Aphex Twin - Mathematical Equation

[hapyflipingmushrooms]

everyone seems to be saying it's Richard D. James's face in that picture but i don't think it looks anything like him. surely i'm not the only one to think this?

[betthisisnttakenbish]

wow highschool completely missed this chapter in the texts books

[foxxpup]

Its a wonderful example of extreme sound geekiness. :-) I wish I had thought of it doing it. :-)

[zwerty007]

@foxxpup I don't mean to brag but I actually knew you could do this before I even found out about aphex twin. I'm not saying it's any less genious, cos I'm pretty sure he would've had to make his own program t do it back then =)

[TheDiethard]

Insane

[nycdieselwhore]

i have the vst used to make the bitmap image into sounds on fl 9 its fucking awsome hahha

[MarthaStout0202]

The face is as creepy as the music!

[UniqueGeekFreak]

The Mathematical Equation of:

X (This song) + Z (home alone) = Y (You'll shit yourself to sleep) o.O

[GrafiGumo]

3:18 do u hear the nokia sound ?

[xHenri]

So fucking creepy

[toxicptl]

i want my mom

[raibri]

This is trippy.

If you look at this video (person basically took the whole Equation song and sent it through a Spectograph) right around the time that James's face shows up, the guy's dog starts howling. Hilarious

[KoreyAusTex]

it is a partial derivative of the sums of the components of a Fourier transform...

[rabbidhedgehog]

The actual name of this song is ΔMi−1 = −∂Σn=1NDi[n][Σj∈C{i}Fji[n − 1] + Fexti[[n−1]]

[Valadar917]

You even hear an almost human voice screaming after the face. Man do I love audio engineering.

[mynmyself]

AFXManolo... mola bastante el nombre...

cual crees que sería la mejor manera para aprender esto? bueno, no se ni lo que es... hago música electrónica y acabo de encontrar todo esto del Spectogram etc, me molaría ser capaz de convertir imágenes en audio y viceversa, sobretodo para crear visuales en directo (como si fuese un osciloscopio)... como crees que se puede aprender mejor desde 0?

gracias

[luis39205]

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT! O.O and i thought paranormal activity 2 was scary :S

[siliciuminat]

genius

[eridan13]

ok i got enough i must see a lot of cartoons to forget that

[guggsdugrass]

the face is even more scary than the sound

[rchamil]

Mathematical equations were used in the making of this video

[BlockJuice]

Rename the audio file "ΔMi−1=−αΣn=1NDi[n][Σj∈C{i}Fji­[n − 1]+Fexti[(n−1)]", it's only fair.

[AmeniphusX]

What is the name of the track at the intro?

[galea18]

the name of the oftware is 'cool edit pro'

[xCOOPA22COOLx]

awesome find. Good job

[fresswolf]

The software is called MetaSynth

[fluence51]

Post-rock is the future of music... in Earth. But this definitely is what music from other worlds should sound like.

[dirtystephennwilson]

@fluence51 how would you know? Are you an alien?

[EpicPoop]

Welcome to hell.

[NicholasMcClintock]

RDJ is no doubt an alien. He's fucking sick as shit.

[Wolliom]

How do I view this? There's no face when I view the spectrum in Adobe Audition....

[Arkham456]

AFXManolo where is the intro sound clip from?

[Deluxeta]

It's clearer when using the vinyl needle drop.

[theyellowfury]

Cool video, he inspires me too

[prking97]

where did you get this program?

[nikito370]

OK what most videos about this "face" are missing is that there are several parameters for spectral analysys of a sound, and one of them (which I don't recall yet) reveals that said "face" is in fact a picture of RDJ himself, the one on the cover of "I care because you do". It's not a "devil" or an "evil face"...

[ledzepp8rammstein]

it's still creepy =)

[cy545]

i dont get it

sdfasdfas

[th3cactusplant]

brix r shat

[amigaknight]

insane. 0_o

[Mljkghiyt]

just use the beep map vst plugin in fl studio choose a picture thats a bitmap image and when you play notes the picture comes out

[iAmJerkk]

lol...retards..this song is from '99...you think in those times were such programs?duuh..

[killkenny14]

Yes.

[gorillazhead]

Ummm, spectrograms have been around since the 70's dumbass, I should know, my father's an electrical manufacturer.

[DeadPrototype]

Richard David James, è IL GENIO dell' Elettronica! 5/5

[B12345678910]

Wel if anyone has time would you listen to my music and tell me what you think there are a few tracks up but if you listen to one listen to New Other thanks for your time.

