It would be an overstatement to call it a hobby, because I only dabble rarely, but I like to play with digital audio manipulation with the open-source tool Audacity. I was experimenting today with the various Audacity filters and applying them to some of my mp3 songs. One of the filters allows you to simply play a song backward.
So I was playing various songs backward to hear the effect. In almost all cases it's a disaster. The sounds produced are very strange. Not 'exotic' strange, but migraine-headache strange. With one exception. I discovered by accident that bagpipe instrumentals sound perfectly natural when played backward. You can't tell that you're listening to the song in reverse. It sounds like it was written that way, but of course you get a completely different tune and experience when compared with the original song played forward.
My case in point is Amazing Grace performed on a series of bagpipes. It is worth noting that this only works when the song is played with 100% bagpipes--if there are drums, vocals, or any other instruments, the whole thing gets spoiled and sounds awful.
The backward-played song sounds quite nice to me. I wouldn't say that it's as awesome as the Amazing Grace tune, but you may be surprised how melodious it is. You might even like it.
Download the song and have a listen. Post here and tell me what you think.
1 comment:
That was awesome. What a great discovery. I now know I love bagpipes frontwards, backwards, and probably sideways...any way you can get them to me!
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