In the late 1990s, artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, along with composer David Soldier, polled 500 music listeners to determine the least desirable musical qualities. They compiled their data and then composed a piece of music that incorporated as many of these qualities as possible, titling the final product “The Most Unwanted Song”. The folks polled apparently don’t like rap music, sopranos, or songs about cowboys, so their song prominently features a soprano rapping about cowboys. Other features include tubas, banjos, accordions, sudden changes in dynamics and tempo, children’s choirs singing about holidays (Labor Day, Ramadan) and corporations (Wal Mart, Coca Cola), and an uncomfortable length of 25 minutes.

The end result, in my opinion, is catchy and fascinating - much more than the sum of its unwanted parts. If you’ve ever enjoyed Mr. Bungle, I think you’ll love this song. You can stream it from the Wired article, or download the MP3.

So Bruce is the lead singer for this heavy metal band called Iron Maiden, which was pretty big in the 80’s but is still rocking out today. As if being the lead singer for Iron Maiden wasn’t awesome enough, Bruce was also really into fencing and competed internationally, and started his own fencing equipment company. And as if being the lead singer of Iron Maiden and being a top international fencer wasn’t awesome enough, Bruce also decided to become an airline pilot and now flies Boeing 757 jets for a UK charter airline. Then, in a final coup de awesome, he had a 757 painted with the Iron Maiden logo, climbed into the pilot’s seat, and flew his band on their world tour. Bruce Dickinson, you’re awesome.

Music software company Celemony has announced the latest version of their pitch correction software, Melodyne. While it’s been possible for quite some time to use software to correct or change an individual note in a recorded melody, until now it’s only been able to do that with a monophonic melody, meaning only one note is playing at a time, such as a voice or a flute. The breakthrough is that they’ve finally made it possible to actually access all of the notes in a polyphonic recording, such as a strumming guitar or a chorus of voices. The software extracts each note and displays it in a grid, where time goes from left to right and pitch goes from bottom to top. You can then select each individual note with your mouse and move it up or down in pitch, forward or backwards in time, adjust it louder or quieter in volume. You can use this as a tool to make subtle corrections, or create a whole new piece with the same instrument. Check out the video to see it in action (and forgive the poor voiceover announcer for not knowing how to pronounce “monophonic” or “MIDI”).

In Hungary during World War II, vinyl for making records was hard to come by. So some clever folks used discarded medical X-ray film instead. Jozsef Hajdu presents some fine examples.