Not only do humans make good test subjects, they sing pretty well, too.
As those who have completed Portal 2 know – and anyone who hasn’t should probably stop reading right now for fear of having the ending spoiled – the game ends with not one, but two songs. The first, “Want You Gone,”
is in a similar vein to “Still Alive,” but the other is significantly more operatic.
For those of you who have completed the game – and for those who haven’t, why on Earth are you still reading this? I wasn’t kidding about the spoilers – might recall that as Chell rides the elevators out of the Aperture Labs after defeating Wheatley, she is serenade by a chorus of turrets, including the magnificent and powerful Animal King Turret. It’s this tuneful snippet that vocal group Acquire, via A Capella Records, has recreated, using only the human voice and what they call “various robot enhancements,” which is mostly limited to the occasional sound effect.
According to the description on the video, this is all part of a grand experiment. “Today, we at A Cappella Records are GLaD to announce a partnership with Aperture Science,” it says. “The video involves a cappella music. It is designed to see how test subjects react to a cappella music.” Bizarre as it sounds, that’s actually the kind of experiment you could almost see GLaDOS trying as she gets more and more bored.
It’s a fun little number, even if opera isn’t usually your thing, and it’s quite remarkable how rich a sound they manage to achieve with just four people. If you like it enough that you want to carry it around with you, then A Capella Records has stuck it on iTunes. If you’re in the mood to recreate it, then A Capella is offering free sheet music, which also contains the lyrics in both Italian and English.
Source: Geeks Are Sexy
