Endless Jingling
December 16, 2014 8:17 AM   Subscribe

Endless Jingling [via mefi projects] cortex made this. how do we stop him. why would he do this. mods please delete cortex
posted by Greg Nog (180 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



 
You are a bad bad man. Endless coal in stocking.
posted by gwint at 8:20 AM on December 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


unsubscribe
posted by poffin boffin at 8:21 AM on December 16, 2014 [20 favorites]


One of my loops had to do with a "glistening Jesus."

RESULT!
posted by Kitteh at 8:21 AM on December 16, 2014 [9 favorites]


I enjoyed the snippet that was just "little Lord Jesus no." That song is normally terrible, so a deep feeling of dread really improves it.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 8:22 AM on December 16, 2014 [14 favorites]


It does not currently make noise on iPhones. Sorry You're welcome, iPhones.
posted by pemberkins at 8:22 AM on December 16, 2014 [8 favorites]


This is great, though it is currently including songs the title suggests it should not be, like my Deck Lang Emmanuel getting some Jingle Bell Rock in there.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:23 AM on December 16, 2014


"I'm/white/bushels of fun/glistening."
posted by ChuraChura at 8:23 AM on December 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


Lennon or McCartney or crazy endless jingling elf
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 8:23 AM on December 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


I always knew cortex like iphone users best.
posted by rtha at 8:23 AM on December 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


I have a feeling my office is going to play Endless Jingling Chicken today....
posted by elwoodwiles at 8:24 AM on December 16, 2014


My first instinct is that dude clearly needs a hobby but then I realize this... is his hobby and I think dude clearly needs to take up meditation or something.

Also, this is awesome. But it must stop.

Awesome.
posted by bondcliff at 8:25 AM on December 16, 2014 [7 favorites]


flagged

as fantastic
posted by capricorn at 8:25 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


I love this. So much.

(but crossfades pls)
posted by uncleozzy at 8:26 AM on December 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


Fever dreams are the best Xmas presents.
posted by delfin at 8:26 AM on December 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


No, the sudden jumps are fine, perfect, maybe. The clicking when the samples miss zero crossings is irritating.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:29 AM on December 16, 2014 [7 favorites]


.../...
here we come a / ransom captive
hold me / send you a
happy new / waits for you

posted by Dr-Baa at 8:33 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


I shared this on Facebook and already lost three friends.
posted by bondcliff at 8:33 AM on December 16, 2014 [74 favorites]


Cortex and Greg Nog are bad persons and should be made to feel bad together.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:34 AM on December 16, 2014 [16 favorites]


The clicking when the samples miss zero crossings is irritating.

It is! I don't know a good solution that doesn't complicate things enormously, but I would welcome one. The no-zero-crossings issue comes from, I think, the fact that I'm picking random whole-second intervals of each song to play back to back, and of course because my recordings didn't all end up with zero crossings at each precise second the juxtaposition creates pops some time.

If there's a super simple way to induce zero crossings in real time or otherwise sneak in a super rapid non-obvious crossfade or whatever, I'm all for it. But for what is mostly a hack at heart I wanted to avoid doing anything overly complicated with it.
posted by cortex at 8:34 AM on December 16, 2014


You can still get artifacts if you only break on zero crossings. Not as loud though. But a crossfade solves both the non-zero-crossing caused pops, and the frequency juxtaposition caused artifacts too.
posted by idiopath at 8:41 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


I find myself getting really excited when I get 'el-NOEL'. It's like the FIIIIIIIVE Gold Rings of the jingles.

Go Tell it First Syne is a beaut. I wish there were a way to link direct to it.
posted by AFII at 8:41 AM on December 16, 2014


It's A William Burroughs Christmas, Charlie Brown
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 8:43 AM on December 16, 2014 [10 favorites]


A David Fincher Very Special Nightmare Christmas

Appropriate.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:43 AM on December 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


Cortex and Greg Nog are bad persons and should be made to feel bad together.

