's the people who *don't* do anything you should be complaining about.
Another Tune Featuring Sagan (Score:2)
I wrote a tune early on this year featuring the dulcet tones of Carl Sagan.. This made me mp3 it up and post it online ...
please enjoy ....
http://www.ashgroveservices.com/dark_existance_feat_sagan.mp3 [ashgroveservices.com]
Nick ...
I don't care. (Score:5, Insightful)
It was worth watching.
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There are much better autotune videos out there:
Auto-Tune the News #2 [youtube.com]
I Was Like Um [youtube.com]
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Very likely. but how many of those fall under the umbrella of "News for Nerds"?
(Yes, I'm aware that /. frequently breaks that rule, but the point of the story isn't Auto-Tune. It's Sagan.)
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worth watching. not slow news at all. matter of fact, its much cooler than another 'lets toot the linux/FOSS horn' and the 'F to the RIAA' pitter patter that constantly resounds here.
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thanks for taking the time to listen to real hip hop! Stay Positive!
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The mpg on the creators site is a bit higher quality, but not much.
http://hinome.net/EFh9F10/galaxyrise.jpg [hinome.net]
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Don't be silly.
Carl Sagan is always on topic on Slashdot.
Cosmos was as profound and inspiring as TV gets, and a defining moment for an entire generation of nerds; any excuse to talk about it is welcome.
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And don't forget a beowulf cluster of Mae Ling Mak not touching this with a ten-foot Natalie Portman with hot grits....
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The fact the author of the video mentions auto-tune in the video's description is a good indication to the processing he used.
[J]
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While Autotuning is a form of a vocoder, I must point out that this was not, in fact, an autotuner, but just plainly a vocoder with the particular notes carried by a synth.
The difference being that autotuners attempt to use the same sound as the voice for a carrier, in order to keep it sounding like the singer. In this vocoder, the singer is only the modulator, and a synth is used as the carrier.
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You're not the first to think of Carl Smith [youtube.com]. (Or Agent Sagan, if you prefer.)
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The last time I heard anything like this, I was stationed outside of Istanbul.
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But if you watch the video, it's clear that the timing is altered to make Carl's phrasing match the tempo. I suppose they altered the timing as they wanted it for the whole video, and then used autotune to adjust the pitch as needed.