The Final Soundtrack

july 14, 2010.

As an hommage to the Vuvuzela, this SoundBlog edition proudly presents _Finale_: the full soundtrack of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup final between the Netherlands and Spain, slightly (but ever so subtly) edited [re-composed], for an optimal listening experience. The match was played in the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, on sunday July 11th, before a crowd of 84.490 soccer fans. Referee was Howard Webb.

The mp3 file's total playing time is 2 hours and 2 minutes.
File size is 112 Mb.

_Finale_ has five movements:
1. First half [ 45'02" ] 2. Second half [ 45'42" ] 3. First half e.t. [ 15'31" ] 4. Second half e.t. [ 12'27" ] 5. Epilogue [ 3'55" ]

Here is how I re-composed this World Cup final's soundtrack: by hand I cut out (most of) the referee's loud whistle blowing that continuously interrupts the game, except for his start and end whistle, which I kept to mark beginning and end of each of the first four movements. I also removed the stadium announcements, some (but not all) of the in-field and sideline shouting, and left only a couple of the ball-kick ('pok') sounds, to which I added delay to mark sections within each of the movements. In each of the first four movements there are some vuvuzela patterns that I emphasize ('musicalize') by repeating them. In the fourth section, with the score continuing to be a non-conclusive 0-0, the tension of the approaching end of time drives the 'orchestra'-dynamics to near-explosive heights. This section ends with the outburst of the crowd when Andrés Iniesta marks Spain's match winning goal. It is followed by a 4 minute Epilogue, a dazzling chronological collage of all the referee whistles and ball kicks that I cut out.

[ I recorded the original sound file of the wc2010 final match from its live videocast - without commentary - on the Eurovisionsports web site onto a Zoom digital recorder. It took me about 23 hours of editing to prepare the file for _Finale_ according to the above plan. If you download the track and enjoy the work, do consider donating a small sum via PayPal to keep the SoundBlog going ... ]

Feel free to re-mix!

...

Added September 2010: The fine Dutch cultural web daily Hard/Hoofd re-published my Final Soundtrack, and uploaded the full file to SoundCloud:

Added July 2017: More soccer on the SoundBlog - Le zida ne passera pas par moi ... :

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SB Tweet Digest #5 (june 2010)

july 13, 2010.

There have been 28 SoundBlog tweets in June.

...

[15702748488] On June 8th the UK based interdisciplinary media arts organizationTINT launched the first edition of its online Arts Lab: eight artists were offered a web presence within the context of this Lab, in the form of a self contained blog in which each artist documents and reports on a work in progress. We can follow online how these media art works evolve and discuss with the artist via the comments, who in turn may get viable and valuable feedback.

I initially proposed TINT to report in the form of such an online residency on the development of the virtual version of the Carcassonne table that I plan to work on asap, as a an interactive abstract 3D model. But I realized, in view of the many other things that need to be done, that I simply would not have the time to work on this over the summer. Maybe later.

But of course there are others.

Among the eight projects currently active as a TINT residency two caught my special attention.

Lauren McCarthy reports on work that is part of her Tools for Improved Social Interacting. Lauren's 'tools' include, for example, a Happiness Hat. It has a sensor attached to the cheek of its wearer that measures her smile size. If that smile's not big enough a servo motor will move a metal spike into her head, thus teaching her that she'd better be happy ...

In her TINT blog Lauren documents the building of a small table that at its base has knobs that the table sitters can adjust with their feet. In that way they can give 'feet-back' on how much or little they enjoy interacting with the others sitting with them at the table, by making its top light up or dim. Of course the table top's response will correspond to the sum rating of everyone around the table. Observe that as soon as there's more than two seated at the table, it will become an intriguing game to try and figure out who precisely is enjoying herself, and who is not. You know how you are turning the knob. But which one of the two others is responsible for the table's dimming? Who is enjoying your presence, and who is not? Is it the other that she's disliking? Or both? Is it what you say or how you look? Lauren's table might just prove to be the perfect 'paranoia machine' ...

