Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Seth Nicholas Johnson Joe.
Speaker 1: As of this recording still out on Parental Leaf. We'll
Speaker 1: be back soon. But in this episode, Seth and I
Speaker 1: are continuing our exploration of hidden messages and allegations of
Speaker 1: hidden messages, secrets, and easter eggs in music. In the
Speaker 1: last episode we talked a lot about back masking, about
Speaker 1: reversed audio. We mentioned some other examples of of the
Speaker 1: way that things can and we're hidden in music. But
Speaker 1: in this episode we are going to venture into the groove,
Speaker 1: into the record groove, and discuss physical media and even
Speaker 1: more detail. We did touch on it a bit in
Speaker 1: the last one. So if you if you basically know
Speaker 1: nothing about via records and how you play a record,
Speaker 1: go back and listen to that first episode, because we
Speaker 1: we do talk about some of that, Because I mean,
Speaker 1: part of the background here for for this discussion is
Speaker 1: as much as I admire certain vinyl records that come
Speaker 1: out and I see them, you know, on a website
Speaker 1: or in a store, I've never purchased one and since
Speaker 1: a child, I've been told to avoid touching vinyl records.
Speaker 1: Let the adults use that. Uh you don't want to
Speaker 1: break the needle or scratch the record, etcetera. And so
Speaker 1: I've left them alone. Seth. On the other hand, UH,
Speaker 1: you have a very different relationship with records. Absolutely, I've
Speaker 1: manufactured vinyl. UM. I've processed vinyl coming from UM like
Speaker 1: like full blown uh pressing plants. I've been buying it
Speaker 1: most of my life. UM. For me, when I was younger,
Speaker 1: I reached certain points where I inherited a few records
Speaker 1: for like my parents, but they didn't have a very
Speaker 1: sizable collection. But when I started going to record stores
Speaker 1: in my youth to to buy cd s, there was
Speaker 1: a point when I realized, oh wow, these other things
Speaker 1: are so much cheaper than the CDs. This would have
Speaker 1: been in like the nineties, And Uh that was all
Speaker 1: there was to it was. I was just greedy for music,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, all right, how am I
Speaker 1: going to uh get as much music as possible. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna buy these used records as much as I can.
Speaker 1: And in fact, at that stage, UM, I can give
Speaker 1: some deliberate examples like, for example, Um, let's say Radiohead. Um,
Speaker 1: I might be wrong the live recordings that record. I
Speaker 1: remember holding a CD in one hand and a vinyl
Speaker 1: record in the other, and the record was cheaper, so
Speaker 1: I went, oh, all right, I guess I'm going with
Speaker 1: the record. The same thing with a Widow City by
Speaker 1: the Fiery Furnaces, just like that era the late nineties
Speaker 1: early two thousands where it was like, oh, new vinyl
Speaker 1: is cheaper than new CDs. Now that is completely the opposite,
Speaker 1: so be prepared if you're going into a record store.
Speaker 1: But at the time it was not a very popular format.
Speaker 1: So that's why I got into vinyl was just because
Speaker 1: it was the less expensive option so I could buy
Speaker 1: more music. And so yeah, that that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: why it started for me. Now, in looking at a
Speaker 1: record and in playing a record, this is this is
Speaker 1: where I really had no idea about any of this.
Speaker 1: I kind of had this idea that if you if
Speaker 1: you place a record on the turn of table, you
Speaker 1: place a needle in the groove, there's there's just one
Speaker 1: path that it is. Essentially, I guess it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the distinction between the labyrinth and a maze. If
Speaker 1: you if you if you have if you make that distinction,
Speaker 1: like a labyrinth, there's only one way through. It twists
Speaker 1: and turns, but you can't get lost because there there
Speaker 1: are no dead ends. It is a journey through complexity
Speaker 1: from point A to point B. A maaze, however, can
Speaker 1: be different. Amaze can have different paths through the complexity.
Speaker 1: Amaze can have dead ends, it can have traps, you
Speaker 1: can have dragons and trolls and so forth, if you
Speaker 1: if you want um and based on a lot of
Speaker 1: what I ended up reading here, and and and based
Speaker 1: on what I think we're gonna be discussing here, it
Speaker 1: does seem to me like actually, vinyl records are more
Speaker 1: like this maze. There there's more. There's sometimes more than
Speaker 1: one path through the record, the good ones, I would say,
Speaker 1: the average record. I think you're correct. There is a
Speaker 1: very deliberate path, always starts in the same place out
Speaker 1: at the edge of the record, always ends at the
Speaker 1: same place, which is the inside of the record. I
Speaker 1: think that's that's the most common route, but there there
Speaker 1: are many examples of people trying new things, people going
Speaker 1: different routes with that, and this is this is so
Speaker 1: just counter to like the tape culture, the DVD culture,
Speaker 1: and then the subsequent digital media culture that that that
Speaker 1: that I most have most of my experience with, like
Speaker 1: there were there was there will get into some examples. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have things like hidden tracks with with CDs and
Speaker 1: so forth. But this is a whole different scenario. This
Speaker 1: is like the it's like the record as puzzle box,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, and it's fun where you can
Speaker 1: hide these things. Like I said, I've I've manufactured a
Speaker 1: lot of records on my own. In particular, Um, I
Speaker 1: do what's called lay the embossed records. And uh so
Speaker 1: here's here's a fascinating thing I have personally done, which
Speaker 1: I think is is really cool. So on a compact disc, okay, uh,
Speaker 1: the data is written from the inside, you know, towards
Speaker 1: towards the center to the outside. Vinyl is the opposite
Speaker 1: that the information is on the outside going inside. So
Speaker 1: usually on a CD there will be some blank space
Speaker 1: because there's like eighty something minutes of of of space
Speaker 1: on on a compact disc. If you're whatever you're doing
Speaker 1: doesn't use up that much space, you have this extra
Speaker 1: room on the end. So what I've done, I have
Speaker 1: flipped a compact disc upside down and put a song
Speaker 1: from a Vinyl you know, embossing needle onto the underside
Speaker 1: of the c D. And now not only is that
Speaker 1: a CD that can be played in a CD player,
Speaker 1: but if you flip it upside on and put it
Speaker 1: on a record player, you can play a song on
Speaker 1: the underside of the CD itself. So like fun, things
Speaker 1: like that you can do with vinyl, and it's just
Speaker 1: not it's you know that fun isn't there in most
Speaker 1: of the other mediums. All right, well, let's get into
Speaker 1: some specific examples here. And for this I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: back to an article that I referenced in the first
Speaker 1: episode that we did. This is by Jonathan Vinyl, Darryl Griffiths,
Speaker 1: and Stuart Cunningham in Easter Eggs, Hidden Tracks and Messages
Speaker 1: and Musical Mediums, and they write that there are three
Speaker 1: primary ways that records allow for hidden information. The first
Speaker 1: is something called locked grooves. So these are grooves which
Speaker 1: cause the turntable to play an endless loop. And I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess you you'll have to maybe help me make
Speaker 1: sense of this. But is it like if the needle
Speaker 1: enters this particular groove it will just go on forever
Speaker 1: in a circle. I have a record here next to me. Coincidentally,
Speaker 1: I'll just show you literally on it. Sorry, I won't
Speaker 1: be able to show you because this is a audio medium,
Speaker 1: but I'm pointing it out to Robert. All right, So Robert,
Speaker 1: you see this record in front of you. The song
Speaker 1: plays starting here at the outside, and then it moves
Speaker 1: to the inside. Like I was saying, now, when the
Speaker 1: needle gets past the songs, the record needs to stop it.
