Sunday, December 5, 2010

Identify This Bird

My sleeping hours shifted several timezones recently, which had the unexpected delight of exposing me to the calls of wildlife that apparently only make noise at 3am.


Normally I consider myself a fair hand at identifying the local bird calls, but this one has me stumped.  Possibly a cockatoo?  Those aren't usually nocturnal, but it's about the only thing I could think of that would make this horrendous sound.  Does anyone know what this bird is?

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Throwing Your Voice

I've been meaning to get this blog going for a while - now I actually have the time!  Obviously, the focus will be around the three things I find most interesting - sound, writing, and games.  Hopefully I'll be able to put up something about some personal projects I've been working on here too.
On the subject of sound, last night, I had the opportunity to go see David Strassman, the ventriloquist almost everyone in Australia has probably seen at least once in their lives.  He's unusual in that he actually performs out in all of the regional locations instead of just the capital cities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB3g7PcF1vs&feature=related

With ventriloquism - and puppeteering in general - seemingly an almost dying art, it was rather amazing to watch and listen to someone at the top of their craft.  Voice acting is a difficult discipline in itself - to add to that throwing your voice all around the stage while operating a puppet and controlling your own reactions is enough to send your head spinning.

There was one point when he had three puppets answer simultaneously.  It would be interesting to know precisely how he did that - it must have been pre-recorded, but the cue timing was so perfect.  (Once after a particularly long day at work I actually stopped and spent a good twenty seconds trying to speak in stereo before remembering that it's impossible.)  For that matter, one of the puppets had a synthesized voice - how to cleanly switch the effect on and off when the voice is coming from the same source and so rapidly switching back and forth?  Or when that source is on the other side of the stage?  Or was it purely vocal chord acrobatics?

It was really nice to see that kind of mastery of an art still alive, with only just enough smoke and mirrors to make the puppets seem independently alive.  We become so used to performing these tricks digitally, but just like orchestral performances, no matter how excellent the virtual instrument it will never quite be able to catch the same warmth of tone of the real thing.