A big, blunt woman with a wicked sense of humor, Ms. Nilsson brooked no interference from Wagner's powerful and eventful orchestra writing. When she sang Isolde or Brünnhilde, her voice pierced through and climbed above it. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Nov 3, 2009 - 11 comments

A guide to a capella arranging from SmarterMusic, including some nice analysis of examples.
posted by Wolfdog on Nov 2, 2009 - 16 comments

Fiddle, accordion, and a singing drummer. Seven minutes and fifty seven seconds of Gypsy music from Ukraine, live in Budapest. The real thing. Totally wailing. Kickass. Técső Banda at Kertem.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Oct 10, 2009 - 23 comments

"The ability to convey the depths of despair, the heights of jubilation and the serenity of an abiding faith are all that is required to be known as “The Voice.” Unfortunately, very few possess the ability to do all that and what’s more unfortunate, we lost one of those few–possibly the best of those few–with the death of Vern Gosdin at the age of 74." [more inside]
posted by dawson on Apr 29, 2009 - 7 comments

This drawing toy responds to volume.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Feb 14, 2009 - 16 comments

Phil Minton | Jaap Blonk | Ami Yoshida | Maja Ratkje | Henri Chopin | The Littlest Sound Poet
posted by Beautiful Screaming Lady on Dec 3, 2008 - 8 comments

Said to be the busiest actor in Hollywood -- ever, Don LaFontaine was this generation's most prolific announcer, in the traditional sense of the word, lending his voice to all the major American television networks, and redefining the movie trailer. LaFontaine has died of complications from a collapsed lung at 68. [more inside]
posted by evilcolonel on Sep 1, 2008 - 94 comments

Enter text, get an mp3. Make a call, get a text. Talk into your phone, send a text.
posted by desjardins on Dec 1, 2007 - 14 comments

9 Superpowers made real. [Via Digg.]
posted by homunculus on Jul 20, 2007 - 33 comments

"Why (For) Pat Carroll wasn't actually Disney's first choice to voice Ursula in 'The Little Mermaid'? The casting story of one of Disney's most delightful demons.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Jun 15, 2007 - 18 comments

Decades of cartoons and movie previews have desensitized us to the art of the voice-over. For decades, the movies, cartoons, and commercials we watch have been given life by a relatively small group of extremely talented and prolific voices.
posted by potch on Jan 27, 2007 - 25 comments

Mexican government bans American Catholics who sued Mexico City Prelate The Mexican government took the unprecedented and controversial step of banning Dave Clohessy of SNAP and Jeffrey Anderson, a lawyer specializing in abuse cases, from entering the country for five years. The men had filed a lawsuit against Mexico City Archbishop Norbeto Rivera, who they allege covered up sex abuse in his diocese.
posted by parmanparman on Oct 16, 2006 - 14 comments

Sonic Postcards - winner of the New Statesman New Media Award. Explore sound. Via the Sonic Arts Network, UK exponents of Electroacoustic music.
posted by nthdegx on Aug 2, 2006 - 1 comment

Mona Lisa's voice finally heard. Even if you can't read Japanese, you can still click the buttons underneath each portrait to get playback. Works with Internet Explorer. Suzuki — a co-winner of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for promoting harmony between species by inventing the Bow-Lingual, a dog-to-human interpretation device — undertook the project as part of activities promoting the Japan release of the movie "The Da Vinci Code."
posted by nickyskye on Jun 3, 2006 - 16 comments

Honda's last TV ad was a treat for Rube Goldberg fans everywhere. Their latest (9.4MB zipped H.264 video) is an excellent demonstration of the human voice as an instrument.
posted by Mwongozi on Mar 4, 2006 - 22 comments

Otto is just looking for a little love. Can you fit the bill?
posted by atom128 on Feb 8, 2006 - 16 comments

"The extraordinary radiance of the voice. I still remember that. The extraordinary, enveloping, overwhelming beauty of Ferrier's voice."
When Kathleen Ferrier died at 41 in October 1953, she was as famous as the newly crowned Queen. A working class girl from Blackpool who had to quit school at 14 to work as a telephone operator, a young woman who lacked formal musical training and whose husband bet that she would never win a music contest, Ferrier -- under the guidance of the great conductor Bruno Walter -- went on to become an international superstar. An "ordinary diva" who humbly worshipped "Herr Doktor Bruno Walter", gave very few newspaper interviews, never appeared on television or in cinema newsreels. Her speaking voice can be heard only briefly and only twice, on a tape made at a post-concert New York party, and in a short speech she made for the BBC at an Edinburgh Festival. Her extraordinary career lasted only less than 12 years.
Half a century later, although her legacy lives on through her music, Ferrier herself -- "Klever Kaff" -- remains elusive. More inside.
posted by matteo on Dec 3, 2005 - 11 comments

Fed up with navigating badly set up voice mail systems, Paul English has posted a voice mail cheat sheet to help you cut through to a real human. Which is just as well because most companies seem to set up their voice mail systems like this.
posted by Zinger on Nov 25, 2005 - 19 comments

Slawesome calls itself "e-mail for your voice" - it's a new web-based service which combines elements of audio blogging and webmail. Messages can be private or public - at least one bleeding-edge blogger is already using it to make voice posts. And it's been built using Ruby on Rails - so it's got to be good, right?
posted by runkelfinker on Oct 18, 2005 - 15 comments

The Song and the Singer For many he is the greatest Lieder singer of the 20th century. As he turns 80, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau reflects on his long career.
posted by matteo on Sep 8, 2005 - 7 comments

He broke all the rules... because there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and no way out... He's a one-man army... He's the voice over king Don LaFontaine. [link to MP3 interview in case you want to skip all the text]
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Jul 25, 2005 - 10 comments

Thurl Ravenscroft, voice of Tony the Tiger, one of the singing busts in Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion, and the inimitable vocalist behind "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," has passed away at the age of 91.
posted by Faint of Butt on May 25, 2005 - 28 comments

Photobloggers discuss subway photography ban to the villiage voice. The proposed ban on photography in NYC subways was previously discussed on metafilter here In response to the ban, photobloggers plan a protest Sunday, June 6 starting at a kiosk for an MTA-sponsored exhibit of photographs celebrating the centennial of the subway, many of which ironically were taken during the previous ban.
posted by KirkJobSluder on Jun 5, 2004 - 8 comments

The World Wide Web Consortium Voice Browser working group is developing revolutionary markup languages similar to HTML that, instead of focusing on a visual interface, will cover dialog, speech synthesis, speech recognition, call control and other aspects of interactive voice response applications. "This will allow any telephone to be used to access appropriately designed Web-based services, and will be a boon to people with visual impairments or needing Web access while keeping theirs hands & eyes free for other things. " (via: Internet Scout Report)
posted by peacay on Apr 13, 2002 - 3 comments

Voice Recognition - An Optimistic Take. A sunny view of a voice-commanded future. But I'm a little freaked out by their description of "VoiceXML"... someday will we all be saying "Metafilter, CLICK"?
posted by wiremommy on May 16, 2000 - 3 comments