Being bad is where Greg Nog is a Viking.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:44 AM on December 16, 2014 [16 favorites]


Cool! I was just thinking that with all the Christmas songs about drums and bells, there could be an all-onomatopoeia version of this. It would go, rummy tum tum / ring-ting-tingle-ing / pa-rum-pa-pum-pum / ding dong / rooty toot toot / ring-a-ling / pop pop pop . . . and so on.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 8:45 AM on December 16, 2014 [7 favorites]


Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to click that link so soon after drinking a refreshing mug of ayahuasca nog.
posted by slkinsey at 8:46 AM on December 16, 2014 [15 favorites]


that's the jingle bell, that's the jingle bell ... birth!
posted by mean square error at 8:52 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


cruel/boy
sky shepherd/Stephen.
posted by AFII at 8:53 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


*gibbers*
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:00 AM on December 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


the best time of the most wonderful time of the Christmas!
posted by thelonius at 9:00 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


oho this is the best christmas carol i've heard in years!
posted by rebent at 9:02 AM on December 16, 2014


Seriously, if my Facebook feed is any indication, this is going viral. Two of my friends have already shared it, saying things like "this is the worst thing ever" and their friends are in turn sharing it.

Hopefully all the traffic will crash Cortex's site and bring an end to this horrible, horrible thing.
posted by bondcliff at 9:03 AM on December 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


Well done.
It really seemed to like Israel for me.
Is-rael/Is-rael/Is-rael...
posted by chococat at 9:04 AM on December 16, 2014



God Rest Ye White Faithful
joy, oh / Satan's power when / save us all from / Christmas
posted by mean square error at 9:04 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


Jesus, that's disturbing.
posted by heyho at 9:08 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


omg, I never realized realize how grim some of these carol lyrics are until they were taken out of context:
Go Tell It Excelsis Discordia
God / damned / floating whorehouse / death is / the navigator

wtf??
jk. I need to get back to work.
posted by mean square error at 9:11 AM on December 16, 2014 [10 favorites]


tight/oria
o...
oooo-
o/de
posted by symbioid at 9:12 AM on December 16, 2014


This is great, though it is currently including songs the title suggests it should not be, like my Deck Lang Emmanuel getting some Jingle Bell Rock in there.

Yeah, the way it's working under the hood right now is that it selects at least three songs out of the three dozen available, grabs hand-coded title bits from each of those to create the new title, then maybe grabs 1-3 additional songs but doesn't put 'em in the title. I felt like upping the variety of source material a bit produced better results.

Also, if you want to become a xmas hacker, you can access a few undocumented control variables from the javascript console on your browser: skipchance, loopchance, backchance. Each is a probability value between 0.0 and 1.0 representing the chance that that mechanism will be applied. If you go to the JS console and type e.g. "skipchance = 0" and hit enter, it'll alter the script's odds there for the current page load.

- skipchance is the chance that the script will jump to a new random song and segment.
- loopchance is the chance that the script will play the same segment again.
- backchance is the chance that the script will jump backward one segment in the current song.

They're applied in order, so if skipchance fails then it'll test loopchance, and if that fails it'll test backchance, and if that fails it'll just play the next segment in sequence in the song.

The default values are
var skipchance = 0.6;
var loopchance = 0.3;
var backchance = 0.6;


So if you set skipchance = 0, loopchance = 0, backchance = 0, you'll get an endless loop of one full song at random; 0, 1, 0 will give you an endless loop of a single segment; 0, 0, 1 will give you an endless backward rendition of a song; 1, 0, 0 will yield unadulterated random madness.

I might sit down and actually just expose these as controls at some point but by yesterday morning I'd been buried in this thing for a whole weekend and just needed to be done for a bit.

Go Tell it First Syne is a beaut. I wish there were a way to link direct to it.

Yeah, that's another "maybe I'll add that" thing. Either to be able to save a combo you chanced across as a parameterized URL, or to just have actual checkboxes/dropdowns on the page to select specific combos. Though I also like the ephemeral chance of it as is.
posted by cortex at 9:12 AM on December 16, 2014 [20 favorites]


I am a little high on Theraflu right now so this is AMAZING.
posted by jenjenc at 9:15 AM on December 16, 2014 [17 favorites]


Huh it doesn't work at all for me.
posted by kenko at 9:16 AM on December 16, 2014


Being bad is where Greg Nog is a Viking.

you son of a
posted by Hoopo at 9:16 AM on December 16, 2014


This feels like it fits oddly well as a soundtrack to the Clickhole "Are You Ready For Christmas?" quiz.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 9:17 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


What Christmas carol has the lyric "Ransom captive" in it? And what does that mean?
posted by ChuraChura at 9:18 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


"Come on all ye snowman" was the title I liked best.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 9:18 AM on December 16, 2014 [7 favorites]


