In the 70s, Cheech & Chong joked about playing Black Sabbath at 78rpm and seeing God. In the 80s (my punk rock days) I joked about playing The Sex Pistols at 16rpm and hearing Black Sabbath. Today the kids are all hypnotized by TikTok chipmunks. What a time to be alive!
This reminds me of the research that showed college students prefer the sound of heavily-compressed MP3 files to the original high-fidelity audio of the same music. People like what they're familiar with, even if it's demonstrably of lower quality.
Good point, but maybe something else is happening. People's attention spans are getting shorter all the time, and using the 'net rewires our brains. Maybe people are just getting dumber.
Hah, can you cite specific studies, or is that comment related to simple observation? For me the latter is simply provided by good old-fashioned empirical evidence.
It's not as bad as you think. (Eating bugs, not watching TikTok.) When I was in the army our squadron OC thought it would be amusing to send us on a "live-off-the-land" exercise (aka Operation Starvation).
Termites, toasted on a shovel are … OK, I guess, although you don't want to get too many of the soldiers. Witchetty grubs are actually pretty nice.
Gives the biggest dopamine hit in the smallest amount of time, likely why collections of sped up tiktok vids are doing big numbers on youtube. Part of the attention economy (shorter songs, shorter videos).
The sped-up chipmunk soul sampling was a trademark of Kanye's early sound, so maybe in a way this is the next logical progression of sampling? Instead of taking a snippet of a song to create a dance or hip-hop track, it's now channeled through a visual medium. This could be to establish a vibe or enhance the video.
I agree that this piece is missing a nod to hip hop for its use of sped up gospel, soul, and r&b samples, which were a potent primer for the now popular taste now demonstrated by TikTok users. Young people on TikTok (teens) were never really exposed to Alvin and the chipmunks, but have been saturated with hip hop aesthetics from a young age.
Though Kanye definitely popularised it, I'm not sure if he can take credit for 'chipmunk soul' method of pitched up sampling. One of the earliest examples of the technique is on LL Cool J's Around the Way Girl, released in 1990.
Predating TikTok, but also a facet of online culture, is the bizarre electronic genre 'nightcore', which is essentially existing tracks sped up and uploaded to YouTube with a pictures of anime characters. Here's an example of a nightcore remix of a Mike Oldfield track.
Reminds me of the "turntable wars" in the old top 40 AM radio days. If there were two competing radio stations, one would slightly speed up the songs so that they would sound worse on the other station. Then that station would retaliate by speeding up its songs a wee bit more. And so forth. The simplest way to do this would be to wrap one layer of splicing tape around the turntable capstan.
This is really interesting! I am well aware of the "loudness wars", but not of the "turntable wars". Do you know of any good resources where this is discussed? I tried doing a little searching, but I didn't come up with much.
If we're talking about the same phenomenon, "loudness wars" were more of an FM thing. A brilliant engineer in Brooklyn called Eric Small invented a device called an Optimod that really made an FM signal "pop" on the dial. Once one station in a market had one, then everyone had to have one.
Cumbia music, which for some time now is considered acceptable listening after decades of being dismissed and laughed at, has a sub genre calles ‘cumbia rebajada’ which is simply extremely slow versions of well known tracks. The result, somewhat foreseeably, is a feeling of it being more haunting and profound.
More to the point of the article, I think the whole speeding things up is more than a fad for the younger generations. I teach very young adults and the sound coming out of their phones is more often than not speeded up, not just the music in TikTok videos but also the audio messages they receive via WhatsApp and even podcasts, which they’ll steam through at doble speed so that they can get it done with and get back to wasting time on TikTok and WhatsApp.
Sometimes they will show me a documentary or podcast - because it’s relevant to their project or learning - which has the audio edited in a manner that there’s no breathing time for the speaker. These audios I always refuse to listen to.
On the other side of the same coin, at the beginning of each semester I receive an email from the special needs office of the university; until about three or four years ago they were usually empty, and occasionally would have one or two names of students with hearing difficulties or Asperger Syndromes. Now they contain an endless list of names with the same word next to them:
American CIA spyware is bad eonugh, CCP spyware is Hěn huài. In mainland China TikTok is a tool. In the West it's a weapon. Two completely different versions. Like WeChat and Weibo. Yeah, they look the same but they aren't.
I've learned from my Chinese friends who used to work for the CCP media that Tik-Tok is a giant data-collection agency that focuses on influencing the minds of the youth - particularly kids in the US. As to where are all that US data goes, well, I don't want to speculate because I suspect it's a very dark place.
One possibly salient aspect of sped-up music is that the attack and delay of each note or phrase is compressed, resulting in a 'tighter', 'cleaner' or more 'polished' sound. But I think there's a fundamental impatience at the heart of the phenomenon; the commenter who mentioned dopamine delivery is probably on the right track. And the data pointing to burn-out supports the idea too.
But have you heard the slowed down 33 1/3 RPM version of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”??
'Jolene' slowed down bears a striking resemblance to Kansas' hit 'Dust in the Wind' :)
A gothic masterpiece
i always knew dolly had a touch of bauhaus in her.
In the 70s, Cheech & Chong joked about playing Black Sabbath at 78rpm and seeing God. In the 80s (my punk rock days) I joked about playing The Sex Pistols at 16rpm and hearing Black Sabbath. Today the kids are all hypnotized by TikTok chipmunks. What a time to be alive!
This reminds me of the research that showed college students prefer the sound of heavily-compressed MP3 files to the original high-fidelity audio of the same music. People like what they're familiar with, even if it's demonstrably of lower quality.
Good point, but maybe something else is happening. People's attention spans are getting shorter all the time, and using the 'net rewires our brains. Maybe people are just getting dumber.
