Comments on: It's oh so quiet...shh...shhh

It's oh so quiet...shh...shhh

marzenie99 — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 10:59:35 -0800

Hey, shut up, I can't hear! What else will 99¢ get you from the iTunes Music Store? Nothin', that's what.

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 11:08:56 -0800

I've read this in a few different places now, and I don't understand why everyone is so fascinated. The encoding process for the iTunes store is almost certainly entirely automated. Why would we expect them to manually select and delete silent tracks? In fact, if you're buying an album that happens to have a silent track, wouldn't you expect the iTunes store to include that?

By: Witty

Witty — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 11:16:29 -0800

Yea. This seems like a non-issue to me. I mean it's not even a case of, "Hey I bought Hey Ya! and got nothing but silence." In which case, I still wouldn't care.

By: 2sheets

2sheets — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 11:21:48 -0800

If you buy the CD, you have no choice but to pay for the silent track. With iTunes, you have the option to skip it. (create your own!) So I would think this is a good thing.

By: meehawl

meehawl — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 11:22:35 -0800

I am fully prepared for rants by Apple fanatics telling me how AAC-encoded silence sounds better than mp3-encoded silence or WMA-encoded silence.

By: gnutron

gnutron — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 11:33:04 -0800

Pootie don't needs no music, Pootie don't need no words. Pootie too good! Pootie too good!

By: jpoulos

jpoulos — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 11:33:09 -0800

John Cage composed "4'33"," a 1952 piece with a pianist that features just over 4 1/2 minutes without sound. That's not true. There's no music for 4 1/2 minutes, but the "piece" is comprised of the ambient sounds in the theater (people coughing and whatnot). A good recording will let you hear that.

By: Blue Stone

Blue Stone — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 12:06:23 -0800

" I am fully prepared for rants by Apple fanatics telling me how AAC-encoded silence sounds better than mp3-encoded silence" I have a couple of albums with silent tracks [Laraaji's "Flow Goes The Universe", and Brian Eno's "18 Keyboard Studies"] I never was able to rip the silences to MP3; the resulting files were essentially empty and nothing would play them. Seems like AAC has MP3 beat, hands-down.

By: lotsofno

lotsofno — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 12:07:45 -0800

"John Cage composed "4'33"," a 1952 piece with a pianist that features just over 4 1/2 minutes without sound." Rememeber how he used to that one move where he did the splits and punched ya right in the mean bean machine?

By: attackthetaxi

attackthetaxi — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 12:18:29 -0800

I'd pay 99 cents for some peace and quiet. Such a deal.

By: strangeleftydoublethink

strangeleftydoublethink — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 12:28:26 -0800

I'd pay 99 cents to not wade through unprovoked comments by people who are "prepared" for Apple fanactics to tell them something.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 12:31:11 -0800

>> John Cage composed "4'33"," a 1952 piece with a pianist that features just > > over 4 1/2 minutes without sound. > > That's not true. There's no music for 4 1/2 minutes, but the "piece" is comprised > of the ambient sounds in the theater (people coughing and whatnot). A good > recording will let you hear that. My own band does a cover of this rearranged for chamber orchestra (tricycle, bathtub with legs, and 50lb sack of cement.) It needs work, though, because it generally takes more than 4'33" for the cement to harden in the bathtub. On the other hand I once heard a really tight, cookin' bluegrass band get through the piece in under half a minute.

By: xmutex

xmutex — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 13:09:34 -0800

Did someone really just say mean bean machine?

By: Mwongozi

Mwongozi — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 13:33:46 -0800

I encoded the live performance of John Cage's 4'33" by the London Symphony off the BBC broadcast. You can download it (video included) here

By: Slagman

Slagman — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 13:37:30 -0800

I've resisted posting this link for days, and now it is everywhere, so it was only a matter of time.

By: LeLiLo

LeLiLo — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 13:45:35 -0800

I would like my 4' 33" of silence to be preceded by some cackling, and a weird voice saying "Wipeout." On the other hand I once heard a really tight, cookin' bluegrass band get through the piece in under half a minute. p.s. In a non-related matter, I have recently learned that Chopin's Minute Waltz is a) not supposed to be played in a minute and b) not necessarily a waltz.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 13:50:03 -0800

I just turn my speakers off and use the PC clock to time 4'33" of silence. Is that piracy?

By: arto

arto — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 14:03:36 -0800

Hello, darkness, my old friend...

By: paulrockNJ

paulrockNJ — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 14:08:23 -0800

I just turn my speakers off and use the PC clock to time 4'33" of silence. Is that piracy? ha! that's funny stuff....

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 14:19:13 -0800

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 14:19:29 -0800

But what do you hear if you play 4'33" backward?

By: meehawl

meehawl — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 14:56:43 -0800

strangeleftydoublethink said: I'd pay 99 cents to not wade through unprovoked comments Obviously you do not pay attention to the whinings of consumers arguing over the merits of various lossy formats and flavours of DRM. Face facts: they all suck. But I will gladly take your 99 cents (Euros please!) and in return, when and if I dare to venture forth a comment, aphorism, or unregulated or indeed even contemplate daring to engage in a psychologically orthogonal speech act of any kind, I'll send you an advance email warning you so you can avoid damaging your sensitive sensibilities. How's that sound?

By: sfenders

sfenders — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 15:52:48 -0800

These are encoded in a "lossy" format, right? The less noises there are in a track, the more significant any loss must be. So if it's all silence, ANY loss means the entire track is DESTROYED. Plus, I bet they compress down to just a few thousand bytes. On a real CD, you'd be getting the tens of millions of additional zero bytes that were intended by the artist. Totally unacceptable, this.

By: O9scar

O9scar — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 16:00:07 -0800

What's funny to me is a) these are DRMed like everything else and b) you can get both "explicit" and "clean" versions of silence from Slum Village. The original story is here, btw.

By: shepd

shepd — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 16:01:03 -0800

By: shepd

shepd — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 16:01:17 -0800

I win!

By: smackfu

smackfu — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 17:22:11 -0800

I wish there were more silent tracks. They could split up those hidden tracks that have 20 minutes of silence then a song. I hate when those pop up in my playlist.

By: inpHilltr8r

inpHilltr8r — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 17:31:19 -0800

Rememeber how he used to that one move where he did the splits and punched ya right in the mean bean machine? I'm embarrased to admit I actually got that joke, although I can't remember the control sequence.

By: dmt

dmt — Sat, 07 Feb 2004 14:37:08 -0800

By: Finder

Finder — Sat, 07 Feb 2004 23:15:57 -0800

The emperor wears...what? *Everything* is new for a newborn.

By: Fofer

Fofer — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 08:51:59 -0800

I've got your MIDI file right here.