[jam1es200]

reverse spectro-analyzation takes allot of effort and time ! TRY IT if you dont beleive me. Richard D James Also Known As AFX, Polygon Window, Power-Pill, Blue Calx, The Dice Man, and others ????? he is ahaed oh his time & not un-like a modern day Bach, leave the geeza alone he's allright. Genius = Aphex Twin.

[aaapha23]

I'm sure it does, but there's a freeware app called Coagulight which does it for you. Used it myself to hide an image of my wife in a song I wrote for her. The talent's not the doing of it, it's the appropriate placing of it. :)

[EdwardMarshall1982]

yea it called reverse spectro-analyzation. Neat trick, but no talent involved.

[momobit]

AMAZING!!!

[DjHyphie]

wow.. that it actually amazing. How the FUCK!!!!! did RDJ do that??? SERIOUSLY? I dont think people realize how hard it is to actually make a picture in a spectrogram BY USING AUDIO ONLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[moles9999]

he didn't use audio only, he produced a picture and used MetaSynth to convert it into sound. still pretty cool though

[willywooba]

Check out a program called Coagula. You can load a picture of yourself and convert it to sound in a couple of seconds. ;)

[Sluggen]

He used Metasynth, it's not that hard really, you just import a picture and it renders a sound from it. He is amazing though.

[illuminol]

i want 2.5 seconds back for reading that comment, bitch

[QuantumMechanic788]

Wow that is absolutely crazy. This guy is a mad genius.

[JavaSpitLava]

alien music...aphex will always be the greatest ion out of the box music

[music192]

what's the software used???... (if it is possible to know..)

[AFXManolo]

adobe audition

[music192]

Thank you....i ll check it out...looks interesting!

[tryclo999]

@music192 Cool edit pro 2

[tryclo999]

@music192 Adobe Cool edit pro 2

[TEHTZ3000]

lol

[Aleksandr011]

This song has always been just creepy as hell to me. Amazing anyway

[AFXManolo]

I agree with you

[L00NGB00W]

Sheesh. The bitrate is good enough to see the image isn't it? Cool find AFXManolo.

[AFXManolo]

:D i read it and then tried it, and her it is xP

[obliviongreen]

i could listen to ambient distortions all day long,it literally calms me down,not sure if it just scares me stupid for a moment,or im just hardwired this way,whatever the case,i really do like it.But i dont know the first thing about computers,so i have no clue how to cook my own brew..know what i mean?

Be good yall.

[crystina99]

i knew where was something behing that one part.. thanx for showing us!!

[AFXManolo]

;) you`re welcome

[AndyMoore76]

If you posted this as a high quality WAV, people would still whinge, miserable bastards, sheesh. Nice vid mate, thanks for posting.

[AFXManolo]

i don´t understand very well what do you mean with "whine", english is not my first language, ur welcome pal!

[clixsyt]

Why do you people give a crap about what bitrate he listens too?

[fakeyourdeath85]

thanks for wasting a minute of my time while u open the song.Yeah nice 128 Kbps mp3 too.

[metalhasmyballs2]

crazy shit.... but of course after seeing the video for Rubber Johnny or what ever it was callled.... one can only expect.

[PazJunior]

Eww, you listen to 128 Kbps MP3s.

[stevevaizorz]

this really creeped me out when I 1st saw it lol Aphex Twin is scary but his music is great

[costin12]

not everyone will understand your comment ...

[AFXManolo]

at least my naive video is teaching other to not believe everything you read on the net, cheers mates!

[diefex]

You want me to comment?

All electronic music is made with trigonometric functions (equations). Because computers speak in binary, not notes. Some people that write electronic music use calculators, that is all. :)

I would not be surprised if RDJ did not use a calculator for this one, however. I have done similar stuff with modulation before, and it is FUCKING HARD. However, you can see that there is a difference between his visualization and that of a copy pasted image.

[diefex]

not to mention the obvious phase sets and modulation that can be heard in this sound NOTHING like that of a copypasta. Copypasta image/spectral analysis sound like bollocks (too much intensity @ high frequencies) You also have to notice the scale that the analysis is set at, it is exponential, not linear....most of the sound is in lower, audible frequencies...it is music, not noise. (yeah, Aaron, you didn't quite get it on w/your cats.)

[MOOPsQuad]

wow u prolly wack off towrds this kind of shut eh?

[DONOTPOSTHERE]

they have a dedication to interesting music unlike yourself fuck face

[Peanutslayer2]

whoevr found that one has no life

[Sschwenk]

This Is the most Synestetik stuff i've ever heard ? no seen ? no heard ? dunno ^^

[KamikazeKombat]

That's insane shit!