Speaker 1: It needs to stop the needle from just running into
Speaker 1: the paper label or anything like that. So right here,
Speaker 1: right next to the label, like basically a big circle
Speaker 1: going around the paper label center of a record. That
Speaker 1: is where the traditional locked groove is. There's no sound
Speaker 1: on it. It's just instead of a spiral, because that's
Speaker 1: basically what a groove is. It's a very elaborate, very
Speaker 1: dense spiral, you know, containing different grooves and therefore vibrations
Speaker 1: and sound. The very very bottom of that spiral, it
Speaker 1: doesn't still end as a spiral. It ends as a
Speaker 1: solid circle. That way, the needle when it's finished will
Speaker 1: more or less stay still. It'll just stay in at
Speaker 1: that central point and it won't cut into the label
Speaker 1: or whatever. So if I'm, for instance, if I'm watching
Speaker 1: a film in which a record has been this is
Speaker 1: my main experience of this. In a movie of a
Speaker 1: record is finished playing, sometimes it'll it'll just be that
Speaker 1: to chunk to chunk kind of sound. That's the locked
Speaker 1: groove at the end of the record. Yes, although most
Speaker 1: locked grooves wouldn't make any sound at all. But yes,
Speaker 1: correct that that that kind of like stereotypical loop down
Speaker 1: there at the end. Yes, yes, well, the authors of
Speaker 1: this paper, they point out, quote, most records will only
Speaker 1: contain a silent locked groove to prevent damage to the
Speaker 1: needle when it reaches the end of the side. Like
Speaker 1: you explained, the presence of a locked groove that contains
Speaker 1: music would be difficult to detect without prior knowledge or
Speaker 1: careful visual inspection of the grooves. Therefore, a music containing
Speaker 1: locked groove has a good chance of surprising the listener
Speaker 1: during the performance of the recording. That's true, if you're
Speaker 1: looking at it from the outside, it doesn't look any difference,
Speaker 1: just just just like um. For the most part, if
Speaker 1: you're looking at groove is on a record, you can't
Speaker 1: determine what's on them. Actually you can if you if
Speaker 1: you have very very talented eyes, eventually you can like
Speaker 1: tell what the silence looks like. But that's that's that's
Speaker 1: just experts only. That's that's not the average person at all.
Speaker 1: The prime example that they mentioned in the paper of
Speaker 1: this is of of having music in the locked groove
Speaker 1: brings us back to the Beatles A Day in the
Speaker 1: Life from Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Hearts called Band. This
Speaker 1: song enters a locked groove at the end of the song,
Speaker 1: a locked groove that contains music. And I mean, thinking
Speaker 1: back on the on the song, I mean, I know
Speaker 1: where this is occurring, but I only have experience with
Speaker 1: like the CD version of this. I had this album
Speaker 1: on CD when I was I think in high school. Um,
Speaker 1: but if you were playing the record, that final tone
Speaker 1: of the song potentially goes on forever, Is that right? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: as as as long as you don't lift it, because yeah,
Speaker 1: like I was saying, that central locked groove, it's there's
Speaker 1: no data there, it's silent there, it's there's no sound.
Speaker 1: It's just like you're saying, like chunk chunk, chunk chunk,
Speaker 1: it's just moving in a circle. But there's no rule
Speaker 1: that says you can't put some some noise on those grooves.
Speaker 1: Why not? You know, why not have that circle be
Speaker 1: a loop of audio? Why not? And have you experimented
Speaker 1: with this? Uh in creating records? I have many times
Speaker 1: because it's fun, like, why wouldn't you? You know? Uh?
Speaker 1: So Um. The most importantly, uh, something to keep in
Speaker 1: mind when you're doing this is that it's actually a
Speaker 1: a pretty small window for for to to create that loop.
Speaker 1: So a typical record rotates at thirty three and a
Speaker 1: third revolutions per minute summer forty five, but that's a
Speaker 1: that's usually for singles. So yeah, thirty three and a
Speaker 1: third revolutions per minute, which means that a single rotation
Speaker 1: of the record, one needle going all the way around
Speaker 1: is one point eight seconds. So that's how long your
Speaker 1: loop has to be. One point eight seconds, no more,
Speaker 1: no less. So so, UM, here's an example of what
Speaker 1: I've done. I did one where it was called it
Speaker 1: was a series called skip records, where what I did was,
Speaker 1: um oh, that's actually another good, great example. If you
Speaker 1: ever are listening to a record that's damaged and the
Speaker 1: record starts skipping it's always the same duration. It's always
Speaker 1: one point eight seconds because that same fragments is going
Speaker 1: to be playing again and again and again. That that
Speaker 1: that's why UM you can actually tell if someone is
Speaker 1: faking a skipping record because it will be longer or
Speaker 1: shorter than that quick just like zip a dip atep
Speaker 1: up zip, but step puttep up. It's that's that one
Speaker 1: point eight second loop. And in fact, when when when
Speaker 1: I am manufacturing records, that's the final step before I
Speaker 1: finish a record is UM. So if you can picture
Speaker 1: it in your mind, there is basically UM an arm
Speaker 1: that has a cutting needle. Usually it's a a sapphire
Speaker 1: or a ruby, and it's pressing into the use polycarbonate.
Speaker 1: It's pressing into the polycarbonate and it's moving from left
Speaker 1: to right on on like a spiral arm. Basically, what
Speaker 1: you do is when you're done recording, is you stop
Speaker 1: that arm from moving left or fight. Then you go
Speaker 1: one one thousand to one thousand, and then you lift
Speaker 1: it up. And what you're doing by by stopping the
Speaker 1: movement is you're ending that spiral in a single place
Speaker 1: and you wait one one thousand, two one thousand for
Speaker 1: it to complete that circle and end that loop. But
Speaker 1: if you are still playing audio when you do that
Speaker 1: one one thousand, two one thousand, what you're doing is
Speaker 1: still putting data, putting information, putting sound into that loop,
Speaker 1: and you can make it go forever. So, like I
Speaker 1: was saying, I had a series called Skip Records where
Speaker 1: my whole point was I wanted it to sound like
Speaker 1: a record was just skipping for five minutes straight. Don't
Speaker 1: ask me why it's art, you know it's fun. And
Speaker 1: uh so I I did this multiple times. And the
Speaker 1: fun part is is that I on these records, I
Speaker 1: always ensured that the final groove was always a locked groove.
Speaker 1: Therefore potentially that these records loop forever, that there is
Speaker 1: no end to this record and it can just play
Speaker 1: until your record play or breaks, or until tell there's
Speaker 1: a power outage. It's just it's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a forever equation. And you have favorite examples of this
Speaker 1: from from from other records, from from bands and so forth.
Speaker 1: There's a lot. And actually it's it's fun to me because,
Speaker 1: like you said, you usually don't know when it's going
Speaker 1: to happen. So for me, if I put on a record,
Speaker 1: and it's playing and it ends up in a locked
Speaker 1: groove and you've never heard this record before. You might
Speaker 1: be off on the other side, reading or playing a
Speaker 1: video game or doing the dishes, who knows, and you
Speaker 1: notice that, like, wow, it's been doing this one tone
Speaker 1: for like forty five minutes. That's not even possible on
Speaker 1: a record, Like there's not that much room. What is happening?
Speaker 1: And you walk over and you're like, ah, this record's
Speaker 1: got a locked groove. Uh. This happened to me once
Speaker 1: on one of my favorite records, And this is my
Speaker 1: favorite example of this. The Godspeed You Black Emperor album
Speaker 1: F sharp, A sharp Infinity. The final track Bleak Uncertain Beautiful.
Speaker 1: It ends on a locked groove of playing the final
Speaker 1: two notes of the song, and those last two notes
Speaker 1: are F sharp and A sharp, and by being on
Speaker 1: a locked groove, they play for infinity. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: still remember the first time I played that record and
Speaker 1: when that needle hit that that final moment, it just
Speaker 1: kept going and going and going, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is wonderful. Like it took me. You know, I
Speaker 1: had to be active, I had I had to realize
Speaker 1: that something was not right, investigate and realize what they
Speaker 1: had done to me and my time. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: a fun practice, you know. Do you maybe this doesn't occur,
Speaker 1: but do you. Are you ever in a position where
Speaker 1: someone comes up to you and says like, I'm I
Speaker 1: don't know anything about records, but I'm gonna get into
Speaker 1: records now, I'm gonna start buying vinyl. And then do
Speaker 1: you have to warn them, like, look, people have laid
Speaker 1: traps for you. But the main one which I actually
Speaker 1: will warn people about, because these things were discussing, a
Speaker 1: locked groove doesn't happen that often, So some other techniques
Speaker 1: were about to discuss don't happen that often. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty rare, and they're and they're extra cool
Speaker 1: because of it. One that is extremely common that actually
Speaker 1: happens all the time, not just to others but to
Speaker 1: me as well, is the difference between a thirty three
Speaker 1: and a third record and a forty five record. Because
Speaker 1: forty five rpm records, I'm sure you everyone would understand this.