ChuraChura, it's O Come Emmanuel. The full line is "and ransom captive Israel."
posted by quaking fajita at 9:20 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


ChuraChura, that appears to be from O Come O Come Emmanuel, and it'd be "ransom captive Israel."
posted by gusandrews at 9:20 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


herp derp jinx!
posted by gusandrews at 9:21 AM on December 16, 2014


What Christmas carol mentions Satan??
posted by EndsOfInvention at 9:21 AM on December 16, 2014


O Come All Ye Faithful, I think.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:21 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Man we must have totally sang the radio edits in Sunday school.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 9:22 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Actually, it's God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman - sorry.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:23 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


To be fair "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is an Advent song not a Christmas song, but the fight to keep Christmas where it belongs (between after dusk on December 24th and Epiphany) has been lost and everything is a mess now.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:23 AM on December 16, 2014 [8 favorites]


This is all very good, but I really prefer some of the old-timey carols:


The boar's head in hand bare I
Bedecked with bays and rosemary
And I pray for my masters be merry
Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Reddens laudes Domino!
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Reddens laudes Domino!

The boar's head as I understand
Was once some guy whose name was Stan
And thus bedecked with a gay garland
Let us servire crudio!

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Reddens laudes Domino!
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Reddens laudes Domino!

Our steward hath provided this
In horror of the great abyss
Which on this day to be served is
In submersii altrio!

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Reddens laudes Domino!
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Reddens laudes Domino!

posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:24 AM on December 16, 2014 [21 favorites]


God Rest Ye Gentlemen has it in the first verse: "save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray", etc. Though cut it off and mash it up with something else and you end up with e.g. "Santa Claus is / Satan's power / glistening, and / glistening, and / ..."

(For most of the songs I only recorded a verse and a chorus or so; I was more interested in variety than completionism, so doing 20 or so minutes of 36 carols was more what I had in mind than a solid hour or whatever.)
posted by cortex at 9:25 AM on December 16, 2014 [10 favorites]


EndsOfInvention:

"God rest ye merry, gentlemen" ; "...to save us all from Satan's power when we have gone astray, oh tidings of comfort and joy."
posted by jeff-o-matic at 9:25 AM on December 16, 2014


Huh. That was definitely one that escaped my secular upbringing, during which my formerly-Orthodox Jewish mother was much more enthusiastic about Christmas decorations and singing than my formerly-Methodist, now-atheist father.
posted by ChuraChura at 9:26 AM on December 16, 2014


The little vibrato totally sells the "too much espresso in the North Pole coffeshop cocoa lattes" feel of the thing. (It reminds me of the "Honey Bear [SLYT]" video, in fact.)

"Christmas is going to be a lot more jittery in 2014!"

LOVE THIS.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:26 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


bondcliff: I shared this on Facebook and already lost three friends.

See? It's a Christmas miracle! And you didn't even thank Cortex. Sheesh.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:27 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


If there's a super simple way to induce zero crossings in real time or otherwise sneak in a super rapid non-obvious crossfade or whatever, I'm all for it. But for what is mostly a hack at heart I wanted to avoid doing anything overly complicated with it.

Yeah, I'm sure there is (a cursory search suggests that the dev version of SoundJS might let you tween sounds), but it's probably not worth the effort for something that's kind of supposed to be irritating.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:28 AM on December 16, 2014


This really highlights that The Twelve Days of Christmas is indistinguishable from SEO spam.
posted by pb at 9:29 AM on December 16, 2014 [12 favorites]


This is pretty much what America sounds like from Thanksgiving through New Years.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:30 AM on December 16, 2014 [9 favorites]


Santa Claus comes to say your prayers
here comes Santa Claus o'er the plains
in excelsis exile
posted by anthom at 9:32 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


FAN TASTIC.
posted by vrakatar at 9:37 AM on December 16, 2014


Pairs nicely with a little Hell Interface. V/Vm would approve.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:40 AM on December 16, 2014


I thought this was going to be actual endless seamless jingling and I am disappoint. If you are like me, here are thing you might like.