[NewBeatz93]

what is the song at the start, i like it :) anyone know

[euanobm99]

icct hedral by aphex

[NewBeatz93]

thanks :) x

[Fleischmahn]

Hm, when i try this in goldwave, his face looks fucked up :D

[soggylogg]

i used to make the same kinda wooo sound when id be acting excited back when i was a youngin

[MugenNoKarayami]

that last sound just gives me chills and goose bumps when ever I hear it. but in a good way. very nice!

[B0B350]

yeesh

[kineskopan]

KAKAOIROROSKRKAKSKADSA

[Pwnagemonkey1]

Fuck yeah man it sounds like a demon or hell or some shit

[kida101]

Wow that's awesome...RDJ is a true genius. Check out my original music video for Xmd5a on my channel!

[Trgr66]

This is unlike anything ive seen ever before. I believe im about to become a fan! Take 'Come To Daddy' for eks.

[BMX10GO]

alguna explicacion ? como puta lo hiso

[Doyubi]

"Here's the mon who inspired me to always go beyond in everything I don."

THAT'S FINE, YOU PRETENTIOUS LITTLE FUCK!

But next time you go "beyond in everything", you should make sure that the soundquality is reasonable, at least!

IDIOT!

[AFXManolo]

tnx 4 the opinion pal!

[Doyubi]

Was positively fucked when i wrote my love-letter. Sorry :)

[Soriphen]

0_o?

[UrbanMonkeyy]

how the fuck did he do that can come one please let me know

[oskararnarson]

My thoughts exactly

[helvennoir]

its quite easy to do, if you have FL Studio there's a plug in called Beep map, just load a picture into that and boom! or there is a free program to download called "Coagula"

[darkitechture]

Yeah, you can do it that way, but that's not the way it was done in this case.

[neurontechno]

its an old technology. there are may ways to do it...

[Paxmax]

Aphex Twins is very far out. I swear I can feel my ears getting a warm fuzzy feeling when I listen to a particular part of "Come to Daddy"

Weird stuff... but entertaining!

[shufflespack]

this shit scares the hell out of me

[Mint89674523]

Crazy shit dawg.

[SPDeff]

помоему и не удивительно =)

[AFXManolo]

по моему мнению оно

[fdevant]

wikipedia (...)

[JeliRoll90]

Aphex Twin is awesome! One of my favorites!

[phoenixDarky]

awsome

[penisfacefucker]

it sucks

[ifrito19]

nice

[cornishacid25]

metasynth?

[nitromefan]

This song is a real brainfuck

[MPaans]

Why is this movie 4 minutes long? Jeez, cut it down to making your point, which is like 15 seconds.

Interesting find tho ;p

[PHOG1]

it's 4 mins long cos the tune is 4 mins long, and it's a great tune. all 4 minutes of it ;)

[pedromonteverde]

For me, is more an Alien face than Rhichard James face. It's so easy to do those electronic sounds with pixels. He hadn't much work in this music. This isn't a "Mathemathical" Equation, is a "Symbolic" Equation, abstract, not concret like maths

[Sliwaaa]

Mathematics isn't concret. >.>

[Sliwaaa]

"Mathematics is an area of abstract knowledge built using logical reasoning on concepts such as numbers, figures, structures and transformations." (First définition of maths, thanks Wiki.)

But then, even though the results of mathematical truths are purely formal, they find applications in other sciences.

And as Wigner said "mathematics has an unreasonable effectiveness in the natural sciences".

(And yeah, I'm a maths student. (: )

[chatch15117]

lolz @ colege... i can tell that problem won't simplify by looking at it and i'm in high school TARD

[pedromonteverde]

46 years + High School = you give me the answer

[pedromonteverde]

Try to play "End of August" of Yanni

[michaelalowther]

mathmatics is concret cos you always get the same answer if you do an equation over and over again...

ex 1+1 will always be 2

and its the same with complex equations

[jadams110]

listen to einstein here...

[gilmonteverdemusic]

I was going to say that biatch. You put an image there and it gives a sound and..... voilá, you did an irritating and stupid Aphex Twin song that has no sense if you don't put it on a spectrum.

[gilmonteverdemusic]

ya, my songs have Jessica Alba naked... who's da genius hum?

[Chuchunezmi]

Hey, where do I get this audio track for myself? Creepy cool vid...

[KillingSpreeFreesBee]

NoiZe music video?

[DigiTan000]

Wicked! He did a reverse fft on his own face?!!?

[FilmPA]

OK! I am having a little bit of trouble finding the name of a video device.

I worked on a Disney commercial one time, and saw a measuring/viewing, 3D video tool.

I want to say "Spectrograph", but I also want to say "Radar", or "Visualizer for Video instead of sound", or "Oscilloscope".