Speaker 1: A forty five rpm it's spinning faster. So therefore the
Speaker 1: data that's put onto it that the vibrations the grooves
Speaker 1: are at a different speed. You know, so if you
Speaker 1: if you put on a forty five rpm record at
Speaker 1: thirty three and a third, it's extremely slowed down, So
Speaker 1: you might have a completely incorrect view of a song
Speaker 1: if you don't pay attention to what the speed is.
Speaker 1: And uh, there's audiophile pressings of records where they'll have
Speaker 1: full twelve inch records that are printed at forty five
Speaker 1: rpm because there's there's more room for the grooves so
Speaker 1: they can sound better. Blah blah blah, and so you
Speaker 1: just have to know. You have to hopefully the artist
Speaker 1: has labeled the record this is a forty five rpm,
Speaker 1: or you just have to listen to and go, that's
Speaker 1: not right. Try it at thirty three and a third,
Speaker 1: Try it at forty five and go, Okay, that's right.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you won't know. Sometimes they won't label it
Speaker 1: and they won't tell you, So you just have to
Speaker 1: make your best guests. Like like R. E. M. For example,
Speaker 1: used to never label the sides of their records, like
Speaker 1: there was no side A, side B. It was just hey,
Speaker 1: you listen to one and they listen to the other.
Speaker 1: I'm not telling you which is which, and not until
Speaker 1: c d S came around, that did. They have to
Speaker 1: eventually decide and put an actual track order for you.
Speaker 1: And there were a couple that I learned I had
Speaker 1: the wrong order, like, for example, UM, I always listened
Speaker 1: to Murmur by R. E. M. Side B first, then
Speaker 1: side A, but I had no way of knowing that
Speaker 1: until I bought a CD of it. Wow. All right,
Speaker 1: well we'll get back to track ordering in a bit.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be more on that. But getting back to
Speaker 1: the three main methods of hiding stuff in the grooves
Speaker 1: here from that two four teen paper, The next one
Speaker 1: they mentioned is inverse grooves. So if I'm understanding this correctly,
Speaker 1: it is a record that it is meant to be
Speaker 1: played backwards. If you play it forwards, you're playing it backwards.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Yes, they think about it this way M.
Speaker 1: As we're discussing. When you're playing a record, you start
Speaker 1: the needle at the rim and you press play and
Speaker 1: it continues until it hits the label. That's the traditional
Speaker 1: way a record plays. The grooves are set up that way,
Speaker 1: the spiral leading down to the drain, you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's the way it goes. These are the other way around.
Speaker 1: You are supposed to start the needle in the middle
Speaker 1: and then it plays out to the edge, almost like
Speaker 1: manga style. It's like, oh, start the other end, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they mentioned a couple of examples of this. One
Speaker 1: is a this one. I don't know, were you familiar
Speaker 1: with this particular um group. This is a Noma's track
Speaker 1: that would gorf beat one from the practice us a
Speaker 1: EP and it includes the instructions to play it. One
Speaker 1: must place the needle at the point where you would
Speaker 1: expect the tract end. And then they also mentioned Megadeth
Speaker 1: single for Sweating Bullets, which was an inverse groove pressing
Speaker 1: and it had a warning on the packaging that said,
Speaker 1: quote paranoid pressing on blue vinyl. Warning, do not attempt
Speaker 1: to play this record in the conventional manner. Both sides
Speaker 1: reverse play from the inside groove outwards. It makes sense
Speaker 1: because I bet the average person they would just assume
Speaker 1: their record was broken, you know, because if you did
Speaker 1: put it the correct place and pressed forward, best case scenario,
Speaker 1: you're getting it to play backwards. More probable is that
Speaker 1: because that is starting with the locked groove, it won't
Speaker 1: be able to enter into that spiral, so it'll just
Speaker 1: sit there and you just hear nothing so or maybe
Speaker 1: a little little skipping or some static. But another great
Speaker 1: example of this, uh, this is found on Jack White's
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen solo album Lazaretto. Jack White and his
Speaker 1: record label Third Man Records are known for doing all
Speaker 1: kinds of fun gimmicky things, like they have like liquid
Speaker 1: core records. They have records where like there'll be a
Speaker 1: forty five inch record hidden inside of a twelve inch
Speaker 1: you have like cut open the record to pull out
Speaker 1: another record. Like He's done a lot of really fun,
Speaker 1: interesting things. He is the Willy Wonka of of of
Speaker 1: record manufacturers, and I really admire him for that. Um
Speaker 1: for his two thousand fourteen album Lazaretto, he just wanted
Speaker 1: to put it all in one record. He wanted to
Speaker 1: be all the gimmicks all at once, so he he
Speaker 1: um called this version of Lazaretto the Ultra LP And
Speaker 1: it's got so many fun gimmicks and innovations that we
Speaker 1: would need literally an entire episode just to break them down.
Speaker 1: But you can. You can find copies of it to
Speaker 1: see online. I believe there's also a YouTube video which
Speaker 1: I sent you, Robert, which has Jack White just pointing
Speaker 1: out every single wacky gimmick of this one single record.
Speaker 1: But but on side one of this record, it does
Speaker 1: play backwards like you're saying you have to start the
Speaker 1: new needle by the label, and it plays out to
Speaker 1: the rim. And I wonder how many people just couldn't
Speaker 1: figure that out, because know, I mean, it's um, I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people who are just in life,
Speaker 1: they aren't reading instructions. Kind of people, you know, like
Speaker 1: if they get a piece of furniture from Ikea, they're
Speaker 1: not going to read the instructions. Is just gonna put
Speaker 1: it together. And I'm sure buying a record, you don't
Speaker 1: even assume that there will be instructions, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it was Mega Death with Sweating Bullets or whether it's
Speaker 1: Jack White with Lazaretto, why would there be instructions, So
Speaker 1: you just you just play it and you're confused why
Speaker 1: it's not working. Yeah, this Lazaretto album. We when you
Speaker 1: initially mentioned it to me in our chat, you listed
Speaker 1: all the gimmicks it had, and I didn't even understand
Speaker 1: all of them. It seems like it makes me think
Speaker 1: of of the book um House of Leaves. This feels
Speaker 1: like it it's like the House of Leaves of vinyl records. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was very popular, I believe. I know it
Speaker 1: was the best selling record at the time, but I
Speaker 1: think like for the year it was like the best
Speaker 1: selling vinyl record for that year than Alright, moving on
Speaker 1: to the next example that they've given this paper. Double
Speaker 1: grooves or parallel grooves quote records where two grooves run
Speaker 1: simultaneously through a record, causing the needle to play different
Speaker 1: material depending where it is initially placed. This is apparently
Speaker 1: sometimes referred to as a third side. Yeah, I've also
Speaker 1: heard these called three sided records, and uh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there are a few names for this, but these, these
Speaker 1: are these are much more rare. These are fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna have to keep explaining this one to me. Um.
Speaker 1: A couple of examples that they mentioned. There's the Monty
Speaker 1: Python matching tie and handkerchief from three, which the packaging
Speaker 1: is pretty neat on this because the album is packaged
Speaker 1: to look like you're buying a matching tie and handkerchief,
Speaker 1: which is fun. But side two has two different grooves,
Speaker 1: so depending on where you place the needle, you'll get
Speaker 1: different material. Now, I have firsthand experience because I own
Speaker 1: this record, and it's it's amazing. Here's the best part
Speaker 1: I can say about this. Uh, this one entirely worked
Speaker 1: on me because I didn't even know that there was
Speaker 1: a hidden third side until I read about it later
Speaker 1: and had to investigate for myself, like like like that's
Speaker 1: not printed on the record anywhere that there's hidden music
Speaker 1: or I guess hidden comedy on this record. So so
Speaker 1: here's here's I think their goal, which was so all
Speaker 1: records side A, side B, the side with two parallel grooves.
Speaker 1: What's happening is, um, yeah, I guess picture that spiral again.
