"Sometimes behaves so strangely"

If you read my first blog post, you would have seen that I want to become a radio producer, so I figured it was about time I made a post about some audio-related stories. This first story is one I first heard on WNYC's Radiolab. Radiolab is a radio program broadcast on NPR in America and is available as a free podcast for the rest of the world. Chances are, if you continue to read this blog, that you will see a lot more posts based on Radiolab stories. The reason for this is because they are no small part of my inspiration for radio production. You know how bassists may look up to Victor Wooten as the apex of bass technique, or some guitarists fantasize about standing on stage next to Joe Satriani and his beautifully bald head? Well, that's how I feel about this show. If I had the opportunity to work for them, I'd sell my family home for plane tickets.

Pictured: Beauty incarnate. The bald kind.

Not Pictured: Happy fingertips

But anyway, this somehow leads me to this first story. I'm sure Radiolab would do a better job at explaining it than I ever could. If you listen to the first five minutes of the audio clip below, you'll get the point. I'd recommend you listen to the whole show sometime, but this first five minutes is all we need.

If you don't feel a particular desire to listen to said audio file, I'll do my best to explain what it is about.

Diana Deutsch is a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. She is a perceptual and cognitive Psychologist who is a lead researcher in the Psychology of music. She has done a lot of research on the nature of absolute pitch, discovering that amongst people whose first language was a tonal language (languages where words can have more than one meaning based on the tone of the word), 75% of them had absolute pitch, whereas amongst people who had languages such as English as their first language, only 25% of them had perfect pitch. (If you want to know more about this research, you could look here). Another very interesting point raised in this episode is that no matter what language they speak, all mothers, all around the world, talk to their children in the exact same way.

Deutsch has also made two CDs based on audio illusions, which leads us smoothly to the main point of this article. Listen to this: http://www.acoustics.org/press/156th/Sound_Demo_1.mp3

Did you hear it? The story goes, that one day, while editing the first track, an introduction, to Deutsch's second CD, she had this particular part of the track on loop while she went to make some tea. She completely forgot that she had left this looping and, while drinking her tea, she began hearing something really odd. What was she hearing?

This.

She realised it started to sound like music. If you go back and listen to that track, you will see what I mean. It seems like a completely normal sentence until it comes to this phrase and it sounds like she suddenly bursts into song. If you didn't hear it the first time, go back and listen to it now, you'll wonder how you missed it the first time, it seems so obvious when you know it's there. It was this discovery, of how speech can "sometimes behave so strangely", that lead Deutsch to discover the link between language and absolute pitch.

Oh, I probably should have warned you at the start of this post: once you hear the musical quality of the speech, it's impossible to unhear it. I first heard it a few weeks ago and ever since it has been stuck in my head, it is a seriously catchy tune!

For more info on Diana Deutsch, her research, and her illusions, click here

For more info on Radiolab, click here

Can you hear the music? Could you hear it before it was pointed out to you? Let me know! Leave a comment below the blog, you don't even need to sign up or anything!

Choosing Blog Names

A name is an important thing.

Names are how we recognise people and objects, if something doesn't have a name then it doesn't really exist, does it? Humans so far have not found anything they can't put a name to.

Names have long been thought to hold some sort of magic, whether that be "Yeah, he looks like a Robert to me", or the belief that a witch could place a spell on you if she knows your name. Names give value to the world around us and help us to contain the abundance of information we see around us. For example, in stead of saying "The giant ball of fire above us which gives us light and heat went behind the mass of soil, rock, and water we are standing on blocking the light to the big rock in the sky that appears at night", we say "There was a lunar eclipse". Of course, that analogy breaks down when you realise that fire, light, soil, rock, water, night, and sky are all names.

It is this necessity for a name that accurately encompasses what this blog stands for, and what it aims to be, its very essence and personality, that I have wrestled with over the past few days. It lead me to a few choices:

• Dreams and Other Inaccuracies
• Inaccurate Interpretations of The World
• Minor Discrepancies
• And (suggested by Michael Steele) "To McKee or not to be"

I really liked "Dreams and other Inaccuracies" and "Inaccurate Interpretations of The World" as they pretty much summed up what my plans for this site are: My incredibly biased, and most likely wrong, view of the world through the eyes of a dreamer. And although calling myself a dreamer is admittedly very pretentious, I mean it in the way Scroobius Pip means it in the song "Waiting for the beat to kick in": A lot of my poems and writings seem to start with me waking up, or being in a dream, or dream like state. Now, this implies a certain level of abstraction in my work.. You might say I'm keeping it surreal but.. I'd rather you didn't. Fact is. I sleep a lot. It's as simple as that. I like sleepin' man. It's a nice place to be.

They both seemed a bit long though, so it got shortened to Inaccurate Interpretations.

But without further ado, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Nathan McKee. Nathan meaning "God has given" and McKee meaning "Fiery One". I am a media student aspiring to be a Radio Producer. I live in Northern Ireland and, although I don't intend to live here forever, I'm happy enough with it for now. I play bass guitar, my ultimate goal with the bass is to just be able to make people groove, the kind of groove you can't escape for days after. And to get a Rickenbacker 4003 bass and possibly a Fender Jazz Bass. Which leads me to another point, I love music. Just music in general, I'll give anything a listen to. I like reading books and graphic novels. I enjoy comic books but I don't get to read them all that often. I'm slowly starting to enjoy TV shows more than Films.

I hope you've enjoyed my blog. I'm not going to give a time frame for my next post cause I don't know when next I'll have something interesting to share.

Bye for now,

From the Fiery One.