My plans for voice recognition software were thwarted.
As Jane Smith — from How Publishing Really Works — pointed out in the comments section, voice recognition software is fairly voice specific. You have to “train” it to recognize your own voice, at which point you can play your own recorded voice back to it (or speak through a microphone) and the program will recognize your own words well enough to come up with a reasonable transcription.
My problem, however, is that that’s not really what I needed. I wanted to be able to play back an interview between two people, and have the VRS system be able to transcribe it. That, alas, is beyond the capability of most VRS systems.
The literature for MacSpeech didn’t really make that clear — I thought it was going to be a technological wunderkind, capable of transcribing whatever I might play through it (“Revolution 9” from The Beatles might have been fun), no questions asked. That wasn’t the case — and since I don’t work by dictating into the computer, Scribe is pretty much a useless program for me.
Unfortunately, when I called customer service at MacSpeech to see if I could get a refund on the program — since it really didn’t do what I needed it to do — they told me no dice, since the program “was working as it was supposed to.” Rats.
So I’ve gone back to Plan B — having the conversation transcribed. I did learn, however, that if your transcription doesn’t have to carry a standard of “legal weight” — meaning it won’t be scrutinized in a courtroom — you can have things transcribed for a much more reasonable rate. I’m supposed to have my transcript back soon. I’ll let you know how they did — and if it looks good, I’ll let you know who I used.
As you know, I love looking behind the scenes at how people work. What you’ll see below isn’t quite a making of video, nor is it a music video per se — but it’s one of the few existing bits of color film showing the Beatles at work. In this case, they’re recording “Hey Bulldog,” a 1968 song that was scotched as a potential single then shelved for The Beatles before finally appearing on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack in 1969.
There’s a strong group dynamic at play here– John Lennon and Paul McCartney read off of Lennon’s scrawled lyrics sheet, George Harrison switches guitars for the solo, Ringo makes whooping background noises, and John and Paul finally go a little nuts at the end, barking and hollering. It’s probably one of the last times the group would have quite so much fun in each other’s company — they would disintigrate into the fractious sessions for The Beatles later in the year — and it remains a fun song. It’s also one of Madi’s very favorite songs to play on Beatles Rock Band.
I’m obsessed with knowing how things work. More specifically, I love knowing how people work — how they do their jobs, what their creative process is, what their working environments are like, and what challenges they face. I’m especially fascinated when it comes to learning more about how writers and artists produce whatever it is their particular craft might be.
When you hold a book in your hand — or view a painting, watch a movie, or listen to music — you’re seeing only one part of a story — and usually it’s only the last chapter, ripped from the book and handed to you as the Complete Story. That bit of creative misdirection means that you’re seeing only what the artist wanted you to see. The artist who produced that painting you’re looking at, for example, doesn’t really want you to know or care where he bought the canvas, who he scrounged the paints off of, what room he painted in, or that his mother always wanted him to be chef instead of a painter. The art itself — which is the end result of the creative process — is meant to be the statement; the rest is insignificant.
I tend to disagree with that. The biographer in me can’t help but wonder how people were working and living their lives, even as they were creating their art.
I love knowing what goes on behind the scenes. I love visiting the homes of famous writers, artists, or politicians, for instance, and soaking up the atmosphere where they lived and worked. I enjoy poring through journals, letters, records and receipts, fascinated with what people write in the places where they believe no one will ever be looking. I’m one of those annoying people who watches every single “Behind The Scenes” or “Making of…” feature on a DVD, so I can see the interviews with the cast and crew, writer and director.
Creating art is hard work. And I think that hard work deserves to be explored and celebrated — especially when it makes for such a good story.
Let me give you an example.
I’ve always been intrigued by the Beach Boys. It’s not so much their music, which I’m not interested in much beyond what you might find on a typical greatest hits CD; rather, I’m fascinated by the relationship and creative dynamic between the Wilson brothers and their overbearing father, Murry. While I’ve not yet been able to find a biography of the group that truly rises to my expectations in this regard (the last one I read, Catch A Wave, was, I thought rather flat), I recently came across a primary source that’s even better: forty minutes of open audio from a 1965 Beach Boys recording session, when the early takes of “Help Me, Rhonda” are broken up by the entry of a drunken, sometimes angry, sometimes weepy, but almost always abusive Murry Wilson.
Murry proceeds to take over the session, berating the singing of Al Jardine — who’s singing his guts out — and lecturing Brian Wilson on sacrifice and hard work (“I’m a genius, too!” Murray testily proclaims). At one point, Murry and Brian can be heard scuffling over the controls, as Murry tries to turn off the recording equipment and Brian — thankfully — manages to leave the tape rolling.
It’s a fascinating look behind the scenes, and makes you appreciate even more just how difficult it must have been for Brian Wilson to produce . . . well, anything. More than anything, you can see that Brian Wilson didn’t create great music through magic; it was, for more than just a few reasons, hard work.
If I’ve peaked your curiosity, don’t worry, I won’t leave you hanging. Courtesy of WFMU, then, here’s the full 40-minute version of the January 8, 1965 Beach Boys recording session. If you don’t have 40 minutes, here’s a highlight reel.
As an added bonus, here’s the first installment of Peter Bagge’s The Murry Wilson Show:
My point is, sometimes what’s going on behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain is just as interesting as the final product itself — provided, of course, that you really want to look. But you tell me: Does that peek behind the scenes take something away from the final product? In other words, is the magic gone at that point? Or does knowing of all the hard work that went into it make you appreciate the final product that much more?
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