Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

english.elpais.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 196 posts

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#181

Post by jacquesm »

graveli wrote: post #169
zuminator wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This relatively recent idea that someone can become more female or more male through drugs and surgery The Hijra community (Indian trans/non-binary) has been around for thousands of years, and surgical castration has been one traditional way for them to achieve their identity during that period. It's not relatively recent. https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/religion-context/case-studies/ge... In any event, I think in a fr…

A castration cult that abducts young boys, chops their balls off, and sells them into the sex trade is not really a great example of this. It baffles me why people who support Western transgenderism liken it to the hijra, as it's hardly a flattering comparison.

Having seen up close how Indian families treat children that are trans I think you may want to reconsider your stance.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#182

Post by yunch »

rodgerd wrote: post #146
yunch wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> genital inspection Such a weird meme, why are people so obsessed with this idea of genitals being inspected these days. Feels a bit like the obsession with koro or fan death. Like come on, no-one wants to look at your nob or your gash, no-one is demanding this. A very silly suggestion.

It is literally a law in some US states that children have to submit to genital inspections to participate in sports.

No it isn't, that is just a meme people are repeating without thinking.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#183

Post by relaxing »

quesera wrote: post #101
Blackthorn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to work with an archivist to make these public? (I'm not one, to be clear.) Carlos recordings seem impossible to find!

These are still copyrighted recordings, and they seem to be available in the usual places you would find copyrighted digital audio. Her work is not licensed for digital distribution, and largely out of print. So, there's unfortunately no way to compensate her directly for her works. And "work" is an understatement. Moog synths of the day were barely instruments. Imagine playing a symphony (symphonic arrangement) usin…

It’s not quite as a bad as a single glass. More like 61 glasses, but you can only strike one at a time.

And on the other hand, you can glissando smoothly between any 2 notes. Not many other instruments in the orchestra can say that!

Pitch drift due to temperature fluctuations was quite bad, it’s true, but it becomes part of the charm of those “switched-on” records.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#184

Post by graveli »

jacquesm wrote: post #181
graveli wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A castration cult that abducts young boys, chops their balls off, and sells them into the sex trade is not really a great example of this. It baffles me why people who support Western transgenderism liken it to the hijra, as it's hardly a flattering comparison.

Having seen up close how Indian families treat children that are trans I think you may want to reconsider your stance.

The abduction and castration of children by hijra gangs is well documented. There's nothing that really comes close to this in Western culture.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#185

Post by tleb_ »

elondaits wrote: post #164
awsation wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone knows if this is a available for streaming? BTW, the catchy synth in the trailer is here: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=52f1ElmTy4o&feature=share Laurie Spiegel - Appalachian Grove I

Yes, check their website for options. They vary between UK, US and the rest of the world: https://sisterswithtransistors.com/

I was surprised to notice that Arte TV France has it (in VO). It is not available when the website language is set to English. Unsure if accessible outside France. https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/104017-000-A/sisters-with-tran...

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#186

Post by gwbas1c »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #84

Now 83, she supposedly remains active in music, but is still an elusive figure who fiercely protects her work... Her self-imposed seclusion is a cautionary tale for us today, something that she admitted in the 1979 People interview. “The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent,” she said. “There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous wast…

I've always suspected she's very introverted, private, and a perfectionist.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#187

Post by gwbas1c »

vr46 wrote: post #18

Poor Wendy. I was literally thinking of her yesterday when I pulled out my original Clockwork Orange record. I would love her to do a masterclass and be able to extract some of her knowledge for my own experiments in electronic music. The whole world has lost out here. It's not too late though, I hope we see something from her.

Wendy released an album where she explains her technique and gives examples. Really worth the listen: https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Synthesis-Wendy-Carlos/dp/B00...

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#188

Post by Karawebnetwork »

yunch wrote: post #111
Karawebnetwork wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lynn Conway is another woman I look up to. The trans women who lived between 1950 and 1980 and still managed to advance their careers impress me, and I do my best to emulate them.

Quoted post unavailable.

I would encourage you to look at the state of the world before you express your thoughts in public.

"A US study showed that [trans] individuals have lower socioeconomic status despite of having higher education level" https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339204814_Transgend...

"Three out of 10 transgender adults lost their jobs recently or live with someone who did. [Compared to] One out of 10 cisgender men" https://publicintegrity.org/inside-publici/newsletters/watch...

"58% could not get academic transcripts with the correct name or sex designation" https://www.ourspectrum.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Workp...