- Jingle Bells Ten Hours
- Jingle Cats Ten Hours
- Tibetan Bowls Ten Hours
- Ten Hours Hypnotoad

cortex, please open that envelope I left you on your desk that says "In case of disappointing emergency"
posted by jessamyn at 9:42 AM on December 16, 2014 [35 favorites]


jessamyn: "cortex, please open that envelope I left you on your desk that says "In case of disappointing emergency""

This reads like a weird combination of Hari Seldon and my dad.
posted by boo_radley at 9:45 AM on December 16, 2014 [22 favorites]


O gods it starts to sound like Jello Biafra after a while.
posted by vrakatar at 9:49 AM on December 16, 2014 [6 favorites]


> Huh it doesn't work at all for me

Technically? Or on a spiritual level?
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:53 AM on December 16, 2014 [8 favorites]


Comfort and
Comfort and
Comfort and
Stephen


I feel madness approaching.
posted by specialagentwebb at 9:55 AM on December 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


If you zoom in very very far at the beginning and end of the clips and do a "fade out" in a wave editor, that should get rid of the clicking without getting rid of the jump cuttery.
posted by en forme de poire at 9:56 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Followed closely by:
When the snow lay Stephen
I wanna wish you Stephen
Comfort and Stephen
Satan's power when Stephen

posted by specialagentwebb at 9:57 AM on December 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


All I want for Christmas is my
round yon virgin
reindeer

posted by Pallas Athena at 9:58 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is pretty much what America sounds like from Thanksgiving through New Years.

If you add in the sound of small children shrieking either with glee or outrage in the background it's basically indistinguishable from a trip to the mall in December.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:58 AM on December 16, 2014


No sound for me in Chrome/Win7.
posted by Fnarf at 10:01 AM on December 16, 2014


This has made my day so much better.
posted by minsies at 10:11 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


There's no such thing as / Grandpa / Grandpa / Grandpa / Satan's Power

O_o
posted by delfin at 10:17 AM on December 16, 2014 [10 favorites]


Wow: an engineer just burst into my working area and raven-screamed what are you playing, while actually digging furrows into his cheeks with his fingers. Don't think I've ever seen that happen in real life. I think it was the repeated "feliz-navi, feliz-navi, feliz-navi-----town" that drove him over the edge.

He has six children and his nerves are a little frayed this time of year. . .

I'm sorry, Cortex, I momentarily took credit because I just had to reply, "A Christmas mix I made for your kids!"
posted by barchan at 10:25 AM on December 16, 2014 [46 favorites]


I was with Jessamyn: wasn't there an endless Cortext drumroll? Google-fu fails.

Not that this isn't the most wonderful horrible thing I've come across in a long time.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 10:26 AM on December 16, 2014


DON WE NOW OUR LA LA LA
DON WE NOW OUR LA LA LA
DON WE NOW OUR IA IA IA
posted by scrump at 10:29 AM on December 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


Yeah, it seems like you could just run the clips through something like Audacity and have it apply a 5ms fade in/out to eliminate the clicks without going to the extra trouble of implementing real crossfading (which would throw off the timing unless you padded each clip a bit, no?)
posted by contraption at 10:30 AM on December 16, 2014


Yeah, this is not good. I've learned that if you reload there's about a 1/10 chance that you will open a dimensional portal to other realms if you let it play through its incantation, and each of these realms apparently has about a 1/1 chance of being a place filled with too much fire, headcrabs, flying brain-hungry metroids and fleshly, skinless cacodemons projectile vomiting flaming teeth and other pleasant things.

So... I'm headed down to the library to open this page on every computer I can get my hands on. Good luck, Earth!
posted by loquacious at 10:30 AM on December 16, 2014 [22 favorites]


This is so, so, so good. It is filling me up with joy on a day I really needed joy. I'm going to cry. Thank you.
posted by The Minotaur at 10:30 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


Now look what you've done, you made The Minotaur cry!
posted by jessamyn at 10:33 AM on December 16, 2014 [10 favorites]


When I was a kid at Catholic school our hymnals were ones someone had typed up and mimeographed. The lyrics for Deck the Halls read, in part:

Fa la la la la, etc.

... and so that's what we sang. "Fa la la la la, et cetera!"

This reminds me of that.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:34 AM on December 16, 2014 [10 favorites]


cortex made this

Christ, what an asshole.
posted by ElDiabloConQueso at 10:41 AM on December 16, 2014 [11 favorites]


I just reloaded to "Grandma Got Santa Wonderland" and my wifi cut out in protest.
posted by deludingmyself at 10:51 AM on December 16, 2014


I got an amazing song called Have A World Tree that keeps repeating say your prayers and admonishes

how cold and drear / O Christmas tree
all are merry and / only green when summer's here
posted by oulipian at 10:52 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


This is indistinguishable from the pandora mix that is on most of the day in my dental office.
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:52 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


My god this is horrifying.
posted by gaspode at 10:55 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Some of these combinations remind me of songs from the movie Frank.