What I saw: Lines in layers in real time video production. When the camera shot went forewards and backwards, there were lines going up and over people, and other objects. Any ideas?

[Wammy92k]

Dude this is really cook =D

[Wammy92k]

I meen cool =p

[demonbomb102]

That is creepy as shit.

[EpedemicOptikz]

that is some scary cool shit.

[synsei1]

I immediatly recognized the kind of sounds you get with Metasynth. But How did you find the picture among all these sounds ?

[sariwis]

this was a web legend to me so I made it real

[NoqturnePL]

OK to all you guys saying this is fake. IT IS NOT. Aphex did this on purpose.

To the author - nice find :) I'm sure that there are more "pictures" in Aphex's tracks - he just loves to play with his listeners' minds xD

[AFXManolo]

:D keep like that!

[comianain839]

bloody well love your username lol, but aye, man what software did you use for this? :) cos like, afx is a sexy beast and i anna find other 'pictures' and im sure squarepusher will have some similar too, their music is just so class :D

[AFXManolo]

hey, well to view the face i used adobe audition then changed the wave mode to the spectrum mode, is what you can see in the video when i open the menu up right! :P i´ve heard square pusher has a lot of this stuff, but i haven´t seen any

[comianain839]

deadly! :D

[Deckardpr]

hooooooooooly shiiiiiit!!!!!!

ma men aphex twin.

[cornflakes002]

I just think it looks cool regardless if its a joke or not

[greenjazzer]

fake

[AFXManolo]

REALITY: How to Create a High-Def speaker for under a buck <---------- this is fake dude

[sirmustapha]

James was reportedly using Apple machines back then to produce music, and it's highly unlikely that he produced the software to generate sound. Other musicians were using it as well (e.g. Venetian Snares), but James, in my opinion, was one of the few who managed to take a "gimmick" and transform it into MUSIC. You'd never guess those sounds were actually images, and including his own grin on the song was a really clever joke.

There's a spiral at the end of "Windowlicker", visible the same way.

[AFXManolo]

i like feedback :D tnx pal!

[LemonTartProductions]

The specific software that Richard used to create the spectral images is known as Metasynth Pro, an application for Macintosh computers.

[weatherkop]

You can get any picture and run it through a spectrograph anylizer and get the same type of sounds, I did it with pictures of girls asses one time. Its no big deal now, Aphex did it when no one really knew about it. Thats how you stay ahead of the game.

[Angelskingarden]

Well, he has a degree in engineering. You need to be able to handle logarithm math for that. Spectrograms operate on logarithms, so he might have just done it by hand.

[Vislav]

Whoa, creepy. I like it.

[chromarium]

How? Well, a lot of people say that he used tool X or tool Z but they mostly refer to very modern software. Gotta remember when this was done, and similar things even before this one - we are talking mid and late 90s or so. The answer is that it was done with a special little black box which had and still has far more audio processing power than the best home computers even today. I can't tell you what it's called. But you can probably dig and find out. Sorry :)

[AFXManolo]

nice one pal!

[DDRpwnerer]

Well, I think he used Max/MSP a lot in this album, thus the somewhat odd/unorthodox drums he seems to have in a lot of tracks. I could be wrong, but he stated this in an interview (Though I can't guarantee for THIS album.) Regardless, yeah, he did use a true spectrograph to do this, not some computer program.

[FlyboT]

He almost certainly used Metasynth.

[juallren]

Woah thats creeepy and awesome

[Deluxeta]

It's not "mathematical equation"! It's ΔMi−1 = −aΣn=1NDi[n] [Σj∈ℂ{i}Fij[n − 1] + [Fexti[n−1]]

[mariano26788]

yes but in the Japan Version... the USA version it's "Eqaution o Matematical Equation o Strage Formula"

This song it's awnsome...

[Deluxeta]

Nope! I'm in europe and I got this ;).

[QuadroWho]

it's cool and all but it'd be way cooler if he had figured out how to make noises to make his face in this instead of using a program. you know that'd be whoop ass.

[MaraudingMaster]

That'd be incredibly hard. Luckily, the type of sound needed to project his face suits his style perfectly.

[QuadroWho]

yeah that did work out nicely. wasn't this off the windowlicker ep? that was probably pretty ahead of it's time when it was released. i hadn't even heard of this until a few months ago.

[Joferjoe]

omg thats actually awesome XD from 1:58 if they made a real song out of that id defo buy it XD :p

[DeeCine]

Whats the big deal anyway? Know AFX is a very inventive and skillfull DJ. But its not like he made the software to put his face inside this audio composition.

[boudi22]

Look from Venetian Snares is also cool work