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Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

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Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

#81

Post by noizejoy »

chiph wrote: post #58
s0sa wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you mean. I recently did the same thing for the little bit from Gunsmoke at the beginning of “Is There Anybody Out There?”, e.g. “Is it unsafe to travel at night?” - incidentally spoken by actress Diana Muldaur, who later played Dr. Pulaski in Star Trek TNG.

Now I wonder if Frankie Goes to Hollywood sampled the voice on "Two Tribes" from some 1950's British government film. "If your grandmother or any other member of the family Should die whilst in the shelter Put them outside, but remember to tag them first For identification purposes"

Almost. Not sampled from the original, but recreated by the same voice actor:

> Actor Patrick Allen, who narrated the associated public information films, recreated this narration … [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive#Cultural_i...

Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

#82

Post by leptons »

hinkley wrote: post #41
Quekid5 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

?

It’s an interview. Pink Floyd, The Floyd. Why would you say The Floyd?

Ever see someone mention "The Donald"? It's the same thing.

It's when something or someone gets so recognizable that they can be referred to in a singular sense. There are lots of instances of this throughout pop culture.

In the context of the interview, it's someone who was part of the "Floyd-verse" (this word is a mashup of Floyd and Universe, another common affectation). Pink Floyd was a remarkably famous band, and they still are. Someone that was part of the "Floyd-verse" naturally would have felt the band as all encompassing. It wasn't just a band, it was tour after tour, hit song after hit song, millions and millions of fans - and getting caught up in that made "Pink Floyd" seem far bigger than the sum of its parts. Calling that phenomenon "The Floyd" is actually very succinct, and portrays how large a cultural phenomenon Pink Floyd was and still is, 60 years later.

I have to wonder why you can't/won't understand this.

Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

#83

Post by weinzierl »

So we know a couple of digits and the splice points. We also know the date. Phone numbers used to be public back then.

It would be fun to grep for the pattern in the matching phone book to see if someone in Pink Floyd's circles comes up.

Only problem is to get hold of a digital version of the phone book. It strikes me as odd how hard it is to retrieve information that used to be so ubiquitous.

Not too long ago police in Germany asked publicly for information about certain phone numbers related to the Madeleine McCann case. Apparently not even the police has an archive of old phone books.

Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

#84

Post by matthiasl »

jhoechtl wrote: post #50

And what us the number in Knocking on Heavens door, the Guns n'roses version?

659 8890

That one's just ordinary DTMF. I recorded the audio, trimmed it manually and then made a spectrogram like this:

    sox gun1.wav -n rate 4k spectrogram -m -y 500
The 'rate' switch is to cut down on how much of the frequency space we can see. I left the audio as stereo because there's less music power on one channel, making it easier to see the tones.

(And google finds quite a few pages confirming those digits)

Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

#85

Post by elpocko »

criddell wrote: post #70
dvh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alphaville's second album Afternoons in Utopia starts with quiet muffled word "night", then followed by few seconds of silence and then first song called IAO starts. The last song on that album is about Lady Bright: There was a young lady named Bright Who's speed was much faster, much faster than light She departed one day In a relative way And returned on the previous...

The first words on Pink Floyd’s The Wall are “… we came in?”. The last words on the album are “Isn’t this where …”.

Dream Theater has a string of 4 albums (over 6 years) in which each album starts with the soundscape from the end of the previous album. The last album in the cycle, Octavarium, musically and thematically finishes in a loop, connecting the end of the last song to the beginning of the first.

Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

#86

Post by 082349872349872 »

prepend wrote: post #51
codevark wrote: post #4

Odd. This and other PF audio figured in a dream last night. Then I came downstairs and saw this.

Obviously we are all still in your dream. Please hold on asleep as long as you can as I treasure my existence and don’t want it to end.

As "you are just a figment of my imagination" is solipsism, "I am just a figment of your imagination" must be cosolipsism.

Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

#87

Post by buildsjets »

jhoechtl wrote: post #50

And what us the number in Knocking on Heavens door, the Guns n'roses version?

659-8890. You just better start sniffin' your own rank subjugation Jack, 'cause it's just you against your tattered libido, the bank, and the mortician, forever man, and it wouldn't be luck if you could get out of life alive.

Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

#88

Post by hnlmorg »

fredoralive wrote: post #61
matthiasl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. Yep, 44 is the UK country code. The problem I got stuck on is that the rest of the number, 1831, didn't make sense. I assumed the number was complete, since it had the right start and stop signalling (KP1/KF). It's not long enough to be a London telephone number, and, today, I think London numbers start with 020. The UK numbering plan has changed several times since 1980, but I couldn't find a time betwe…

A London number at the time would be from the UK (01) eee nnnn where e is the exchange[1] and n is just a number, and the 01 can be omitted if you're in the 01 area. For intentional calls it would be (+44) 1 eee nnnn, as you omit the initial 0 that on an internal UK call is an indication you're dialling an STD[2] number and not a local number. There doesn't seem to have been an 831 exchange at the time[3], so as note…

> and that ruined the Live and Kicking phone number jingle

I thought I was the only one that had that number burned into my memory for all time!

I’m glad, for my sake at least, to hear I’m not the only one.

Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

#89

Post by wahnfrieden »

mrandish wrote: post #63
wahnfrieden wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musicians still release samples without clearing them

Yes, I'm aware. Although a major mega band doing so on a wide release album these days would be taking a significant legal risk - which is why it's now fairly rare. But back in 1979 it wasn't uncommon, to the extent that one of the then-biggest bands in the world could do so on their biggest album project yet.

It might be a notorious example but artists do take those risks https://www.billboard.com/lists/kanye-west-ye-sampling-lawsu... (not to mention the many artists that release music without licensing from the beat producers, which still happens regularly)

Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

#90

Post by tomcam »

hinkley wrote: post #73
dotancohen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My then-15 year old daughter surprised me a few years ago. We had just pulled up to the house. Instead of opening the car door, she put on Led Zeppelin I and we sat in the car listening to the entire album together. I honestly think that was the first time in her life that she put on an entire album to listen to. And she did appreciate what an experience it was - like watching a movie when all you've ever seen were Y…

Most good albums have one song that was never released as a single, that’s just for the fans. So even beyond the “story” the album contaminates, they miss important chapters. Anyone who talks about Tears for Fears, a side conversation about The Working Hour will start. Throwing Copper had five or six singles released over almost three years, but Pillar of Davidson is still my favorite song from that album, and one of…

For me that's very often the 7th song on an LP and usually starts its second side
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