"Transgender workers report unemployment at twice the rate of the population as a whole (14% vs. 7% at the time the workers were surveyed)." "More than four in 10 transgender people (44%) who are currently working are underemployed." "Transgender workers are nearly four times more likely than the population as a whole to have a household income of under $10,000 (15% vs. 4% at the time the workers were surveyed)." https://www.thetaskforce.org/transgender-workers-at-greater-...

"nearly 30 percent of transgender people in the United States are not in the workforce and are twice as likely as the cisgender population to be unemployed." https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/coronavirus-leadi...

"Transphobia rife among UK employers as 1 in 3 won't hire a transgender person" https://www.crosslandsolicitors.com/site/hr-hub/transgender-...

"Almost half of transgender people are unemployed, a survey by the Think-tank for Action on Social Change has found. Among the 51 per cent cent who had jobs, many settled for dismal salaries, the group’s research showed." https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/half-of-transgender-peopl...

"The unemployment rate for transgender and gender nonconforming respondents in Ontario has been estimated to be 20%, more than double the provincial average." https://www.hrpa.ca/hr-insights/the-hrpa-celebrates-gender-e....

"Trans Pulse Canada found that 24 percent of trans people have an annual income under $15,000, while 24 percent have an income between $15,000 and $30,000. With a poverty line of individual income at $25,920, almost half of trans people live either below the poverty line, or very close to it." https://xtramagazine.com/health/trans-health-canada-health-i...

"Employment: over one in three trans respondents felt discriminated against because of being trans when looking for a job (37 %), and a quarter (27 %) reported discrimination at work." https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2015-being-tra...

"Controlling for these and other observed characteristics, transgender individuals have significantly lower employment rates" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0019793920902776

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#189

Post by mallvinegar »

jancsika wrote: post #21
jrochkind1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The final paragraph of the article is interesting though: > Her self-imposed seclusion is a cautionary tale for us today, something that she admitted in the 1979 People interview. “The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent,” she said. “There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous waste of years of my life.” While that kind of tolerance/…

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now. That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence. Off the top of my head: 1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale , you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael…

Here's an excerpt of what Steinem wrote:

"In a way, transsexuals themselves are also making a positive contribution by proving that chromosomes aren't everything. By ignoring this internal structure they cannot change, and focusing on external body appearances and socialization, they are demonstrating that both biological women and men may have within them the qualities of the opposite gender and thus the full range of human possibilities. Unfortunately, this point isn't made in the popular press. On the contrary, transsexualism is used mostly as a testimony to the importance of sex roles as dictated by a society obsessed with body image, genitals, and 'masculine' or 'feminine' behavior. But the main question is whether some individuals are being forced into self-mutilation by the biases around them, and whether their self-mutilation is then used and publicized to prove that those biases are true.

"Feminists are right to feel uncomfortable about the need for and the uses of transsexualism. Even while we protect the right of an informed individual to make that decision, and to be identified as he or she wishes, we have to make clear that this is not a long-term feminist goal. The point is to transform society so that a female can 'go out for basketball' and a male doesn't have to be 'the strong one'. Better to turn anger outward toward changing the world than inward toward mutilating our bodies into conformity. In the meantime, we shouldn't be surprised at the amount of publicity and commercial exploitation conferred on a handful of transsexuals. Sex-role traditionalists know a political tribute when they see one.

"But the question remains: If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?"

This point of view doesn't seem typical of your average alt-right enthusiast to me, she's considering transsexualism within the context of radical feminism, specifically the abolition of gender.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#190

Post by racl101 »

lordfrito wrote: post #24
racl101 wrote: post #6

Still love the original theme from Tron. As much as the Tron (2010) movie's score had a "cool" factor it lacked the heart and soul of the original. If they ever do another one I'd like to see the original Carlos' Tron's leitmotif woven back into it.

Tron 2 soundtrack was such a huge disappointment from me, and I'm a die hard Daft Punk fan. Listened to it once, never went back to it. The original Tron soundtrack is such a joy, totally underrated... Amazing how she blended electronics with orchestration... in my memory it feels like a purely electronic soundtrack but it's not at all. The artistic impulse would be to go full electronic with something like this, she…

I liked the soundtrack for what it was but my ears had expected to hear the leitmotifs I was familiar with.

It's like watching a new Star Wars sequel and hearing no leitmotifs. Not The Force theme / Luke's theme, not Leia, not Yoda, nothing to tie it back to the original.

In the sequel they only had the leitmotif in a tiny scene (Jeff Bridges mouths it). And that was it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDHBqK8gc_E&t=01m20s

Post reply on HN