There's a lot of research supporting that position!
Hah, can you cite specific studies, or is that comment related to simple observation? For me the latter is simply provided by good old-fashioned empirical evidence.
Lex, For sure! I've been reading 'The Shallows' by Nick Carr, about that very subject, but I keep starting and stopping! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9778945-the-shallows
The only thing I hate more than chipmunk music are Celine Dion and Mariah Carey.
I think eating bugs (probably inevitable) would beat looking at TikTok, but I've done neither.
It's not as bad as you think. (Eating bugs, not watching TikTok.) When I was in the army our squadron OC thought it would be amusing to send us on a "live-off-the-land" exercise (aka Operation Starvation).
Termites, toasted on a shovel are … OK, I guess, although you don't want to get too many of the soldiers. Witchetty grubs are actually pretty nice.
Gives the biggest dopamine hit in the smallest amount of time, likely why collections of sped up tiktok vids are doing big numbers on youtube. Part of the attention economy (shorter songs, shorter videos).
I'm waiting for a speed up version of a Verdi opera.
The sped-up chipmunk soul sampling was a trademark of Kanye's early sound, so maybe in a way this is the next logical progression of sampling? Instead of taking a snippet of a song to create a dance or hip-hop track, it's now channeled through a visual medium. This could be to establish a vibe or enhance the video.
I agree that this piece is missing a nod to hip hop for its use of sped up gospel, soul, and r&b samples, which were a potent primer for the now popular taste now demonstrated by TikTok users. Young people on TikTok (teens) were never really exposed to Alvin and the chipmunks, but have been saturated with hip hop aesthetics from a young age.
Though Kanye definitely popularised it, I'm not sure if he can take credit for 'chipmunk soul' method of pitched up sampling. One of the earliest examples of the technique is on LL Cool J's Around the Way Girl, released in 1990.
Predating TikTok, but also a facet of online culture, is the bizarre electronic genre 'nightcore', which is essentially existing tracks sped up and uploaded to YouTube with a pictures of anime characters. Here's an example of a nightcore remix of a Mike Oldfield track.
https://youtu.be/xdSB2lapJ5E
Oops, I just made a redundant post above. Great minds?
Reminds me of the "turntable wars" in the old top 40 AM radio days. If there were two competing radio stations, one would slightly speed up the songs so that they would sound worse on the other station. Then that station would retaliate by speeding up its songs a wee bit more. And so forth. The simplest way to do this would be to wrap one layer of splicing tape around the turntable capstan.
This is really interesting! I am well aware of the "loudness wars", but not of the "turntable wars". Do you know of any good resources where this is discussed? I tried doing a little searching, but I didn't come up with much.
I suspect this is one of those unwritten practices, but I did find an article in Billboard discussing it, though in a much later era: https://books.google.com/books?id=pw0EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA89&dq=radio%20speed%20up%20turntables&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q=radio%20speed%20up%20turntables&f=false
It was definitely a thing. I was a practitioner.
If we're talking about the same phenomenon, "loudness wars" were more of an FM thing. A brilliant engineer in Brooklyn called Eric Small invented a device called an Optimod that really made an FM signal "pop" on the dial. Once one station in a market had one, then everyone had to have one.
Thanks for that additional information and resource! I really appreciate it.
Cumbia music, which for some time now is considered acceptable listening after decades of being dismissed and laughed at, has a sub genre calles ‘cumbia rebajada’ which is simply extremely slow versions of well known tracks. The result, somewhat foreseeably, is a feeling of it being more haunting and profound.
https://youtu.be/HOIX3cQ4dik
More to the point of the article, I think the whole speeding things up is more than a fad for the younger generations. I teach very young adults and the sound coming out of their phones is more often than not speeded up, not just the music in TikTok videos but also the audio messages they receive via WhatsApp and even podcasts, which they’ll steam through at doble speed so that they can get it done with and get back to wasting time on TikTok and WhatsApp.
Sometimes they will show me a documentary or podcast - because it’s relevant to their project or learning - which has the audio edited in a manner that there’s no breathing time for the speaker. These audios I always refuse to listen to.
On the other side of the same coin, at the beginning of each semester I receive an email from the special needs office of the university; until about three or four years ago they were usually empty, and occasionally would have one or two names of students with hearing difficulties or Asperger Syndromes. Now they contain an endless list of names with the same word next to them:
Anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety
…
Speeding up things reminds me of old Benny Hill skits. It's basically one person chasing another person, but it gets funnier because it's sped up.
American CIA spyware is bad eonugh, CCP spyware is Hěn huài. In mainland China TikTok is a tool. In the West it's a weapon. Two completely different versions. Like WeChat and Weibo. Yeah, they look the same but they aren't.
I've learned from my Chinese friends who used to work for the CCP media that Tik-Tok is a giant data-collection agency that focuses on influencing the minds of the youth - particularly kids in the US. As to where are all that US data goes, well, I don't want to speculate because I suspect it's a very dark place.
It's been studied. Some of the studies are cited in 'The Shallows,' by Nick Carr. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9778945-the-shallows
i quite liked that book. i should read it again sometime.
"We may weep at the tale of Oedipus, but if Sophocles compressed his story into twenty seconds, the audience would be rolling in the Athenian aisles."
See also Reduced Shakespeare Company.
One possibly salient aspect of sped-up music is that the attack and delay of each note or phrase is compressed, resulting in a 'tighter', 'cleaner' or more 'polished' sound. But I think there's a fundamental impatience at the heart of the phenomenon; the commenter who mentioned dopamine delivery is probably on the right track. And the data pointing to burn-out supports the idea too.