Play this song backwards in iTunes
I was listening to the B-52’s Detour Thru Your Mind and got to the end where Fred Schneider is clearly speaking backwards. A quick search for a “play me backwards” in iTunes found nothing. A quick search on Google found a Mac OS X Hint for playing a track more quickly, with the comment inside that if you give it a negative number, it will play backwards.
A close look at the script indicated that it was exactly what I needed. The script will open the current track in QuickTime Player, go to exactly where we were in iTunes, and start playing from that point. The only change I had to make was setting the playback rate to a negative number.
[toggle code]
- --first, pause iTunes and get the current playback location
-
tell application "iTunes"
- pause
- --get the current track
- set my_track to location of current track
- --remember where the playback head is
- set my_seconds to player position
- end tell
- --second, open QuickTime and start playing
-
tell application "QuickTime Player"
- --open the iTunes file
- open my_track
- set my_movie to first movie
- --go to where we left off in iTunes
- set ts to time scale of my_movie
- set current time of my_movie to my_seconds * ts
- --start playing backwards
- set rate of my_movie to -1
- end tell
Copy this script, paste it into Script Editor, and save it in your iTunes scripts folder as “Play Backwards”. (Enable the Script Menu by using the AppleScript Utility in the AppleScript folder in your Applications folder. Use “Open iTunes Scripts Folder” from the scripts menu in iTunes.)
In your scripts menu you’ll now see your “Play Backwards” script while you are using iTunes. Cue up the end of some vocals you think are backwards, pause, and choose Play Backwards.
For example, cue up to:
| Artist | Album | Song | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| The B-52s | Bouncing Off the Satellites | Detour Thru Your Mind | 4 min 53 sec |
| Bob & Doug McKenzie | The Great White North | Black Holes | 1 min 26 sec |
| Insane Clown Posse | The Amazing Jeckel Brothers | Echoside | 2 min 31 sec |
| Led Zeppelin | IV | Stairway to Heaven | 4 min 42 sec |
| Styx | Kilroy Was Here | Heavy Metal Poisoning | 0 min 6 sec |
| “Weird Al” Yankovic | In 3D | Nature Trail to Hell | 3 min 46 sec |
| “Weird Al” Yankovic | Bad Hair Day | I Remember Larry | 3 min 18 sec |
You have to know Latin to get the Styx one. The B-52s and Al Yankovic’s Nature Trail to Hell are the funniest.
The Led Zeppelin one is pretty damned weird. Totally fucked up. Unlike the others, it is clearly spoken forwards. But if you see the words in front of you, it’s hard not to hear them in the music. This is most likely an example of how easily the human mind is tricked into finding patterns and sense where none exists.
It’s probably just psychological; you’ll want to listen to it backwards before reading the supposed words. They’re pretty unintelligible (for me, at least) unless I’m looking at the words as I’m listening to them.
Oh, heres to my sweet satan. The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is satan. He’ll give you, give you 666. There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad satan.
- Listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed
- “I subscribe to far-too-many podcasts now, and I've found that most of the podcasters can actually be cleanly understood even if you speed up their speech by 50%. So, when my iTunes shows that I have 45 minutes left on a podcast, and I'd rather hear that in 30 minutes, I pull down my script menu to reveal and execute the following AppleScript.”
- Backmasking
- “Backmasking is a recording technique in which a message is recorded backwards onto a track that is meant to be played forwards.”
- Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena
- “Optical illusion sounds pejorative, as if exposing a malfunction of the visual system. Rather, I view these phenomena as bringing out particular good adaptations of our visual system to standard viewing situations. These adaptations are hard-wired in our brains, and thus under some artificial manipulations can cause inappropriate interpretations of the visual scene.”
- Buy Bouncing Off the Satellites
- This is a fun album, especially the strange and meandering detour through your mind.
- Buy The Great White North
- A strange bit of the eighties, this is an entire album of Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis arguing like you and your brother. One of the tracks from this album even hit the charts.
- Buy The Amazing Jeckel Brothers
- This is one of the better ICP albums, with a very funny talk-show take in “The Shaggy Show” and a weird little thing going on in Echoside and Assassins.
- Buy Led Zeppelin IV
- One of the classic Led Zeppelin albums, if not the classic. Contains most of the Led Zep songs you’ve heard over and over again: Stairway to Heaven, Black Dog, Going to California, Living Loving Maid, etc.
- Buy Kilroy Was Here
- This is a fun album, made better because of the concept. Partially made in response to criticism from moral busybodies to earlier albums, I don’t quite get what the story is but it works out. Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto.
- Buy Weird Al in 3D
- Some of the best Weird Al parodies, from Eat It to (my favorite on the album) Buy Me a Condo.
- Buy Bad Hair Day
- By this point Weird Al was making fun of things I’d never even heard of (I only, finally, saw Forrest Gump in the last year). But I do enjoy the sick ones like I Remember Larry and The Night Santa Went Crazy.
More AppleScript
- Getting the selected playlist in iTunes
- It took a while to figure out how to get iTunes’s selected playlist as opposed to the current playlist in AppleScript.
- Converting FileMaker to Django
- Appscript and the Django API make it easy to transfer data from Mac OS X scriptable applications into a Django-powered database.
- appscript AppleScript translator
- Those of us who like Applescript but want a solid command-line scripting environment no longer have to muddle through when using appscript. We can write in AppleScript and then translate to appscript.
- Create a web browser in AppleScript Studio
- AppleScript Studio is a powerful means of putting a graphic user interface onto AppleScript applications. Interface Builder lets us use any of the simple and complex controls that any other application can use.
- Run a script on inserting an audio CD
- You can run a script every time you insert an audio CD to ensure that iTunes is ready for import.
- Six more pages with the topic AppleScript, and other related pages
More iTunes
- Getting the selected playlist in iTunes
- It took a while to figure out how to get iTunes’s selected playlist as opposed to the current playlist in AppleScript.
- Cleaning iTunes track information
- Python and appscript make it easy to modify iTunes track information in batches—if you’re willing to get your hands dirty on the Mac OS X command line.
- Using appscript in Python to control GUI applications
- The appscript module for Python lets you control scriptable applications on the command line without having to coordinate your command-line script with your Applescript applications.
- Run a script on inserting an audio CD
- You can run a script every time you insert an audio CD to ensure that iTunes is ready for import.
- A simple iTunes sleep timer
- If you enjoy listening to music for a while before you go to sleep, but don’t want to have iTunes on all night, you can use AppleScript to make iTunes and your Mac do what you want it to do.
- Two more pages with the topic iTunes, and other related pages
Update: I got Bob & Doug McKenzie’s Great White North as a gift, and added that to the list.
Second update: There was a better way to get this to show only in iTunes.