Andrew Norman Wilson hired a 24-year-old male Bangalore resident named Akhil as his virtual personal assistant via a company based in Bangalore, India, called Get Friday. Andrew investigates and explores the peculiarities of this formal and paid-for online relationship through the realization of a task assigned not to, but by Akhil: the making of a video on 'the best fighter jet in the world'. In his TINT lab blog Andrew documents the progress on the video's making.

[15786762021] I am sure that at least some of our viewers will know Nick Currie, under his moniker Momus: a musician, artist, author and ex-blogger of Scottish origin who is currently living in Berlin. As a pop musician Nick has his roots in the British post punk of the early 1980s, where he started his career in a band with various ex-members of Josef K (a band that I hung out with myself on a couple of occasions during their pretty hectic European touring and recording days, in Brussels and in Amsterdam, including a loud, rough and speedy Sister Ray jam one long ago night in the Amsterdam Oktopus club).
Though throughout his entire musical career Nick never really managed (or wanted) to shake off the shackles that continue to bind him to work and attitude of the great David Jones/Bowie, Momus produced several quite wonderful, personal, postmodern-hip and intelligent pop albums, in a style that – much like Bowie's - never ceased to change and evolve along with the 'signs of the time'. None of these, however, resulted in more than a marginal commercial success, but they did bring him a – well deserved – worldwide cult status.

Earlier this year Nick discontinued Click Opera, his popular livejournal blog, that was updated almost daily. Since it has become far less easy to follow Nick's divers worthwhile reflections and his adventures and interventions in the worlds of art, writing, fashion, music and design. But from his twitter stream last month I did pick up the news that Momus had been recording a new album: Hypnoprism. Interesting about this also for others than dedicated Momus fans are his thoughts about how YouTube functions as an inspiration, a reference, a context and a medium for pop music.

As a consequence, in unmistakable Momusian spirit, Nick let a full preview-version of his new album emerge as a YouTube playlist while it was being made.

[15984922994], [15987333788], [16532047596] I cannot remember any other period in my yet quite lengthy life time in which a single sound managed to cause a worldwide buzz and controversy comparable to that made this summer by the Vuvuzela.

I loved the stadium soundscape when, Saturday June 11th, I watched the soccer world cup's opening match of South Africa against Mexico on television, dominated as it was by the meandering B-flat drone composed of the sound produced by many thousands of those plastic colored hooters, blown by an orchestra of players that, individually or in small groups, oftentimes will be intervening in intervals and pretty much randomly. Collectively, though, the troupe gives rise to a continuous massive soundfield, the contours of which subtly follow the dynamics and tension of the game.

The Vuvuzela was a hot item on the web this past month. (Click here to read this post with vuvuzela accompaniment[courtesy vuvuzela-time.co.uk]). It became the subject of numerous blog posts, articles and uTubes. Some of them informative, some of them funny, many of them silly or outright stupid.

Also a couple of 'vuvuzela scores' were posted, like this one:

Now even though this is of course 'funny', it also misses the point. And it misses it big time. The unpredictable, random, interaction and mingling of the on-and-of blowing of thousands of these plastic horns, each like a tiny molecule of sound, results in a massive soundcloud which overall shape is continuously changing according to the development of the play at hand. I have found listening to that massive cloud's internal movements and its overall development over time a very rewarding experience. Music indeed, to my ears.

Whereas most (european and american) soccer fans seemed to support the call for a ban of the loud & noisy horn from the stadium and broadcast organizations worldwide proceeded to lower the volume of the matches' sound in their live covering of the world cup or eq-ed out the Vuvuzela's ground frequency and first harmonic (Vuvuzela filter: in German / in English), like Peter van Cooten and others (most of them musicians of some sort or other) I wished I could follow the tournament's games in full sound but without being obliged also to listen to the dominant and continuous commentaries that come with the television coverage. It was only towards the very end of the competition that I found out that via Eurovisionsports it was possible to watch the games live online without commentary.

I recorded the full sound to the third-place-play-off between Germany and Uruguay. And I recorded the full soundtrack of the final, between the Netherlands and Spain. More about that next ...

Next SB Tweet Digest in August.

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