Also did Cortex preload the song "O come my two front halls" which includes, among other gruesome lyrics, the lyrics "all I want for Christmas is deck the halls with ransom captive" as an appeal to get a Christmas song into the show Hannibal?
posted by barchan at 10:55 AM on December 16, 2014 [6 favorites]


I do like "Frosty the / snowman / is a snowman / is a snowman / is a snowman."
posted by deludingmyself at 10:58 AM on December 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


This is just so ... horrible.
posted by jeffamaphone at 11:19 AM on December 16, 2014


I think it's beginning to generate death metal lyrics now:

since we've no God
sleep the dreamless
troll the ancient lie


Happy Holidays, everyone!
posted by anthom at 11:19 AM on December 16, 2014 [7 favorites]


I can't wait to play this for the office holiday potluck tomorrow.
posted by rhapsodie at 11:21 AM on December 16, 2014


thumpity thump thump / to the shepherd
hung where you can / hung where you can see


Oh my.
posted by nicodine at 11:23 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


[this is good]
posted by Fezboy! at 11:24 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Angels Merry on High

I kind of feel like a head's up would have explained a lot.
posted by Room 641-A at 11:30 AM on December 16, 2014


all I want for Christmas is my / all I want for Christmas is my / -dad

*sniffle*
posted by Metroid Baby at 11:32 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


This is the song that plays in the ruins of jingle bell square.
posted by The Whelk at 11:37 AM on December 16, 2014 [10 favorites]


10 lords a-leaping/10 lords a-leaping/10 lords a-leaping/10 LORDS A-LEAPING
posted by JHarris at 11:37 AM on December 16, 2014


Don we now our/ Satan's power/ Fa la la la la/ la la la la
posted by tau_ceti at 11:42 AM on December 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


Have a cup of branches.
Not branches!

posted by Naberius at 11:43 AM on December 16, 2014


The first person who manages to actually sneak this on to a retail store sound system wins my undying awe and admiration. Bonus points if no one notices.
posted by gingerbeer at 11:46 AM on December 16, 2014 [13 favorites]


I can't listen right now (work) but please tell me Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" is in here somewhere.
posted by maryr at 11:48 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


The lyrics to "Santa Got Run Over By a Syne" include "All I want for Christmas is my / mind."

Appropriate.
posted by deludingmyself at 11:49 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


"You and your Christmas we angels o jingle."

It's like it's trying to communicate with me.
posted by BlueJae at 11:55 AM on December 16, 2014


This is great man!!!
posted by rubadub at 11:56 AM on December 16, 2014


fa la la la la, la / fa la la la la, la
here we/ here we
Steven/ Feast of Steven

la la la / -el
fu- / -el
fa la la la la, la / angels sing

ಠ_ಠ
posted by boo_radley at 11:57 AM on December 16, 2014


The funny thing is, I was just thinking how all the Christmassy songs have the same basic structure and tempo and instruments you could just throw in nonsense lyrics and it would still scan as a Christmas song.

And it looks like I'm right!
posted by The Whelk at 11:58 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


Request for mods. I need to be able to favorite a post more than once. Like a lot more than once.
posted by Twain Device at 11:59 AM on December 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


Mine turned into a Dental Plan/Lisa Needs Braces bit but with Gay Apparel/Came in Sight.
posted by almostmanda at 11:59 AM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]



No wait, I get it now.

Cortex, I'm buying you a copy of Vocaloid for Christmas.
posted by boo_radley at 12:00 PM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


Cortex, I hope you have a lot of bandwidth.
posted by elizilla at 12:02 PM on December 16, 2014


Christ is / Christ is / Satan's power / walking in a winter wonder / Jesus

And you may think there's / no such thing as / no such thing as / Jesus / Fa la la la la, la / two front teeth

Christ is / Christ is / Jesus

I am so confused.
posted by xedrik at 12:06 PM on December 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


You may think there's / no such thing as / we three kings of / reindeer
posted by NMcCoy at 12:12 PM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


My sequence got rather pedophilic, with references to "children / glisten" and "may god send you a / boy".
posted by Philipschall at 12:15 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


cortex i hope you have a lot of liability insurance when the brainwashed hordes go forth to do your evil bidding
posted by poffin boffin at 12:15 PM on December 16, 2014


cortex I hope you have a wonderful Christmastime santa power glistening jingle jingle jingle
posted by The Whelk at 12:18 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


this is disturbing and moist
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:21 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to click that link so soon after drinking a refreshing mug of ayahuasca nog.

