Updated, for all time:

Readers are nearly 100% for judging this one. It was a fake. And the site with a really stupid name (hellohomo??) admits that it was faux.

Howard Stern Hoaxed! Beyoncé "Outtakes" Are Fake, Creator Admits [E! Online]

Wow, that may be the last time CDM links to E!

Lesson learned: yes, the Internet has the power to spread rumors at new speeds. It can also debunk them even faster. That’s something to pass along to the “get off my lawn!” crowd.

Okay, sound engineers and audiophile experts out there: it’s time to play “is this YouTube video real?” (And, heck, even if it’s not, it’s oddly hilarious.)

A recent episode of Howard Stern’s Sirius radio show claimed to expose a “leaked” feed of the raw vocals for Beyonce Knowles as she sang live on the Today Show. I could try to describe just what they sound like, but it’s really best to hear for yourself.

So, what’s the deal? You can hear the in-tune vocals in the background, as though they actually are bleeding into the mic. Does Beyonce have access to some super-secret, military grade version of Auto-Tune? Is the difference between her processed voice and her actual voice as comically radical as depicted in the ‘N Sync episode of The Simpsons?

I mean, I know – YouTube? Blogs? Howard Stern? The Internet? How much more credibility could you possibly ask for?

I’ll let you be the judge. For the record, the Today Show audience actually heard this.

Found via the brilliantly-domained Yes But No But Yes and Matt Ganucheau. YBNBY or whatever you want to call it describes the singing talentes here as “a parrot being sawed in half.” Hatebeak, an actual parrot trying to sound as though he’s being sawed in half and unofficial mascot of CDM, I’m sure you’re jealous.

Previously: the Great Van Halen Detuned Keyboard Incident.

Oh yeah, and you may want to download this video before someone has it removed.

And yes, hey, if it’s just a fake, it goes nicely with the "shreds" video meme. So bring it on.

Updated: Consensus is that it’s a beautifully-executed fake. (I’m inclined to agree – sorry, Mr. Stern.) And to think, we thought all this time the advantage of tools like Melodyne and Auto-Tune would be taking out-of-tune things and making them in-tune – ignoring the expressive potential of doing the reverse.

Britney, meanwhile? That’s another story.

Now, what I’m curious about:

Who faked this?

How did they do it?

Speculation?

Okay, so you’ve seen the painful demo video for Microsoft Research’s Songsmith software – it was intended to me tongue-in-cheek, I think, but the self-parody didn’t quite work. But the idea of auto-accompaniment software that interprets your recorded singing remains impressive. And I’ve gotten some tips that it is possible to make Songsmith sound good. Naturally, the biggest variable will be the quality of your own singing. But to make the software side of the equation more interesting, it is possible to extend the tool.

Garritan, maker of the samples in the tool, has two add-ons. There’s an orchestral pack with the usuals, and Garritan’s sampled orchestras do sound very, very good. Better yet, there are some analog synths to add, including some bass, J-60, Jupiter, and other action. These don’t come with styles, but they do give you some new sounds. Whether you use them for more evil and cheese is up to you. US$9.99 each.

Band-in-a-Box maker PG Music also has Style PAKs that are compatible with Songsmith, too. The key with these is adjusting variables in the accompaniment, and tweaking chord progressions.

I can’t say I’m entirely sold yet because I’ve never been a fan of auto-accompaniment – though, okay, I did pass some enjoyable hours messing around with electronic organ and Casio keyboard presets as a youngster, so I take that back.

Here’s my challenge to you, if you are a Windows user and give Songsmith a try. Go. Make something really great. Maybe it takes this in a new direction — sample Hatebeak’s heavy metal parrot screeches. Maybe you just happen to be a brilliant singer. Report back. The world’s ears thank you in advance.

Image: roadsidepictures.

Breaking News: If you were David Lee Roth, and you decided to use Songsmith, you would sound something like this. (Thanks, Neal Johnson! Actually, what’s a word that means not so much “thanks” but “please, never, ever send anything like this again, for the love of all that is good?”)

Warning: The following link may cause permanent hearing loss, after you gouge out your ears.

Runnin’ With The Songsmith [Metafilter Music]

It’s a nearly unanimously-held belief: the future of digital content will depend, at least in part, on revenue from ads. This site is supported by ads. Musicians and digital producers will be looking to ads to support what they’re doing – sometimes in the form of direct ad revenue, sometimes in support for sites and communities they use (Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and so on). Ads are very often what makes the Internet free.

But if ad-supported models are going to work, the system that delivers the ads has to work. This week, I believe Google failed to deliver the solution it promises its publishers. They violated their own policies, violated the principle of their service, violated the trust of their publishers, and then failed to respond to an issue that was deeply time-sensitive.

When Third-Party Ads Attack

Before I’m misunderstood, let’s consider advertising policy, which is not the same as editorial policy. In print publishing, whether a small-town weekly newspaper or The New York Times, ad sales relationships have been directly between a publisher and an advertiser. Running an ad does not mean an endorsement of the advertiser or their message or product. In fact, newspapers frequently run “op ed”-style ads that directly conflict with editorial policy, though not without being criticized by some for doing so. The Times runs a regular full-page ad from energy giant Exxon/Mobil, for instance.

In online publishing, we very frequently hand over those relationships to a third party. We expect, in return, that our interests as a publisher will be served by the third party.

This week, Google AdSense bombarded an enormous number of partner sites, Create Digital Music included, with banners opposing same-sex marriage in California, a right that had been protected in that state. Bizarrely, many music tech sites were targeted. The ads were offensive to many publishers; whatever your feelings about marriage and homosexuality, these were effectively ads in favor of discrimination. One ad run on this site was also factually inaccurate, suggesting that California protections for gay marriage can be equated to a mandate to teach about same-sex relationships in schools; various California officials have said that’s not true. Even if you want to debate the issue, that means the ads were claiming something that was false, which is not as debatable.

But tempting as it may be to focus on the political issue and the ads themselves, the ads are not the problem. The problem is that Google failed its publishers, failed the trust we place in Google, and then failed to talk about what it had done. It’s a failure of really historic proportions, and one that really merits a close examination and open debate if ad-supported content has any future at all. The fact that Proposition 8 passed and passed by a very narrow margin, is likely to turn up the political heat on that debate. Advertising was widely credited for the passage of the proposition, making us as publishers unwitting partners in the passage of a proposition many of us would have opposed. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that, Proposition 8 aside, the fault is Google’s for delivering well below the expectations of publishers.

Google’s Promise to Publishers

Unlike the traditional newspapers I used above, using Google AdSense is essentially entrusting your ads to an algorithm, to one that connects your content to relevant ads. Now, no one expects this algorithm to be perfect. Sometimes, it’s downright comical. When CDM covered Hatebeak, a parrot that “sings” death metal music, we got ads for bird feed

That said, the basic pitch Google makes to publishers is relevancy. Without relevancy, ads look out of place. They detract from the quality of the content we’re publishing. And most importantly, ads need to be relevant to make publishers money, which is the whole point. At least in the bird feed example, it was clear that the algorithm was making some match based on content, even if it wasn’t one an human might pick. (In fact, it might even work then – interested in parrots? Maybe you are interested in bird feed, even on a music site.)

But don’t take my word for it. Take Google’s:

AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content—ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful.

They go on to say:

Competitive Ad Filter enables you to filter out specific competitors or specific advertisers.

Editorial Review makes sure that all Google ads are reviewed and approved by the Google team, ensuring that inappropriate ads don’t appear on your pages.

Of course, none of that happened here.

My site is not a political site. Prior to this issue coming up, there’s no way an ad specific to California, entirely political in nature, had anything to do with the context of the site. Now, after this has happened, I’ve started writing posts with words like “homosexual” and “gay marriage,” so those ads would be contextual now. But as of Monday when ads appeared here, they had no business on the site. In fact, it would have been just as inappropriate if an ad saying “Oppose Proposition 8” had appeared on the site. For political reasons, I might not have objected, but it certainly would not have been “ads so well-matched … your readers will actually find them useful.”

Naturally, Google does run some ads as a public service, like “Give to the Red Cross.” But an ad encouraging you to give money to help tsunami victims is relevant to everyone, and it’s an issue on which everyone can agree. Political ads are quite different. And, in fact, sites only run those public service announcements when Google’s algorithm can’t find contextual ads to deliver.

As many publishers point out, the bottom line is lost revenue when this system fails – part of the reason a lot of us are considering dropping Google permanently, even if we don’t see anti-gay ads again. Since Google is click-based, not impression-based, we were actually paying bandwidth costs and missing out on ad revenue in order to carry these ads.

That said, we still don’t really know why this happened with the Prop 8 ads. Did the advertisers just buy up random keywords, getting them the technology placements? (And if so, does Google have a policy for such advertiser abuse?) Or does Google’s contextual targeting actually consider these ads relevant?

Whatever the answer, it gets worse.

Google’s Political Ad Policy

Below: one of the ads in question. Funny, on CDM when we think of protect childrens’ education, we think of expanding funding for teaching music. But worse, it violates Google’s own policies.

We as publishers are Google’s customers. You would think that massive online publicity for this story and widespread complaints from publishes would prompt some sort of response from the company. That hasn’t happened, minus a condescending and inadequate blog post on the Inside AdSense blog explaining how to block ads. (More on why that’s unhelpful in a moment.)

To get any explanation from Google, I had to rely, ironically, on a news article in which I myself was quoted. An unidentified Google spokesperson told the [London] Times Online:

Google allows ads that advocate for particular political position, regardless of the views that they represent. We’re currently allowing ads advocating both for and against Proposition 8.

That statement is based on Google’s published political advertising policy:

We permit political advertisements regardless of the political views they represent. Stating disagreement with or campaigning against a candidate for public office, a political party, or public administration is generally permissible.

There’s just one problem: that’s not the whole policy. Also from Google:

However, political ads must not include accusations or attacks relating to an individual’s personal life, nor can they advocate against a protected group.

Protected group, eh?

Don’t promote violence or advocate against a protected group.

Ad text advocating against any organization, person, or group of people is not permitted.
Advertisements and associated websites may not promote violence or advocate against a protected group. A protected group is distinguished by their:

• Race or ethnic origin
• Color
• National origin
• Religion
• Disability
• Sex
• Age
• Veteran status
• Sexual orientation/Gender identity

Emphasis Google’s. Note the last bullet point.

Supporting Proposition 8 isn’t advocating violence, of course. But it is is “advocating against a protected group” and advocating against “a group of people.” It doesn’t get any more clear-cut than this, Google. There’s no more damning way to advocate against a group of people than to run ad texts explicitly advocating non-equal treatment under the law. And some of these ads went further, suggesting that “group of people,” that “protected group” endangered childrens’ education.

We just elected our first African-American President in America – something that my pro-McCain, Republican-voting friends have said, despite their regrets about the election, really impressed them. If the Web had existed in the 1960s, political advocates might have run ads opposing voting protection for blacks. There’s no question now that such an ad would be advocacy against a group, even if the ad wasn’t explicitly “I don’t like black people.” This is the same issue.

If Google doesn’t follow their own ad policies in this case, there’s no guarantee that we can trust anything Google says about their ad programs. As a publisher, I can’t trust a relationship with any vendor that can’t follow their own policies.

Control for Publishers is Inadequate

A story in Information Week noted that some posters in online forums claim Google’s controls for blocking ads are sufficient. They’re not.

There are two methods for blocking ads on AdSense, and neither one in this case was appropriate or adequate.

Competitive Ad Filter: This filter is designed to allow you to block ads from competitive sites. In this case, it failed on a number of levels.

• You need to know what you’re blocking. It’s called a competitive filter for a reason – the assumption is that you know in advance what ads you don’t want to appear. In this case, we didn’t expect ads from “protectmarriage.com.”
• It’s domain-specific: If we did succeed in blocking these ads, the Prop 8 supporters could simply point to a differen domain and get around the block.
• There’s no way to review ads: I relied on readers in California to even know the Prop 8 ads were running in the first place. I was fortunate those readers gave me the benefit of the doubt and that they responded so quickly.
• The ad filter isn’t real-time: Google’s own blog post concedes that it can take several hours for the filter to take effect. That’s truly unacceptable, because other changes like what the ad code looks like are immediate. And in this case, the day before an election, we couldn’t afford to wait several hours. My own true recourse was to shut off Google Ads entirely. Now I’m finding it difficult to switch it back on.

Ad Review Center: This sounds promising at first. But it’s off by default, it can be necessary to automatically approve ads for ad auctions to work properly, and most importantly, it doesn’t actually have anything to do with contextual ads. The Ad Review Center is exclusively for placement-targeted advertising; that is, ads placed specifically on your site by advertising. The Prop 8 supporters used contextual advertising, based on keywords. So this is really entirely irrelevant.

The Prop 8 Ad Debacle: Failure on Every Level

The Proposition 8 ads that appeared were a failure on a number of levels. For those of you keeping score at home:

• The ads weren’t relevant. While the ads appear to have been geo-targeted, AdSense promises ads relevant to content. I don’t want ads for plumbing contractors in Rhode Island, even if you’re reading there, because I want content-relevant ads.
• Publishers lost money. Because the ads were irrelevant and offensive to many readers, publishers on all kinds of blogs reported suddenly-plunging click-through revenue. That may not mean much to small sites, at least in one day. But the loss on bigger sites must have been pretty painful. (And ironically, this means Google didn’t make as much, either!)
• It wasn’t a fluke. Ads were delivered in large quantities to this site, and to many others. Tech sites may even have been targeted specifically; ads ran on Slashdot and Techcrunch.
• The ads violated Google’s own political policy. If this doesn’t count as advocating against a group based on sexual preference, nothing does. So either Google broke their own policy, or their own policy is meaningless. And it’s clear Google left the ads in the network days after the issue appeared, so they can’t plead ignorance – even less so given that they use their editorial review as a selling point for the service.
• Publishers couldn’t do anything once the ads were placed. Not only did we find out the ads were running the hard way, but we had no real-time ability to block the ads – and they were, by definition, time-sensitive. The way to block the ads effectively? Disable Google Ads.
• Google doesn’t have a support outlet. While there’s an informal discussion group, there isn’t a clear, formal way for publishers to complain to Google.
• Google was completely unresponsive. Again, we’re Google’s customers. Days later, we’ve still heard nothing from Google officially, other than a thinly-veiled, defensive blog post explaining their (inadequate) blocking mechanism without mentioning the issue by name, and some faceless statements in the press that we could have copied and pasted from their FAQ.

We Need a More Perfect Web

I’d like to see several things come out of this mess.

I hope that we start to have a real debate about advertising policy. The issues here were to me pretty clear-cut, but advertising policy in general deals with all kinds of tough issues. It’s time to start talking about that as publishers and advertisers alike.

I hope that we get some response from Google. We need to know what actually happened and why. And, frankly, I would need a significantly expanded toolset for publisher control before ever considering running AdSense on my site again.

But I also hope we see more competition in the marketplace. There are various similar services, but in my experience they often don’t have enough ad inventory to be relevant on a site like CDM. That’s too bad. I think Google might have performed better here if they themselves faced more vibrant competition, and I think the whole ad market might improve, too. There are huge opportunities for advertisers online in these kind of sites, and the economic downturn means it’s even more important to make those solutions work better. I know Microsoft and Yahoo are readying services. I look forward to seeing them.

This was, on every level, a complete mess. But now that the issue is out in the open, the end result could be better advertising systems – if the advertising vendors actually pay attention, and respond.

Just as importantly, this debacle could also mean a new climate in which discriminatory ads aren’t tolerated. Publishers are dropping AdSense left and right, and they should. This violated Google’s principles and policy, and many of us believe it’s wrong to run ads that discriminate against a group of people.

There’s no question this is an important issue for musicians. Amidst all the hype about projects from the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead has been the assumption that our own sites, and community sites we depend on, will be supported by ads. That means that what impacts ads impacts us.

If you believe the future of the Web is bright, then you must also believe that we can all do better.

Related:

Google caught up in row over gay marriage vote [Times Online]

Google Instructs AdSense Publishers How To Block Its Ads [Information Week]

Previously:

Google Ads Disabled; Your Partner is Your Business

Conceptual albums. The folks at BornRich.org have a beautiful music tablet PC design up. (Thanks, Gizmodo.) Only problem: it’s basically a Windows tablet PC with a prettier body; the real magic in portable music tablets would come from smarter software. See also their computer in a drum case, which might allow drummers to sneak Ableton Live onstage.

The Long Tail and the Toilet. Lastly, if you’re looking for a new way to distribute your music and gain audiences, and you’re a totally obscure indie band with a name like “Nine Inch Nails” (who?) why not distribute your music taped to USB keys in urinals? In Portugal? (Damn you, Reznor, you stole ANOTHER of my ideas?) Just make sure you tell the RIAA first. Oh, and make sure not to leave your Logic Pro dongle by mistake. I do love the fake site NIN points to. “ZERO TOLERANCE. ZERO FEAR.” happens to be the new slogan of the new CDM forum moderators.

I present, as mind candy for the weekend: adorable animals with synthesizers.

Cute kitty + Moog Theremin: Who doesn’t love that? From a local meeting of cartoonists comes this bundle of lovability, plus two music samples, ostensibly from 1936:

Dance of the Saucer Maidens
Dance of the Saucer Maidens

Penguin Lust
Penguin Lust

Sakie and Synthesizer: I think Synthesizer is the dog? There’s a pup we can take into our hearts. I’d say Synthesizer could be co-mascot for CDM with Hatebeak, but that might cause fur and feathers alike to fly. This shot comes from Suki Dhanda’s Year of the Dog series for the London underground; dog lovers won’t want to miss the full series at Platform for art.

Pound the Dog with Custom Gabriel Synthesizer: Gabriel Sound’s history of custom sound equipment and synths goes back to the 70s. This time, Pound is the dog, and Gabriel is the synthesizer. If you whistle for Gabriel, I don’t think this modular synth will move. Just a guess.

Kitten, the Synthesizer: How better to round out this synth/animal confusion than a synth that actually is a Kitten? The Octave Kitten was Octave’s low-end competitor to pricey classics from Moog and ARP. Steve Baker has a comprehensive site filled with the obsessive collection of sounds and images you normally associate with better-known synth hardware. So, give the Kitten its due.

Here’s where things start to get surreal. I told my Create Digital Motion co-editor and Web wonderworker Jaymis about this idea yesterday, and started assembling links. I was going to round this synth love out by saying a very happy one year birthday to the Matrixsynth blog. Oddly enough, Matrix has gotten the adorable animal fever too: witness Arak and Legion, complete with racks of synths and cat videos, and cats, synths, and music tracks. (Cat from the latter pictured below.)

We all know the World Wide Web is here just to talk about our pets, so I invite you to help CDM follow up its cute kids series with shots of your cat clawing into your Korg and iBook. Don’t be a stranger.

One controversy I’m sure we won’t avert: cats vs. dogs. I’m a dog person, so keep that in mind. This is an equal-opportunity animals-with-synths feature, but I may have to maintain puppy quotas.

Have a great weekend, folks.

At first, I thought this might be faked, but it does appear to be the real thing, and having known a few parrots, these birds will do far stranger things vocally. Via Signal to Noise, via GoogTube.

If human beatboxers are more your speed, the supremely talented Kid Beyond will be in Austin, Texas, this time doing a full-on gig rather than the shorter tech demo for Ableton he did at NAMM in January. Beatboxing parrots are a novelty; Kid Beyond makes beatboxing a serious instrument; he’s a real vocalist, and an utterly awesome musician. I got a chance to interview Kid Beyond this summer and should have that interview for you soon. In the meantime, a video from VH1 plus gig details:

Here’s Kid Beyond proving that he’s far cooler than Sebastian Bach, as if you didn’t already know that. (These kids and their reality TV …) Via the CDM forums from some time ago.

And via the Ableton email list, here’s the gig in Austin. Wish I could be there, but I’ll be in Chicago and not at NAMM. July 15 should be a big date, as Ableton says they’ll be announcing something at NAMM. I’ll leave you to figure out what that is. Gig details:

Pop-electronica singer/beatboxer Kid Beyond will bring his stunning
vocal skills to Austin on July 15. The show falls right in the middle
of 2006 Summer NAMM; attendees are encouraged to join the fun and see
the show.

A beatboxer for more than twenty years, Kid Beyond is a legend in the beatbox world 14and his recent “live-looping” work is gaining him impressive national attention. Looping and multitracking his voice on stage to create his own live backing tracks, Kid Beyond layers his transcendent singing voice over his own beatboxing and vocal instrumentation. The result is a riveting brew of pop-electronica that has drawn comparisons to Gorillaz, Moby, Fatboy Slim, Thievery Corporation and M.I.A. Ed: I don’t think he sounds anything like these largely unrelated artists, but he does sound great, so let’s leave it at that! -PK

Kid Beyond, with DJ Chicken George, Cherubic & Whatamelon
Saturday, July 15, 2006
La Zona Rosa: 612 W. 4th Street, Austin, TX
Showtime: Doors 8 PM, Show 9 PM; tickets USD 10 cash
http://www.lazonarosa.com/

You may have heard a lot about the InterWeb, a new network that magically connects people around the world through their Compute-trons. You might have heard about its powers to promote music, perhaps by an ill-researched story yesterday where I stupidly pointed to a UK artist who will go unmentioned here. (As it turns out, which I would have known had I bothered to, um, read, all of the following did indeed happen: “girl produces webcast from basement,” “girl gets fan following,” “girl makes it big,” “girl signs record deal,” “girl hires publicist.” Just in the reverse order. It doesn’t explain why anyone listened to a publicist in the first place, or which “punk rockers”, exactly, wear “flowers in their hair”, or why Sandi losing her cellphone made her want to go back, inexplicably, to both 1977 and 1969. Plot of Back to the Future IV? Moving on.)

Surprisingly, though, the mainstream music press, fawning over faux-indie Scottish pop singers and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, have missed the Web’s one major success story. Here it is. I’ve tried to translate to the language of vacuous promoters, because I know as a journalist we can really never get enough of that. Ahem. (Let me get in character for a second.)

It was in the early years of the 21st Century when a bird of a different feather got to realize a dream. His name is Waldo. He’s a Congo African Grey parrot, with a rich, silky voice that has been compared by fans to “a jackhammer being ground in a compactor.” But, unlike some parrots, Waldo wanted to share that voice with the world.

He was lucky to have some friends. Bandmates Blake and Mark not only provided drums and guitar, but as seasoned studio engineers had the chops to sculpt the sound of Waldo into the signature sonic world of Hatebeak. Thanks to the power of modern digital recording technology, Waldo’s spontaneously-timed squawks and poetic lyrics could be captured and fine-tuned. Breaking open the traditional box of “melody”, Waldo created a new vocal language with roots in spoken word art. And the rest is history.

In the Amazonian warmth of 2004, the world first got to hear the magical sound of Hatebeak tunes like “God of Empty Nest”, pressed lovingly to vinyl. The album, Beak of Putrifaction, was an instant classic. A follow-up coupling Hatebeak with Caninus (with dog vocals) ensured Hatebeak a hallowed place in musical memory, thanks to favorites like “Bird Bites, Dog Cries” and “Bird Seeds of Vengeance.” You’ll hear influences from bands like Morbid Angel and Carcass, but blended effortlessly with catchy, popular appeal.

But getting the word out about the power of avian vocals was a challenge. Record stores generally don’t have a section for the animal kingdom, and many record company execs thought Hatebeak might be seen as having only niche appeal, or, worse yet, that a death metal band with a parrot front man was “gimmicky.” Some suggested Waldo could remake himself as a boy band, taking a cue from legendary acts like Menudo.

Enter the power of the Internet. As loyal listeners connected with the primordial animal power conveyed in Hatebeak’s raw but hummable tunes, buzz spread fast. Sites like Internet magazine Boing Boing and an upstart newsletter for musicians called Create Digital Music pointed to something called an “M-P-3 file”, a special way of formatting LPs that allows them to be transferred using computer modems, without the use of a phonograph. But most point to the turning point when the influential and powerful bird owners’ press caught on, and beloved publications like Parrot Chronicles posted lavish features showing the more personal side of Hatebeak.

Flash forward to 2006. As young audiences increasingly turn away from human vocalists, inspired by avian acts through the power of the Internet, and long for more of the ear-bleeding demonic powers of death metal, Hatebeak is ripe to make it big. Really big. Hatebeak has a new album due this year, and word from the studio is that this one could be the breakthrough crossover hit the band has been waiting for. Add to that a powerful new distribution medium for the band — laser-etched Compact Discs — and you’ll want to make sure you stay logged into the InterWeb with your eyes glued to Reptillian Records. Otherwise, Waldo might just peck your eyes out. Or, probably, just bite your finger.

The bird is the word, indeed.

Hatebeak at Reptilian Records (Think Jurassic Park, folks)

Hatebeak’s MySpace Page (fairly certain he beat Clap Your Hands Say Yeah et al to the punch)

Hatebeak’s MySpace friends page, proof positive that MySpace is the best way for parrot dudes to make lots of photogenic human female friends

Disclaimer: I’m not really Hatebeak’s publicist. Though, Blake and Mark, if you want to hire me, I can proudly say I’ve never handled Beyonce. If that gives me more of your kids’ “indie cred.” -PK

As the rest of us lament brick-wall limiting and other techniques for flattening dynamic range and making music louder (see Music Thing’s recent discussion), WWAYM is sponsoring a no-holds-barred, Monster Truck Ralley of audio engineering. The contest: make it as loud as you possibly can.

The competition, sent to us by reader Adrian Anders, “must be as loud as possible but with taste.” (Does ‘taste’ disqualify redoing all the vocals with Hatebeak the death metal parrot?) The award is a license to WWAYM’s own mastering tool, which they’ll use to recreate thing winning entries more easily. I say do it for the bragging rights instead.

Unfortunately, the stipulation that “only legal tools” may be used probably means “no pirated software.” Damn. I was hoping for some sort of street-illegal maximizer/limiter.

Tired of the lead vocalist in your hardcore thrash death metal band? Why not replace him or her with a parrot?

Yes, it's Hatebeak,
the band with a parrot (literally) singing — make that "savaging you
with feathers of razored steel." (I've heard a few folk
singer-songwriters who also fit that description, but I digress.) Where
else could you find tunes like "Bird Bites, Dog Cries," "Beak of
Putrefaction," or "Bird Seeds of Vengeance." The sound is best
described as, um, just go listen to the MP3.

Reptilian Records is also lucky enough to have signed Caninus, which
features two pitbulls — Budgie and Basil — so if you're a dog lover,
you can get that on 7" vinyl, too. Thanks, Kamala, for the tip!