I came across some information about a guy named Jim Wilson who took a recording of crickets and slowed it down until they sound like a human choir of voices. The most referenced link is on Soundcloud.
This linkis to a site that includes not only the Soundcloud link, but also a link to some recordings made by a guy calling Bullshit (he’s in the comment section). His recordings are also of crickets slowed down to varying degrees. Although some of these slowed recordings produce some interesting and unexpected sounds, none of them sound remotely like the human-choir sound of Jim Wilson’s recording.
I don’t have a factual answer appropriate for GQ but I did listen. The possibility of those harmonies being generated by a group of insects in a coordinated fashion to generate sustained and repeating harmonies with that type of voice leading seems to be, ahem, bullshit.
Can’t disprove it though. From a scientific standpoint it would have to be reproducible, which it hasn’t been yet. Or it would have to survive a rigorous inspection of the artifacts produced by the methodology tantamount to a forensic investigation.
This science blog has what is apparently the true story.There are actually three tracks on the recording: crickets at normal speed; slowed down crickets (which sound like slowed-down crickets), and a human voice which is actually Sioux singer Bonnie Jo Hunt.
According to this article the audio in question is three layered tracks. Normal speed crickets, slowed down crickets AND a human vocalist Bonnie Jo Hunt:
The claim that its only crickets appears to be something that’s been added to the recent soundcloud version that went viral.
Actually, reading through interview with Hunt, as pointed out in the comments section of that blog, she doesn’t actually say she sings on the recording. She says it’s just crickets.
But they also sound like some of the elements in the recording.
Assuming that these are both actual slowed down recordings of crickets, I can see how the original recording could have been produced by using various speeds and layering and intermixing them. It’s apparently not a straight cricket chorus that’s been slowed down, but rather a remix.
If he is layering different speeds up then IMO, it still counts as a “hoax”. In that case the repeating haunting melody that you hear is entirely the creation of the human composer, by the way he is arranging the differently slowed down versions.
Very interesting. The notable thing about this recording is that the notes are all the same three tones of the same major chord, with no discernible rhythm. There are mathematical relationships among those notes that suggest that they could be found in nature, so this is more credible than four-part harmony that has chord changes.
It’s not a “hoax” by the original composer. The voice on the recording on the website only says that there are two tracks, one of crickets at natural speed, one in which they are slowed down. It says you are only hearing crickets, not voices or instruments. As far as it goes, all of this may be correct. Now, it gives the impression that this is merely a slowed-down recording of a natural cricket chorus, but it never says that. (It says that the crickets have been slowed down to match a “human life span,” and that’s bullshit if there are varying speeds, but even that’s not certain.)
This may in fact be the original recording from the album, Ballad of the Twisted Hair. This makes no statement at all about how the recording was made. The source of the recording linked to by the website is unclear.
Twenty-one years after the fact this recording may be being misunderstood, misrepresented, and overhyped, but that doesn’t make it any kind of hoax by the original musicians.
I hadn’t bothered clicking through on the cricket recordings when they showed uo from my Facebook friends. I had honestly felt they were demonstrating something trivial, that if you play arouns with a chirping noise to bring it into the common frequency range and cadence of human speech, then it sounds like human speech.
This would have been just like the way you can “speed up” humpback whale songs to sound just like twittering birdsong.
Well, I think we got to the bottom of it. I accept the explanation that these are genuine cricket sounds that have been slowed down at varying rates to produce different pitches, then layered in the final recording.
I wouldn’t quite call it a hoax, but I would call it misleading. Unfortunately, Jim Wilson is not alive to verify this explanation (“Turn me on dead man”).
It’s not clear that Wilson made any particular claim about the recordings. He may have just wanted to generate some cool sounds for an album track. The source of the voiceover on the Soundcloud recording isn’t exactly clear either.