Greg Nog's lesser known, more entheogenic cousin?
posted by juv3nal at 12:23 PM on December 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


I got THE SILENT DAY OF HALLS

which sounds like a mediocre fantasy novel that I would totally read.
posted by The Whelk at 12:25 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


[kicking Odie off the table] Do I look different today, Garfield?
posted by not_on_display at 12:29 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


125 comments and nobody said "eponysterical"? Because this sounds the EXACT way I'd expect a Greg Nog to taste.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:32 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Frosty the / coal / two eyes made out of / Christmas tree

(I can't take it for more than a few seconds at a time but it's awesome.)
posted by dnash at 12:35 PM on December 16, 2014


bondcliff: My first instinct is that dude clearly needs a hobby but then I realize this... is his hobby and I think dude clearly needs to take up meditation medication or something.

FTFY
posted by drfu at 12:42 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Request for mods. I need to be able to favorite a post more than once. Like a lot more than once.

If you don't mind favoriting another post, too, I'm pretty sure cortex can take care of that for you.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:46 PM on December 16, 2014


I think procedurally generated music is going to be a very big thing someday.

Today is not that day.

Tomorrow is not that day either.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:48 PM on December 16, 2014 [7 favorites]


Mine told me that there's no such thing as Christmas. Or Dad :( :( :(
I can't tell if I'm laugh-crying or just plain crying.
posted by twoporedomain at 12:52 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


i can't get my computer to play this and model 500 at the same time

because that's what the hudson's in hell is certainly playing this time of year
posted by pyramid termite at 12:52 PM on December 16, 2014


what happens if i open this in 666 tabs simultaneously, let's find out
posted by poffin boffin at 12:55 PM on December 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


Mine likes Isra a lot, No el, just Isra Isra Isra.
posted by divabat at 12:57 PM on December 16, 2014


Also, that little animated guitarist is a thing of late-80s arcade beauty.
posted by bondcliff at 1:01 PM on December 16, 2014


there is no pause button? this is like a nightmare! a happy happy nightmare.
posted by not_on_display at 1:07 PM on December 16, 2014


Yeah, it seems like you could just run the clips through something like Audacity and have it apply a 5ms fade in/out to eliminate the clicks

In principle, yeah. In practice, there's two issues there:

1. It's not discrete second-long clips, it's just whole mp3s that I'm playing one-second-long segments of in realtime. So what I'd need to do is apply that quick fade out/in envelope to every second-long chunk of each track. Which if done with automation probably isn't a terribly big problem, but...

2. I am so lazily locked into Garageband the last several years that I have a habit of approaching audio tasks from the perspective where "is this possible to do" is treated as "do I know a way to do this in Garageband".

Another little sound issue I have been too lazy to deal with is the way the AUPitch filter in Garageband sort of shits itself right at the start of an audio render; the first half second of every one of my tracks has a weird bit of distortion on it as a result, a little bit of white noise fart that shouldn't be there.

If anybody is feeling like specifically volunteering to reprocess things in the name of experimentally solving these issues, I can provide .wav renders of the source tracks. I might even get around to it on my own.

I can't listen right now (work) but please tell me Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" is in here somewhere.

I seriously considered it, but by the time I'd laid out the scratch guitar/vox guide tracks for 37 songs I decided I had to just call it enough. That and several others got set aside as Not This Time material, basically. Even drawing a line in the sand it took me four hours to get all the music recorded, doing scratch tracks and then piano, bass, guitar, and vocals.

And at that, I didn't have the attention span to pull off the level of discipline I was really hoping for: one of the challenges with this was trying to get all the songs to land right on the beat rather than be as expressive with timing and phrasing as I'd normally be, because I knew I was cutting it up into precise second-long, on-the-second pieces, but for all that there are bits of songs where I slurred or tied a vocal bit across the boundary from one half-measure to the next. It's hard to sing like a robot. I feel like I had more success with the instrumental side; playing really dumb steady plonk plonk piano isn't too hard, mostly feels like I'm accompanying a grade school musical.

