411: Techno

Techno

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Title text: I don't know what's worse - that there exists broken-hard-drive-sound techno, or that it's not half bad.

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Explanation

This comic is an insult towards techno music, which many non-fans find to be very repetitive.

iTunes is a digital storefront for music (in the years since this comic, it has been expanded into other digital media) which provides a 15 second sample to help buyers make sure they are buying the right song. Cueball claims that for any given techno song, the listener can get the same experience for free by just recording the 15 second sample and playing it on loop.

The title text refers to the clicking and grinding noises of a dying hard drive, a sound similar to some techno songs. The title text suggests that this actually exists.

Techno music is also mentioned in 586: Mission to Culture and 740: The Tell-Tale Beat. Sampling and looping sounds that aren't necessarily musical is mentioned in 2427: Perseverance Microphones.

Transcript

[Cueball looking over Megan's shoulder while she is clicking her mouse with her other hand on her chin.]

Cueball: Wait, you're buying techno on iTunes?

Megan: Yeah. So?

Cueball: Couldn't you just loop the 15-second free sample 20 times and get basically the same thing?

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Discussion

I had a hard drive once, MFM or RLL I cannot recall, which periodically would make an odd RRRRRRRR noise (possibly due to lack of calibration or vibration reduction somewhere) to which I referred as my "heavy metal drive".

Contemporary techno is rather reminiscent of 1541 read/write problems. I aver that technology originally spawned the term "head banging", which completes the cycle of metal versus techno. Thokling (talk) 13:04, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

That example music was obviously created after the comic, and could not be what the comic was referring to. Benjaminikuta (talk) 02:17, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

The title text was referring to the concept, which obviously existed prior to the comic existing. It's irrelevant that the example used was created after this comic. -Pennpenn 108.162.250.162 06:04, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

If it obviously existed prior to the comic existing, it would nice to link to it here. I came to this page after finding the above link as the first hit on google, and no other obvious links to examples. Having written that, I did discover this. 162.158.145.96 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
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