Speaker 1: But there are two completely different lines to that spiral
Speaker 1: right next to each other, going all the way down
Speaker 1: to that center. So therefore, when you're putting that needle
Speaker 1: in that groove, you have basically a fifty chance are
Speaker 1: you going to be in the one groove or the
Speaker 1: groove right next to it that never match up. So
Speaker 1: here's the fun. The fun part is that you you
Speaker 1: listen to side A, everything sounds normal, You turn it over,
Speaker 1: you put on side B, listen to it, everything's normal,
Speaker 1: and then you put put away your record. Next month,
Speaker 1: you wanna listen to it again. Side everything's normal? Put
Speaker 1: it on side B. Wait, this isn't the side B
Speaker 1: I've heard before. What's happening? And so you listen to it.
Speaker 1: You're like, I swear I heard this differently before, but okay, whatever, whatever, whatever.
Speaker 1: You put it aside, pull it out, put on again.
Speaker 1: Sometimes side as normal, Side B it's that first side again.
Speaker 1: You're like, wait, wait, wait, I swear last time this
Speaker 1: joke was on there, or maybe you're like talking to
Speaker 1: your friends, You're like, hey, what about that one part?
Speaker 1: You know? Did you? Did you love? Track three? Like
Speaker 1: that's not track three? It's like no, no, what definitely is.
Speaker 1: Come over to my house. I'll play it for you.
Speaker 1: You put it on and it plays the wrong side,
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, I swear like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like a fun it seems like it's. It's it's
Speaker 1: almost gaslighting you. You know it's it's. It's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a very fun gimmick. Now is this? I'm reminded
Speaker 1: of of a trophy encounter in in a lot of
Speaker 1: like carror and mystery TV shows and short stories where
Speaker 1: someone realizes that there's a hidden compartment in a room
Speaker 1: based on the fact of this room is smaller in
Speaker 1: the adjoining room. Is that? Would that be something? With
Speaker 1: this scenario, like, if you were really on the lookout
Speaker 1: for this sort of trick, would you notice that, like
Speaker 1: one side of the record seemed shorter than the other.
Speaker 1: You you would have to be really on your toes,
Speaker 1: because the side of a typical twelve inch record can
Speaker 1: be anywhere from like ten minutes to thirty minutes, depending
Speaker 1: upon how closely you put those grooves together. But yes,
Speaker 1: you you would be able to notice if you paid
Speaker 1: very close attention to how much space was being taken
Speaker 1: up by the grooves, because it's only playing half of
Speaker 1: those grooves when it's going going down the line playing
Speaker 1: all the audio. So like a physical investigation would be needed.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't just be like, well, that side felt this
Speaker 1: long and this one feels different or something. It would
Speaker 1: be possible, but yeah, yeah, you would have to be
Speaker 1: paying a lot of attention. And uh and for me,
Speaker 1: I needed someone to tell me. I needed someone to
Speaker 1: tell me that a record in my collection had three
Speaker 1: sides before I before I realized it. The other example
Speaker 1: that they bring up in the paper is Mr. Bungle's
Speaker 1: Disco of Alone te from in which Hidden Grooves contain
Speaker 1: the songs Secret Song and songs by quote the Secret
Speaker 1: Chiefs Trio. And then they also mentioned that secret Song
Speaker 1: is said to be notoriously difficult to find with the needle,
Speaker 1: that that's another part that you can do on purpose. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I believe on the matching the Monty Python record,
Speaker 1: it's more or less a fifty fifty because just when
Speaker 1: you're when you're creating those grooves, you just make the openings,
Speaker 1: you know, the same size. But let's say, for example,
Speaker 1: you want that second song to really be a secret, well,
Speaker 1: then you don't create an opening for it. You haven't
Speaker 1: exist entirely cut off from that primary groove, and it
Speaker 1: can just live there and no one will ever find
Speaker 1: out unless they deliberately not start the record at the beginning,
Speaker 1: but trial and error just kind of drop it in
Speaker 1: the middle of the record, hoping that it lands on
Speaker 1: the correct group that they want to find. So technically,
Speaker 1: you could have situations where they could be albums out
Speaker 1: there with see Creek grooves with secret information in them
Speaker 1: that have never been discovered. That Nicolas Cage has not
Speaker 1: his character in a film, or Tom Hanks's character in
Speaker 1: the film has not put on the record to discover yet.
Speaker 1: Very possible, now, I would say, in all likelihood, depending
Speaker 1: upon the many ways people start records. I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: a large percentage of the world that doesn't carefully place
Speaker 1: the needle at the beginning of of each record before
Speaker 1: they start. They do just PLoP it on wherever, So
Speaker 1: I bet it would be found pretty quickly, I would assume,
Speaker 1: just based on people's sloppy handling of their record needles.
Speaker 1: So do you have any other fun examples of double grooves,
Speaker 1: parallel grooves, and third sides. There's a couple I've heard of,
Speaker 1: but but I've never seen. This is This is a
Speaker 1: great one that I would love to see this in
Speaker 1: person someday, but I've only read about it. It's a
Speaker 1: horse racing board game. So what you do is everyone
Speaker 1: picks their horses, you know, standard like typical you know
Speaker 1: betting forms, and you read a little description about which
Speaker 1: horses what and blah blah blah, and then you start
Speaker 1: the record, which contains all the sound effects of you know,
Speaker 1: being being at the downs and all that, and there's
Speaker 1: an announcer calling the horse race. However, the record has
Speaker 1: multiple parallel grooves, each with a different result, so you
Speaker 1: never know which horse is actually going to be the
Speaker 1: winner when you put that groove on. So so it's
Speaker 1: almost like a choose your own adventure, except you don't
Speaker 1: get a choice, you know. Wow, Yeah, and yeah. I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from anyone out there who knows of
Speaker 1: other examples of this, because it seems like it's the
Speaker 1: sort of sort of gimmick that that people would have
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun with, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: some sort of narrative use of it, with with with
Speaker 1: some sort of a storytelling technique, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: kind of like Clue the movie where you watch it
Speaker 1: and it's got like the multiple endings kind of like that,
Speaker 1: and that'd be fun. Uh, here's one more example, because
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned it, Uh, going back again to the
Speaker 1: Ultra LP version of Jack Whites Lazaretto. Like I said,
Speaker 1: he's got a million gimmicks on this one. He has
Speaker 1: a version of parallel grooves that I've never seen before.
Speaker 1: Track one on side BE it's a song called Just
Speaker 1: One Drink. It has two completely different intros to the
Speaker 1: song that are parallel grooves, but they both feed in
Speaker 1: to the to the primary groove again, so the rest
Speaker 1: of the record plays completely normal. So it's it's it
Speaker 1: starts off as two spirals and then they both funnel
Speaker 1: into the one standard spiral, so it's and once again,
Speaker 1: it's just luck. Wait wait when you put on that
Speaker 1: needle for the first time, it's it's just a chance
Speaker 1: of am I going to play the like like the
Speaker 1: harder version of the intro or the softer, more acoustic
Speaker 1: version of the intro. It's just who knows what you're
Speaker 1: gonna get? And man, that's fun, Like you can't get
Speaker 1: that with other mediums. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the CD type
Speaker 1: culture we never had anything like that. We'll get into
Speaker 1: some examples of what we did have, but they didn't
Speaker 1: create this kind of level of almost quantum uncertainty, like
Speaker 1: what will happen when I start playing this song? I mean,
Speaker 1: to a certain extend, mystery is there when you play
Speaker 1: a new album for the first time, But the idea
Speaker 1: that subsequent return to that album, that there could be
Speaker 1: not just things that were subjectively different, but objectively different
Speaker 1: things about the listening experience. Yeah, absolutely, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get into the c d age a little bit,
Speaker 1: and let's eventually get into the digital realm as well.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about so called hidden tracks,
Speaker 1: secret tracks. Uh, this is this is an area that
Speaker 1: I I have more familiarity with because again I was,
Speaker 1: I was more of a c D guy than certainly
Speaker 1: than than anything like the CDs were. This was the
Speaker 1: right period where I really got into like choosing my
Speaker 1: own musical interests, choosing the bands that I wanted to
Speaker 1: devote time too. And then also I guess at the
Speaker 1: time too, it's like CDs were starting to get a
Speaker 1: little pricey, so whatever you bought like this was a
Speaker 1: deliberate choice. Not only is this an album you wanted
Speaker 1: to listen to, you would you would make sure you
Speaker 1: liked it, or you would really give it a chance,
Speaker 1: because this was gonna be your album for the you know,
Speaker 1: for for a week or two maybe more, until you
Speaker 1: could conceivably buy another album. So, you know, we get
Speaker 1: into this realm of secret tracks, and I guess the
Speaker 1: thing about secret and hidden tracks is they ultimately really
Speaker 1: weren't that well hidden. I mean, certainly nothing compared to
Speaker 1: the vinyl examples we've discussed, right right, I mean I
Speaker 1: did enjoy sometimes, and I think this is pretty rare
Speaker 1: when there was literally a hidden disc inside the CD packaging.
