Re: XAO Analysis
Check out the video also
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=29&ContentID=123026
Hit soundtrack composed from tumbling share price graphs
5th February 2009, 6:45 WST
A soundtrack of the global economic crisis composed by running financial graphs through SongSmith, Microsoft's increasingly popular music software, has become a YouTube hit.
German experimental musician Johannes Kreidler based the unsettling melodies on charts showing the sharp fall of the values of major world markets and the share prices of troubled institutions including Lehman Brothers and Bank of America.
Although financial data may not be an obvious source of musical inspiration, Kreidler's composition has been hailed by users of the video sharing website, where it has attracted more than 160,000 views in a week.
"Disturbing and hilarious at the same time," wrote one. Another commented: "When they make a movie about this financial crisis, these songs should be played one after the other during the inevitable montage of each company panicking."
The bleakly humorous video is the latest SongSmith creation to go viral. The software, which allows anyone to create complete pop songs just by singing into a microphone or entering a single melody, was mocked as tacky and pointless after its launch, but has now developed a cult popularity.
When the vocals of famous songs are run through the software, the backing tracks it adds are so unlikely that the end results often turn out as surreal reinventions of the originals. Dozens of Songsmith reinterpretations have been posted on YouTube, including a lounge jazz version of Radiohead's Creep, The Police's Roxanne reworked with a reggae beat and Eye of the Tiger as a lo-fi love song.
Kreidler's creation sets the tumbling graph melodies to jangly, upbeat backing tracks, with perturbing results. His video, titled Charts Music, also contains tunes based on rising graphs illustrating the number of US troops killed in Iraq, unemployment figures and US national debt, which if anything are even more eerie.
The musician's satirical intent is clear; at the end of the clip he lists the corporations he has featured among the composer credits.
LONDON
THE TELEGRAPH GROUP