Cortex, I hope you have a lot of bandwidth.

I've gotten the occasional nastygram from Dreamhost before when a project of mine used a lot of computational resources, but never one about bandwidth. In theory I'm paying for an unlimited amount, though in practice I've never served up enough to find out what the actual "hmm, well, when we say 'unlimited' what we really mean is..." limit is.

But in any case, this does almost zero server-side calculations, since it's all javascript running locally in the listener's browser (and even that is super lightweight), so that much shouldn't be an issue. On the disk/bandwidth side I took the precaution of rendering the mp3s real lofi and limiting the number served per page view to a half dozen max, so that should keep the bandwidth manageable too.

I originally was gonna put this on tilde.club, but I felt guilty about the possibility of sticking ftrain with the bill if it did actually take off.
posted by cortex at 1:07 PM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


Oh my god, this is so great. cortex, when you described this to me the other day, I was like "eh, I don't know if that's gonna sound good" but my god it's glorious in practice.
posted by mathowie at 1:30 PM on December 16, 2014 [6 favorites]


Previously, horribly.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:39 PM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


I saw (ok, heard) a slightly earlier, less-polished iteration of this. It's still fairly hypnotic.

Re: this being the sound of America Nov-Dec, I submit the following: Play simultaneously.

I still think it's missing something (but maybe the Endless Jingling just isn't loud enough in the mix).
posted by brennen at 1:58 PM on December 16, 2014


This is the first Christmas-related thing I've enjoyed this year. Apparently I am a monster.
posted by 912 Greens at 2:26 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


So this is the soundtrack for Sunday's meetup, then? Do we have enough Aquavit?
posted by rabbitrabbit at 2:31 PM on December 16, 2014


I am interested in your product. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
posted by chavenet at 2:43 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


OMG! This goes on the Library PA for closing tomorrow night!
posted by evilDoug at 2:48 PM on December 16, 2014 [4 favorites]




Aw man. I got a mix of songs that works pretty well (or "well") but since I can't hope to recreate it myself I can't switch away from the page so I guess this is my life now.
posted by mhum at 3:17 PM on December 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


en forme de poire: Rock, bell, jingle rock bell, rock jingle jingle bell bell
Oh, thank God. I thought I was going to have to be the one.
posted by ob1quixote at 3:40 PM on December 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


Previous Christmas mashup by a Mefite, while we're on the subject (although the lyrics aren't per se Christmassy).
posted by ambrosen at 3:48 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Gay Apparel / Gay Apparel / Don we now our / branches

Sounds about right.
posted by HermitDog at 3:56 PM on December 16, 2014


Speaking of previously and Metafilter's talents, annual reminder that if you like Christmas/holiday music and you want some new takes on classic favorites, you should swing over to the "christmas" or "holidaymusic" tags in Music because there are So Many Gems.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 4:03 PM on December 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


I got this:

tight / hold me / tight / hold me / tight / dying / slowly

I think it's trying to tell me something.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 4:39 PM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


there is no pause button?

Why would you ever want to pause it?
posted by Rangi at 5:09 PM on December 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


You will be receiving a bill from my therapist, cortex.
posted by pseudonymph at 5:25 PM on December 16, 2014


UNACCEPTABLE. 1 MILLION YEARS DUNGEON.

But maybe a more extensive response is required.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:37 PM on December 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


My name is exogenous and I approve of this music.
posted by exogenous at 6:02 PM on December 16, 2014


Some of these are giving me mega Negativland vibes...

Jingle Bells / Jingle Bells
Jingle Bells / Jingle Bells

posted by Florian Biesik at 7:00 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


he's going to find out who's / tender and mild

brb, sleeping NEVER.
posted by ultranos at 7:23 PM on December 16, 2014 [9 favorites]


Also, that little animated guitarist is a thing of late-80s arcade beauty.

Yeah, that is a masterpiece. It really makes the whole concept perfect(ly annoying). Although I have to say, "Rock, bell, jingle rock bell, rock jingle jingle bell bell" is even more so.
posted by LeLiLo at 8:26 PM on December 16, 2014


better not pout / i'm troll the ancient

I think it's threatening me.
posted by axiom at 9:36 PM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Couldn't you just cache the crap out of the mp3s instead of rendering them lo-fi?
posted by curuinor at 10:32 PM on December 16, 2014


also "mods please delete cortex" gets funnier every time I look at it, thanks for that
posted by en forme de poire at 11:14 PM on December 16, 2014 [17 favorites]


"Santa lies deep and dreamless, glistening, dreaming of a lie."

