Skip to main content

The sound of silence

As I think I've mentioned before, I think, one of the stranger websites I run is a sort of karaoke hymns site. The idea is that there are decreasingly few organists out there, so this site provides CDs of an top flight organist playing the accompaniments to hymns (also some excellent solo voluntaries), which can be used to sing along to. It's not as good as the real thing, but it's better than not having an accompaniment, and they are quite popular.

There are just three tracks that aren't keyboard music. This is because we have a Remembrance CD, which apart from appropriate hymn accompaniments includes various national anthems plus the Last Post and Reveille on trumpet. These two tracks feature frequently in remembrance services and military events. The third track, though is something particularly special. This is our very own postmodernist track. It's 1 minute 52 seconds of silence. No, really, a CD track (also available as MP3) that is just silence.

However, unlike a certain 'serious' piece of music that is just silence, this one has a point. Each track has about 2 seconds silence at the end and beginning, plus there are 2 second gaps between tracks. So stick this 1 minute 52 second track between the Last Post and the Reveille and you've got an automated 2 minute silence, without needing to time it.

It was quite amusing recently when someone bought the track as an MP3 - in the end I had to let him off the payment. I really can't justify charging for silence.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope