Zing Dem Hern

So I mentioned a few days ago that I was in show choir (in high school). Well, one of the things that has stuck with me over the years has been this one particular tune. It was an a capella song, sung by all the males (there may have been three or four different parts, I don’t recall exactly). I’m probably butchering the title, but it’s a German song called Zing Dem Hern. It’s also a round, where each voice sings the same melody… but the different parts are staggered, beginning at slightly delayed intervals.

It’s been almost ten years since I’ve sung this song with others, but it’s stayed with me. The melody, the way the voices overlap – it’s a song that never really left my head. A few years ago (around 2001), I decided I wanted to recreate this song in Flash. And instead of using multiple voices, I decided I would record myself, duplicate my voice, and stagger the audio.

Talking with Ted a few days ago about a capella singing made me think of this old Flash piece, and I decided to retouch it tonight. I bumped things up from 20 fps to 31 fps, so it runs a bit more smoothly. The audio quality is about the same as before, though. I recorded this audio right around the time that I moved to Chicago, using a crappy Radio Shack microphone plugged into the back of my computer.

If you listen closely to the first voice singing solo… you can make out a dog barking in the background.

I had a blast playing with this tonight. I really miss toying around with audio, and I need to find more experiments/ideas where I can combine Flash with music. Tonight was one of those nights where a few hours went by and I had my head down the whole time, lost in what I was working on. Didn’t even notice the time go by. And when I looked up again, it was past midnight. Always a good sign.