Speaker 1: That was fun when that would happen on occasion, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, it was, yeah, you'll you'll explain.
Speaker 1: For the most part, it was pretty straightforward to have
Speaker 1: some hidden songs. Yeah, like the main examples to come
Speaker 1: to my mind, or like Tools Undertow and the nine
Speaker 1: Inch Nails EP Broken, the versions that I had just
Speaker 1: had a bunch of like extra blank tracks and then
Speaker 1: eventually the tracks containing the extra songs. And I believe
Speaker 1: I didn't know about this till I was just researching
Speaker 1: it again for this episode, but apparently with Nine Inch Nail,
Speaker 1: the original c D pressing and the vinyl pressing of
Speaker 1: Broken had an extra smaller disc that had the bonus
Speaker 1: tracks on them. That that was a very brief window
Speaker 1: when Yeah, they were like these little mini CDs that
Speaker 1: in theory could play in any CD player, Like in fact,
Speaker 1: if you happen to have a CD player at home,
Speaker 1: especially when the kind of like a tray, you pop
Speaker 1: it open and you'll notice that there's actually a smaller
Speaker 1: imprint inside where the bigger imprint is. That's for these
Speaker 1: smaller CDs, but that medium lasted like a blink of
Speaker 1: an eye. I think they were more popular in a
Speaker 1: in somewhere in Asia. I want to say Japan, that
Speaker 1: they lasted longer, but yeah, I know that they didn't
Speaker 1: last here very long at all. I remember, though, thinking
Speaker 1: that this was clever and cool, and there was this
Speaker 1: kind of idea that it's like, yeah, nine inch Nails,
Speaker 1: they're kind of they're sticking it to the man. They
Speaker 1: have these in there. They're then they're delivering bonus content
Speaker 1: to us the fans that they clearly the record labels
Speaker 1: didn't want this on here, but they said, no, we insist.
Speaker 1: We're gonna hide it at the end where the inspectors
Speaker 1: won't find it first, right, Hey, hey, why not? I
Speaker 1: like that narrative. I I like picturing, you know, a
Speaker 1: Trent Resioner with these little mini CDs hiding at the
Speaker 1: factory to slip them into each and every package. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it wouldn't be entirely out of out of care.
Speaker 1: There were the like later story I forget what album
Speaker 1: this was, but the idea that, like some of the
Speaker 1: tracks were leaked to the media by leaving a USB
Speaker 1: in a bathroom at a concert or something, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's all fun stuff. Now another example for the
Speaker 1: secret track. Another way the secret track hidden track was
Speaker 1: often utilized would be just have a big long gap
Speaker 1: after the final listed track on the album, and then
Speaker 1: eventually a hidden track starts playing. And of course the
Speaker 1: reverse of that is, once you know it's there, if
Speaker 1: you want to listen to the hidden track, you just
Speaker 1: fast forward through the final track to get to that content.
Speaker 1: It's funny too, because, um, all of these examples, they're
Speaker 1: they're all so tied to the CD itself. And in fact,
Speaker 1: do you remember, um, negative time on a CD player? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember what I had one album in
Speaker 1: particular that did this, but I can't recall what it
Speaker 1: was a big thing that would happen, uh that this
Speaker 1: This is like not during the early days of CDs,
Speaker 1: but more towards the later days when basically, um, a
Speaker 1: CD was really kind of being pushed to its to
Speaker 1: its limits of like what it could contain and and
Speaker 1: maybe getting a bit more secretive, getting a bit weirder
Speaker 1: with it. If there was like a bit of audio
Speaker 1: that existed kind of between tracks, whether it be like
Speaker 1: maybe a bit of a skit or an intro, or
Speaker 1: just sort of like an in the studio outtake or something.
Speaker 1: When it was playing and you could watch the time
Speaker 1: on the little um the digital read out, it would
Speaker 1: be like, you know, five seconds, six seconds, seven seconds,
Speaker 1: negative six seconds, negative five seconds, negative four seconds, and
Speaker 1: in that negative space would be this additional noise, little
Speaker 1: little skit, little outtake, whatever, little intro. So that way,
Speaker 1: when you skipped to the final to like the real song,
Speaker 1: it would start where the song starts. But if you
Speaker 1: listen to the album all the way through, this negative
Speaker 1: space would just give a bit more context, a bit
Speaker 1: more padding, a bit more like um continuity, you know.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was pretty fun. But also when
Speaker 1: we reached the age of digitizing our CDs and putting
Speaker 1: them onto you know, our MP three players and whatever,
Speaker 1: oh that that became a headache. Now I don't even
Speaker 1: know how to classify this one. This one is not
Speaker 1: an example that was brought up in the paper, but
Speaker 1: an album that I that I had, and this is
Speaker 1: a great album that the Caius album from Welcome to
Speaker 1: Sky Valley comes to mind. This one had this weird
Speaker 1: structure where it does have a hidden track at the end,
Speaker 1: which is real dumb, but it also has ten tracks overall.
Speaker 1: The first but the I mean ten songs overall. The
Speaker 1: first three songs are all one track, the next three
Speaker 1: songs are all one track, and the last four songs
Speaker 1: are all one track. And I'm not really clear on
Speaker 1: why they did this, but I remember being more annoyed
Speaker 1: by it than anything, because sometimes you want to listen
Speaker 1: to an album all the way through, but sometimes you
Speaker 1: just want to hear Demon Cleaner, which is really great
Speaker 1: track off of that album, really great song off of
Speaker 1: that album, but is the third song in track number two.
Speaker 1: It's a little hard to get to if you just
Speaker 1: want that. I can't speak to um this specific example,
Speaker 1: but I can give this example UM. Just recently, I
Speaker 1: had Joe on on my podcast Rusty Needles Record Club,
Speaker 1: and we did uh the self titled Black Sabbath album
Speaker 1: and on it. The American version combined a bunch of
Speaker 1: the tracks into fewer tracks. So like the original European version,
Speaker 1: let's say, had ten tracks, the American version had like
Speaker 1: six tracks. The albums were more or less identical. They
Speaker 1: swapped out one song, but that's that's beside the point
Speaker 1: more or less identical, just far fewer tracks. And when
Speaker 1: you look it up, like why did this happen? It
Speaker 1: was just a record label thing. They're like, oh, we're
Speaker 1: paying them by the track, so if we give them
Speaker 1: fewer tracks x, we don't have to pay them as
Speaker 1: many residuals, you know. And what's funny is like now
Speaker 1: the opposite is true. Like um, for example, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the idea of like a hidden track inside
Speaker 1: of a CD, where it used to be. Let's say
Speaker 1: let's let's say there are ten tracks on the album
Speaker 1: and one hidden bonus track, so that tenth track would
Speaker 1: be a song, long gap and then another song, So
Speaker 1: eleven songs, ten physical tracks. In today's modern streaming age, basically,
Speaker 1: they've gotten they've they've more or less gotten rid of that.
Speaker 1: Now whenever I see something that used to have a
Speaker 1: hidden track, it's just chopped off and turned into a
Speaker 1: bonus track, because the opposite is true now. Now the
Speaker 1: record label gets paid by these streaming services for every
Speaker 1: single individual track, so they want as many tracks as possible.
Speaker 1: If they can, they'll cut up and do a hundred tracks,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's it's just interesting that that, like
Speaker 1: the opposite is true of the record label wanting more money.
Speaker 1: They used to force you to put it in as
Speaker 1: few tracks as possible, and now they're forcing you to
Speaker 1: cut it into as many tracks as possible, and it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, it's gonna keep flip flopping forever until I
Speaker 1: don't know, until business people don't want money. So it's me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there are plenty of examples that that you can
Speaker 1: point to where if if nothing else they do the
Speaker 1: whole just throw an extra hidden song there at the end,
Speaker 1: after some some blink blink space, you know, a little quiet,
Speaker 1: and then something else pops up. And and sometimes it
Speaker 1: was clearly they were trying to be cheeky, and maybe
Speaker 1: it was some sort of a track that was a
Speaker 1: little cruder or a little little dumber or supposed to
Speaker 1: be cryptic. And other times it was like, I think
Speaker 1: I had a Natalie Merchant album that just had a
Speaker 1: really neat folk song at the very end of things,
Speaker 1: and there's not really neat. I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: any logical reason to have this be a hidden track,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was there hidden um. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: nowadays you pull up the same albums, and I guess
Speaker 1: sometimes they're still gonna keep that together, but a lot
Speaker 1: of times the hidden track is just gonna be listed there. Right. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm not working for Jack Whites'. I'm not getting paid
Speaker 1: for every time I meant in the Lazaretto Ultra LP.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna bring up one more time because get this.
Speaker 1: These are a couple of examples of hidden tracks that
Speaker 1: blow my mind. He hid tracks underneath the paper labels
Speaker 1: on the record itself, and also he put them with
Speaker 1: two different um speeds revolutions per minute than the record itself.
Speaker 1: The record itself is thirty three and a third. Underneath
Speaker 1: one paper label it's seventy eight RPM, and then underneath
Speaker 1: the other one is forty five. So on this one
Speaker 1: record it has three different rpm s. It's wild, And
Speaker 1: the way it works basically is that he did imprint
Speaker 1: a song on traditional grooves under you know, in that
Speaker 1: center space which reserved for the label, and then when
Speaker 1: you do the actual pressing pressing, what happens is that
Speaker 1: the label itself just kind of gets sucked into it
Speaker 1: a little bit, so the sound quality is not that great.
Speaker 1: And I guess, if you really wanted to you could
Speaker 1: like remove the label, you could like tear it off,
Speaker 1: but you can't. It's possible just to play it direct
Speaker 1: clearly through the label. You just place your needle directly
Speaker 1: on top of that paper label and it will play
Speaker 1: the song that's underneath. Oh my goodness. Once again, not
Speaker 1: an ad for Jack White. I like him, but he's
Speaker 1: not paying me. All right. Well, there may be some
Speaker 1: more examples of of hidden songs and tracks from well,
Speaker 1: perhaps from vinyl, but but certainly maybe some more examples
Speaker 1: from the c D age that folks can mention I
Speaker 1: guess without even getting into it much. There also is
Speaker 1: that that late c D period. I guess it's kind
Speaker 1: of late CD period where you also have CDs that
Speaker 1: can be placed inside in your computer's disk drive, so
Speaker 1: you can go to some sort of crappy website or
Speaker 1: some sort of like a visual thing that lines up
Speaker 1: with the album. But I don't know if that has
Speaker 1: Jack White come back around to that. No, I think
Speaker 1: he's he's he's mostly an analog guy. I don't think
Speaker 1: he is hiding you know, PC wallpapers on any of
Speaker 1: his records yet. Now there is another really interesting area
Speaker 1: that that that some of you may be thinking of already.
Speaker 1: And this gets into the idea of having images hidden,
Speaker 1: not not as a PC wallpaper, not as something that's
Speaker 1: in the liner notes for the album or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but actually in the sound data itself. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: idea here is that, yeah, you'll have something in the
Speaker 1: sound data that if you run it through a spectrogram
Speaker 1: editor and synthesizer, you can produce an image, um, the
Speaker 1: the image that was encoded as music or encoded as
Speaker 1: sound anyway inside of a musical piece or inside of
Speaker 1: an album. These are absolutely stunning to me. I I
Speaker 1: do this stuff every day, and in fact, because you
Speaker 1: know the programs that you use to look at these
Speaker 1: images that they're the programs I used to add at
Speaker 1: these shows. You know. That's that's that's that's just part
Speaker 1: of my repertoire. And I have actually looked into creating
Speaker 1: these myself, and I'm still in awe even though I
Speaker 1: know how they do. It's it's ridiculous. I poof the
Speaker 1: most famous example of this, I think, or well, it's
Speaker 1: one of the most famous examples, and in some circles,
Speaker 1: the most famous example, and this is the one that's
Speaker 1: mentioned in that that paper from from Wine, Old Griffiths
Speaker 1: and Cunningham Window Liquor by a f X twin. If
Speaker 1: you run this one particular part of the song the
Speaker 1: sound through this system, you of course get to see
Speaker 1: Richard James, that's APEX twin. You get to see his
Speaker 1: his grinning face. It's it's amazing because first of all,
Speaker 1: it looks even spookier than it always looks. You know,
Speaker 1: Richard D. James is always doing some kind of spooky
Speaker 1: thing with his face, whether it's turning it into a
Speaker 1: mask and putting on a child or whatever. But um man,
Speaker 1: oh man, it's it's it's so fascinating. It too because
Speaker 1: like you know, uh, if you think about these these programs,
Speaker 1: what they're doing is they're showing you, you know, the
Speaker 1: visualization of the audio waves. So the way you put
Speaker 1: the images in there is you reverse engineers. You create
Speaker 1: the image first, and then you basically determine what those
Speaker 1: sounds would need to be to create that image, and
Speaker 1: then you can just basically put it in your song
Speaker 1: and boom, you've got it. But it's so funny because
Speaker 1: every example of this I've seen, it's very obvious that
Speaker 1: something strange is going on in the audio because this
Speaker 1: is not a typical wave. It's a picture of Richard
Speaker 1: James face. Yeah, it's not just a case where oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's if you play this back with satanic message, like
Speaker 1: it's clear that something is there, and then when you
Speaker 1: when you run it through, you can see the artist's
Speaker 1: face or in the case of a particular track from
Speaker 1: Venetian Snares, that's the moniker of Aaron funk Um. There's
Speaker 1: a picture of his cat that when I found very
Speaker 1: very sweet, of course, um in part because I wasn't
Speaker 1: familiar with it. I was familiar with the Aphex twin example,
Speaker 1: and when I heard there was a Venetian Snares, when
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know what this image is
Speaker 1: going to be, but it's is just a cat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nice, it's uh, it's it's a fun way to
Speaker 1: do this. And I think I particularly like these two.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of um, I've seen people in the
Speaker 1: olden days when they were computer programmers in the deep past.
Speaker 1: Not not not um, not in the contemporary sense, but
Speaker 1: the way that you're actually like fooling around like microchips,
Speaker 1: like that old style of computer programmer, the computer programs
Speaker 1: would write little messages to one another on side the
Speaker 1: chips when they put them in computers, than when years
Speaker 1: later you come across something and it has something written
Speaker 1: on it that no one would read except another programmer.
Speaker 1: Who who is you know, fiddling around with this machine?
Speaker 1: And from what I understand, people who write code these
Speaker 1: days often do a similar thing. So I think this
Speaker 1: kind of hidden message in a song very much is
Speaker 1: like one audio producer talking to another audio producer going like, hey,
Speaker 1: look in this funny and it's like, yeah, it is
Speaker 1: a good job. There's at least one more really good
Speaker 1: example of this, and this might be in some sort
Speaker 1: of This might be the most famous example, um, depending
Speaker 1: on where you're coming from. But the two thousand seven
Speaker 1: nine Inch Nails album Year Zero, which which I think
Speaker 1: is a great album. Occasionally play this one agreed today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has I think two different spectagrams. I was only
Speaker 1: familiar with the first one, but the spectrogram at the
Speaker 1: end of the track My Violent Heart, and it's a
Speaker 1: like a hand reaching down from the sky, which is
Speaker 1: also a theme of the the cover for the album.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't imagine how many of these are
Speaker 1: unseen in the world, because I think even more so
Speaker 1: than um oh a hidden song on a record or
Speaker 1: a hidden song on our CD, the vast majority of
Speaker 1: people will never run their audio through through a spectrogram.
