Composite Peppers
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you took all the tracks from a Beatle album, and stretched them all to the same length and played them all at the same time?
I did. This is the result.
Now you know why this isn’t done more often!
By the way, all the tracks have been stretched to 162 seconds long, the same length as the median, “Lovely Rita.”
Here’s another one from another band. Can you guess which band/album were used?
The answer is below in inviso-text.
Portishead, Live: Roseland, NYC
How many seconds did it take?
UPDATE
At Craig Kaplan’s suggestion, I’ve tried the same technique with a bunch of covers of the same track. I chose 13 renditions of “Stormy Weather.” In this case, instead of warping the length of the tracks, I’ve lined them all up to end at the same time, which causes them to form a climactic “storm”.
The artists, in order of appearance are: Lee Morgan, Joe Sample, Tony Bennett with Natalie Cole, Frank Sinatra, Django Reinhardt, Billlie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald with Nat King Cole, Ethel Waters, Etta James, Joni Mitchell, Sara Harmer, and Zooey Deschanel with Samantha Shelton.
September 6th, 2009 at 7:06 am
It took me about 50 seconds. Once I isolated one vocal line and was able to hear both the distinctive vocal style (of Beth Gibbons) and a couple of words of the lyrics, I knew what album it was.
Interesting as a puzzle, but you’re right that I can see why it’s not done that much. It might be cool to try it with a large number of covers of the same song.
September 6th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Haha, you’re nuts. The first hit was a mess to my ear but the second horn blast with the audience gave it away.
The Peppers track sounds a lot more chaotic to me, maybe because I haven’t heard that album for a long time but I think the beginning of the Roseland songs have a lot of empty space and the vocals are mixed higher making it easier to identify.
September 6th, 2009 at 9:53 am
See the update: I’ve added 13 renditions of “Stormy Weather”
September 8th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Wait a minute, so where do we go to find out if we guessed right?
September 8th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
I’ve added the answer in inviso-text to the original post.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
The Stormy Weather Climax is breathtaking…. I really liked it!