[conspire] Janet Jackson vs. Laptop Hard Drives

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

This is an old story that's come up in the news lately, so jazz bass geek Adam Neely has made a neepery video about *why*. Which is more interesting than all the misreporting I've heard.

Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation would not only crash a specific (but unspecified) laptop, but also any other that was sitting nearby.

Has to do with resonant frequencies. But given that the song is in the (quite common) key of E (aka default tuning for a guitar), why *just that song*?

Adam has some answers, with some cool history like 19th century orchestra arms races.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y3RGeaxksY

One thing he doesn't cover: Varispeed was also partly used in the process to compress sound (making it faster made the gaps shorter), so those slightly faster mixes for radio also had compression done to make it more radio airwave friendly. Also, the song took less time, so your song was more likely to be played more heavily.

-- 
  Deirdre Saoirse Moen
  deirdre at deirdre.net