Feb 2022 electronicish
I needed some quick background music for a class video on Alan Turing, just about 30 seconds worth, so I did the synth things on this, and then decided that I could expand it a bit. Because I have never used a vocoder! Drums are a LABS kit, synths are the venerable Dead Duck Audio DJX10, vocoder the Vocovee, ALL FREE STUFF.
Hello there
I hope you are well today
I have only one question for you
Am I a human being
Or am I a bit of computer software?
Alan Turing was a lovely man
And they killed him
And they killed him
Alan Turing was a lovely man
And they killed him
So I wrote him this song
It’s pretty simple
But it’s from the heart
Am I a human being
Or am I a bit of computer software?
I hope you are well today.
Jean-Paul Sartre once said
We choose our own dead
We choose our own dead
And that would be
Alan Turing.
That’s why
I have only one question for you
Am I a human being
Or am I a bit of computer software?
I’m just pretending to be a computer
To be a computer
@elainedimasi Mar 2022
Did this machine pronounce it "it's pretty _simply_" ?! Amazing how easy it is to let what I see override what I hear. ... And if it was done deliberately, I applaud!
@guatecoop Feb 2022
Electronica?!? You did this so well. That vocorder effect is really great, as are the synths....I'm going to download those when I get home! Great results here. Well done!
@metalfoot Feb 2022
Wow. I like this new electronica persona you've come up with musically.
@beat Feb 2022
;]. A joyride to work. Thx!
@tseaver Feb 2022
Nice write: fun to turn the Test on its head for a tribute to its author. The synthy vibe is perfect for that intent.
@elainedimasi Feb 2022
Ok, there are 2 very cool discoveries here for me listening. The first is how much "emotion" comes from voice cadence (syllable timing) and pitch (vocoded only, as much as possible?) in a song even if the voice is trying to be uninflected. The second is how much impact a phrase like "And that would be.." works with our expectations to blur the line between this human being and this bit of computer software. V. cool.
@headfirstonly Feb 2022
This is absolutely lovely. And I say this as someone who actually had an office in the Mansion at Bletchley Park in the 1980s, back when it was a British Telecom training centre. Back then, the scale of Turing's contribution to the war effort and the history of computing was only just beginning to be appreciated. R V Jones's "Most Secret War" had only just been published (I remember watching the BBC series, and being astonished). The book is well worth tracking down.
Did you know that the Imitation Game, Turing's original version of what is now known as the Turing Test, was actually concerned with whether it would be possible to tell whether a hidden respondent was a man or a woman? Given what we now know of Turing's life, it massively opens up the context of that legendary paper...