Speaker 1: It's never going to happen. So unless you are a
Speaker 1: person you know who has that background and you think
Speaker 1: you hear something and you happen to upload it in
Speaker 1: and look at it, I bet there's a lot of
Speaker 1: hidden stuff that's never been seen before. Now there's one
Speaker 1: more example that's brought up, and that is um this
Speaker 1: idea of of black middies, which is not something I
Speaker 1: was familiar with, but it's brought up in this paper
Speaker 1: about Easter eggs and music. And these are apparently midi
Speaker 1: files that contain an absurd amount of data. They when
Speaker 1: played back in a program, can produce patterns when they
Speaker 1: cause the program to fail. And I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: completely understand this one, but it's still interesting. There's still
Speaker 1: something about it almost sounds like let's take the music
Speaker 1: and like crash it and uh and in doing so
Speaker 1: we'll create will create these uh, these visuals. So the
Speaker 1: idea of the black midi is pretty interesting too because
Speaker 1: it uh it ties into a much older idea, which is,
Speaker 1: we as human beings, are limited by what we can
Speaker 1: do with our hands. It's difficult for us to go
Speaker 1: beyond what is physically possible. We we we we have
Speaker 1: two hands for the most part, ten fingers for the
Speaker 1: most part. This is what we can do. Let's say,
Speaker 1: on a piano, A piano can only do what the
Speaker 1: human being can do. Maybe you can add other person,
Speaker 1: but other than that, we're We're just human beings. So
Speaker 1: back in the days when people first started mechanizing musical instruments,
Speaker 1: folks started experimenting with this. One of my favorites. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get his name wrong because I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever pronounced it correctly because I've heard it too many ways.
Speaker 1: A guy named Conlin non car o c O N
Speaker 1: l O n n A n c A r r
Speaker 1: O W. He's an experimental musician. Um. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the things he did, which which many call him the
Speaker 1: first electronic musician because of this, is he would create
Speaker 1: roles for player pianos, you know, those kind of pianos
Speaker 1: that play themselves. And he was like, oh wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this isn't a human being, this is a machine. I
Speaker 1: can make this thing, do whatever I want. So he
Speaker 1: would do things that he would program for these player
Speaker 1: pianos that were impossible, you know, too many hands, notes,
Speaker 1: playing too quickly in succession, you know, just all these things.
Speaker 1: A lot of it was really really fast, and it
Speaker 1: was just it was such like a fascinating idea of like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to create music that was meant to replicate
Speaker 1: human hands, but I'm gonna make it for for nobody.
Speaker 1: This is this is completely imaginary music that nobody could
Speaker 1: ever play. And so so his music is really fascinating.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. Look it up. But that's the
Speaker 1: same idea behind a black midi, which is um if
Speaker 1: folks don't know, a midi file is more or less
Speaker 1: the zeros and ones behind a digital instrument playing music.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of music that's played in most video games, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And so if you are playing a piano that turns
Speaker 1: it into midi data, it's documenting it and you know,
Speaker 1: putting all those little pieces in place, so when you
Speaker 1: play it back, it plays it back the exact same way.
Speaker 1: Same thing, Just like with that idea that Canlaon Nakara
Speaker 1: was doing. You just start putting an extra data, things
Speaker 1: that are completely impossible, things that your hands could never do,
Speaker 1: things that there there aren't there isn't enough time, there's
Speaker 1: there aren't enough fingers in the world to ever actually
Speaker 1: play this, and it gets to such an enormous degree
Speaker 1: that it's that it's impossible and it breaks so um.
Speaker 1: There's an example of this. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard about this, but do you know
Speaker 1: the song rush E. I don't. I'm I'm gonna show
Speaker 1: this to you. Audience will be right back. WHOA that
Speaker 1: that was something? Uh, it's it started off rather subtle
Speaker 1: and kind of pleasant, and then it got really intense.
Speaker 1: I guess to to to describe this to anyone else
Speaker 1: and watch the video of presentation of this is you
Speaker 1: have a keyboard at the bottom and you have little
Speaker 1: blocks falling and it's kind of like tetris. I guess
Speaker 1: if you have blocks when they reach the bottom, they
Speaker 1: just play the keys that they land on, a bit
Speaker 1: like a guitar hero too. Oh yeah, yeah, like guitar Hero.
Speaker 1: And I guess the idea is that early on we're
Speaker 1: seeing things that are very possible with human hands, with
Speaker 1: a human piano player, but then it gets increasingly complex,
Speaker 1: um to the level where no human with even like
Speaker 1: four arms employed this thing. No, I mean, and I
Speaker 1: honestly commend the creator of this um I I believe
Speaker 1: this one is created by someone named um sheet music Boss.
Speaker 1: You can find this video online. It's very popular, It's
Speaker 1: been memed to death. It's um gosh, got many many
Speaker 1: millions of views, so check it out if you haven't.
Speaker 1: It is something to see. I really have to commend
Speaker 1: them on like the build of this, because it starts
Speaker 1: off just like mildly impossible, and then like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is really impossible, and by the time you reach the end,
Speaker 1: it's ludicrously impossible, like like like like like the it's
Speaker 1: criss crossing, it's spelling images, it's like it's it's every
Speaker 1: key being played simultaneously, and yet it still sounds pretty good,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, they just like orders of magnitude though
Speaker 1: in complexity began to drop on you. I mean in
Speaker 1: a way, it's kind of like, yeah, if if Tetris
Speaker 1: suddenly got like like huge leap and difficulty and just overwhelming,
Speaker 1: that feels, I mean, it was a little anxious watching
Speaker 1: and listening to it. So yeah, so this song is
Speaker 1: called rush E. It's a it's very much a meme song. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a long backstory to how this came to be.
Speaker 1: It has to do with Mark Apply or the YouTube
Speaker 1: gamer like. It's a long history that I can't go
Speaker 1: into right now. But ultimately it's just a song that's
Speaker 1: so complex that not only is it impossible for humans
Speaker 1: to play, but it's even too complex for some computers
Speaker 1: to handle. And thus it's title of being a black
Speaker 1: Middi that it's basically it's gonna brick your computer. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: so that that that's more or less what a black
Speaker 1: Midi is, and Rushi is perhaps the most famous example
Speaker 1: of a black Midi. Now I've said the words black
Speaker 1: Midi several times, so I would be completely remissed if
Speaker 1: I didn't mention one of my favorite contemporary bands, Black Middy. Uh.
Speaker 1: They've released three albums so far. There two album, hell Fire,
Speaker 1: is in contention for one of my favorite albums the year.
Speaker 1: And I assume they picked their band name because their
Speaker 1: sound is very maximalist, it's very busy, it's very complex,
Speaker 1: and it's very intricate. So I'm sure they picked their
Speaker 1: band name for that purpose, but a wonderful group. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend people check out hell Fire, one of the
Speaker 1: best album two I promise you need. Let's check that
Speaker 1: out now. Going in the entirely opposite direction from like
Speaker 1: PC crashing um complexity, there's another just one last topic
Speaker 1: to to touch on here and this, but this is
Speaker 1: by no means an exhaustive list of the way that
Speaker 1: stuff can be hidden in music. There may be other examples,
Speaker 1: and feel free to write in about them. But another
Speaker 1: thing you can do is simply take a sound, take
Speaker 1: a song, and either speed it up or stretch it
Speaker 1: out so time stretching is is one worth mentioning here.
Speaker 1: It's a matter of taking sonic information and stretch stretching
Speaker 1: it out so that it is unrecognizable, but in doing
Speaker 1: so perhaps making it interesting, more interesting, certainly more ambient,
Speaker 1: or in the reverse, you know you can you can
Speaker 1: certainly speed things up um. And in all of this
Speaker 1: that reminded me a bit of their various videos that
Speaker 1: will do this online, where they'll take Alvin and the
Speaker 1: Chipmunk songs wit and which, of course you have human
Speaker 1: voice is sped up to be the voices of of chipmunks.
Speaker 1: And then if you slow it down enough, the Chipmunks
Speaker 1: sound like normal adult human beings, and it's everything else
Speaker 1: that sounds like it's from the Twilight Zone in a
Speaker 1: realm of monsters. It's very sludgy, very slow, very lethargic,
Speaker 1: and it's it's very fun to listen to a whole
Speaker 1: album of these uh slowed down Chipmunks songs. But it's
Speaker 1: also amazing how much slower and longer these songs are, like,
Speaker 1: you know, because imagine if you're listening to it at
Speaker 1: its regular speed, it's, what you know, half hour something
Speaker 1: like that. You slow it down and man, you've got
Speaker 1: like an hour and a half album, and the Chipmunks album.
