Reflections on the Errant Voices Conference, April 2022 Consider the adjective “errant.” The word might describe a misbehaving child careening through the galleries of the Uffizi in Florence, Italy, or a knight cresting the peak of a mountain in search of his dragon. An errant traveler might be pursuing a… Read More
What makes a voice sound beautiful, or meaningful, or authoritative? And what is at stake for singers when the vocal sounds associated with authority originated from a history of harm? On her most recent album, She Walks in Beauty (2021), singer Marianne Faithfull probes these questions by musically re-imagining the… Read More
Acoustic hailing devices (AHDs) are high-intensity directional sound systems that produce narrow sound beams with very loud, high sound pressure levels that can be aimed at particular locations: that is, directed to target specific auditors. They are optimized to project intelligible voice messages as well as impactful, attention-commanding warning and… Read More
When the German software company Celemony premiered the first market-ready version of Melodyne at the North American Music Merchants (NAMM) conference in Anaheim, California, in 2000, music software buyers and enthusiasts responded to the product tepidly, and with a bit of confusion. Melodyne’s engineering team had envisioned and designed the… Read More