Santa is a contradictory eldritch horror.
posted by Dysk at 4:29 AM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


Okay, we need to do this with Herzog.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:51 AM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Oh by golly have a holly jolly / somebody /
Glistening / sees you when you're sleeping

I'm very afraid now.
posted by Rallon at 6:36 AM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'm gonna try duplicating the browser tab multiple times for a chorus of random cortexes (cortices?).

Let's see which crashes first: Firefox, or my conscious reasoning ability.
posted by anthom at 7:13 AM on December 17, 2014


A beautiful rendition of rich Christmas. This is the sound of Christmas past, present and future all played at the same time.

What I am saying is, this Jingling is pretty much what goes on in my head during the season to be jolly; a non stop mashed up carol megamix. Still preferable to the Christmas CDs played in shops though.
posted by asok at 7:23 AM on December 17, 2014


Yeah, an interesting note on burying myself in this for a few days: it turns out that when I came up for air, I was not somehow inured to background Christmas music as a result. If anything, hearing some slow maudlin warble on a store (or, worse, restaurant) sound system just made me more annoyed than usual. "Pick up the tempo," my brain would shout. "Pitch shift that fucker! Fuck up the words!"
posted by cortex at 7:34 AM on December 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


better not pout I'm / gay apparel

This is so fun.
posted by ocherdraco at 8:48 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Room 641-A: "Okay, we need to do this with Herzog."

I think I had a dream/nightmare last night that someone did this with Slavoj Zizek.
posted by mhum at 10:57 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


"All I want for Christmas is my/mix and a mingle and a"

YES. I knew if I waited long enough, Christmas mix tapes would be cool again!
posted by bakerina at 1:13 PM on December 17, 2014


Jeoc jr. is listening to this background music while roleplaying on her computer.

I don't know.
posted by jeoc at 4:22 PM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


ninth day of christmas/ true love gave to me / rock
posted by zakur at 4:59 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm gonna try duplicating the browser tab multiple times for a chorus of random cortexes (cortices?).

I am doing this right now and my brain is melting. Highly recommended.
posted by aka burlap at 5:20 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


oh my god, it's—

how did it never occur to me to try this

I fucking made the thing, how did this get by me

should've sent a poet
posted by cortex at 5:22 PM on December 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


Needs more Christmas in the stars.
posted by zippy at 2:40 PM on December 18, 2014


ahaha this is great, good job
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:35 PM on December 18, 2014


There's no such thing as / Grandpa / Grandpa / Grandpa / Satan's Power
Delfin, you don't get out enough. During the holidays, with my family, there is exactly that.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:23 AM on December 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


cortex: "should've sent a poet"

Let's all read William Carlos Williams poems at a certain meter and apply a little cortexing to that situation.
Go to sleep -- though of course you will not
years of anger following
the icebox 
the icebox 
when you are up and dressing, 
The man turns and there --
lullaby, lullaby. The crackle of a newspaper, 
saving
saving
saving
saving
saving
the sun! a clutter of
the rustle of your clothes as you raise them-- 
it is the same tune. 
posted by boo_radley at 8:48 AM on December 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


joy, comfort and / gay apparel
save us all from / la la la


This is great background music for the ugly sweater contest judging happening in my office right now. Everyone hates me. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
posted by palomar at 10:55 AM on December 19, 2014 [10 favorites]


Say your prayers 'cause
Santa Clause comes to-night.

posted by The Great Big Mulp at 2:43 PM on December 21, 2014


This is all very good, but I really prefer some of the old-timey carols:

They compliment each other well: cortex brings us tidings of madness and whoa too.
posted by homunculus at 8:27 PM on December 22, 2014


Well, today *I'm* the slightly unhinged person lolsobbing on the bus so I"ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

Thanks, cortex?
posted by Space Kitty at 9:12 AM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


Really, if all my obituary says about me is "he did a lot of things that made a few people laugh inappropriately in public until they were basically crying" I will have lived the life I want to live.
posted by cortex at 9:45 AM on December 23, 2014 [14 favorites]


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