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't want to be listening to it that long,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's fun. It's always fun. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: um listening to too much audio sped up or slowed down.
Speaker 1: I find it kind of It was messing with me
Speaker 1: after a while, Like if I'm queueing an episode and
Speaker 1: I have sped up too much and I feel like
Speaker 1: I have to walk outside a little bit afterwards. Now
Speaker 1: when I'm editing these episodes, a little peek behind the
Speaker 1: curtain for our listeners. UH. Quite often I'll do it
Speaker 1: at either plus twenty five percent plus fifty and on
Speaker 1: rare occasions up to plus one percent. So I'm listening
Speaker 1: at two x speed. And um, usually it does doesn't
Speaker 1: last too long because I'll have to stop to make
Speaker 1: edits and stuff. But man, oh man, I am very
Speaker 1: familiar with the chipmunk version of Roberts and the chipmunk
Speaker 1: version of Joe Wow. Point to five is pretty comfortable
Speaker 1: for me, and I actually, since I don't really like
Speaker 1: listening to my own voice, I find that if I
Speaker 1: listened to it at point to five, I feel like
Speaker 1: I sound better, and maybe I sound like enough like
Speaker 1: a different person that I can kind of listen to
Speaker 1: myself more and not judge myself. But when I'm at
Speaker 1: at at point five, yeah, it's it's it's already a
Speaker 1: little maddening. And I just can't do double time. It's
Speaker 1: just too much. And yeah, and at a certain point
Speaker 1: for me as an editor, you know, obviously I'm looking
Speaker 1: for things that I need to you know, synch up
Speaker 1: or remove or whatever. At a certain point, I can't
Speaker 1: tell what people are saying anymore, so I have to stop.
Speaker 1: I have to slow it down again. But but Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can also of course stretch out sounds and and
Speaker 1: so forth in order to to make music and create
Speaker 1: novel sounds of Pierre Schaefer made use of time stretch stretching,
Speaker 1: not so much to include easter eggs or hidden information,
Speaker 1: but just as a part of the experimentation and music making. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure offhand if there are notable examples of this,
Speaker 1: but I but I I feel like I've run across
Speaker 1: some examples in the past where some drone and ambient
Speaker 1: music creators have used this effect, Like take something really,
Speaker 1: slow it down, and even if the source material is
Speaker 1: not ambient and drone, you can create an ambient and
Speaker 1: drone experience from it. Potentially. There there's been a couple
Speaker 1: of very again we're getting into like kind of like
Speaker 1: meme music at this point. Again, but a very popular
Speaker 1: example of this was bouncing around the internet a while ago.
Speaker 1: Someone took the very popular Justin Bieber song Baby, and
Speaker 1: they slowed it down by eight hundred percent and the
Speaker 1: results was beautiful. It was very ambi and many people
Speaker 1: compared it to like a Sugar Ross song, and it's
Speaker 1: a it's fun to listen to. And then the cool
Speaker 1: part is is that that kicked off the idea of like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can do this to anything, you know, And so
Speaker 1: people just started applying this slow it down by a
Speaker 1: philosophy to nearly any song and it always has basically
Speaker 1: the same ethereal floaty sugar ross like vibe, which makes
Speaker 1: me really want to speed up sugar Roast by a
Speaker 1: hundred percent just to see what that will sound like.
Speaker 1: But I haven't done that yet. I'm sure someone has
Speaker 1: on the internet, so I'll have to check that out.
Speaker 1: But but it's fun. I in fact, I came across
Speaker 1: a m It was a website where they're they're The
Speaker 1: website's entire purpose was just to slow down audio that
Speaker 1: you fed into it. That you would feed in something
Speaker 1: and it would slow down by a percent for you.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a fun little trick. I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: just like all gimmicks, it can be overplayed and kind
Speaker 1: of loses its creativity. But it's fun. It's fun stuff.
Speaker 1: It reminds me a bit too, of all this of
Speaker 1: the the science fiction and satirical ideas that on one hand,
Speaker 1: Frank Herbert explored a little bit in the Dune books
Speaker 1: with Samuda music which is a type of music that
Speaker 1: we would listen to while also doing the drug samuda,
Speaker 1: and it's like you could only appreciate the music while
Speaker 1: your brain was altered by this drug because of potentially
Speaker 1: because of the way it slowed down or sped things up.
Speaker 1: And then also the British satire series Brass Eye from
Speaker 1: Chris Morris, they had an episode on drugs that was
Speaker 1: a parody of like anti drug hysteria in the UK,
Speaker 1: and they had a whole bit about this made up
Speaker 1: drug called cake, and there was a whole bit in
Speaker 1: there about like this is the music that they listened
Speaker 1: to while they're on cake, and this is how it
Speaker 1: sounds to us. But if you're on cake, it sounds
Speaker 1: like this, and so it's yeah, I can't help but
Speaker 1: bring that up. I literally just read a book about
Speaker 1: the Pink Floyd debut album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Speaker 1: I just finished it like maybe a day ago, And
Speaker 1: there's actually a big chunk in there about that too,
Speaker 1: really really leaning into the idea of like there's an
Speaker 1: audience here that is willing to put up with a
Speaker 1: fifteen minute song. Most of them are on acid, but
Speaker 1: there is an audience for this. Can can we can
Speaker 1: we Pink Floyd pivot from being a single based band
Speaker 1: into an album based band where we can have those
Speaker 1: fifteen minute songs and this kind of like internal debate
Speaker 1: about that, and of course then you get into like
Speaker 1: all the sit Barrett stuff and Roger Waters and it
Speaker 1: goes onto a whole other world. But but hey, if
Speaker 1: you enjoy this kind of talk, you should tun an
Speaker 1: Interesting Needles Record Club. Yeah yeah, yeah, tell everybody where
Speaker 1: they can find Rusty Needles Record Club. Se It's a
Speaker 1: podcast that I host weekly, new episode every Friday. I'm
Speaker 1: a big old music nerd and I just need an
Speaker 1: outlet for talking about music. And uh, thankfully Robert and
Speaker 1: Joe are nice enough to have me on here to
Speaker 1: do it every once in a while. But if you
Speaker 1: need it all the time, you look up any place
Speaker 1: where you find your podcasts Rusty Needles Record Club, and
Speaker 1: you'll find me, my friends, my co hosts, and we
Speaker 1: talk about music. It's like a book club, but for
Speaker 1: music instead, and each episode is a different album. And
Speaker 1: it's a great way to uh, you know, have a
Speaker 1: surrogate music friend. It's a great way to be introduced
Speaker 1: to new music, and it's a great way just to
Speaker 1: kind of get some good recommendations. It's fun because, in particular,
Speaker 1: a lot of the episodes we do are chosen by
Speaker 1: our listeners. People were right in say hey, you gotta
Speaker 1: listen to this, and then that becomes the album of
Speaker 1: that week. So it's it's fun. It's just a great
Speaker 1: way to open yourself up to the wide spectrum of
Speaker 1: music in the world. Awesome, All right, Well we're gonna
Speaker 1: go and close it out here. These two episodes on
Speaker 1: on hidden material and music, Easter eggs and music and
Speaker 1: so forth. But yeah, we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: out there. If you have thoughts on the techniques that
Speaker 1: we discussed in these episodes, if you have thoughts on
Speaker 1: the specific examples that we discussed, and if you have
Speaker 1: new examples or new techniques that come to mind, let
Speaker 1: us know we'd love to hear from you. A reminder
Speaker 1: that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a science podcast,
Speaker 1: and our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On
Speaker 1: Monday's we do listener mail, on Wednesday's we do a
Speaker 1: short form artifact or monster effect, and on Friday's we
Speaker 1: do weird How cinema. That's our time to set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to Seth for not only co hosting
Speaker 1: these two episodes, but also producing Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind and Weird How Cinema in general, And if you
Speaker 1: want to reach out to us, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Please law Report PROPA