Wine Gift For those Who Have Nearly Everything

Basset hounds work, too! Mine is indiscriminate, but my friend Arv's Lena will chose the Harlan out of a tray of corks to chew on.

That is certainly a talented parrot that you recorded. I have heard some amazing tales of the powers of mimicry possessed by parrots, but to imitate a whole orchestra in tune, along with Mickey Mouse singing "Largo al factotum..." is truly unbelievable. In all seriousness, that sounds like a doctored recording in which you've sped up the vocal track while leaving the instruments untouched -- or is it merely a novelty recording in which a castrato sings the title role?

Mark Lipton

I used a wave editor called GoldWave to process the recording from an old acoustic one. I first removed some noise with special filters. I then used a progrom that allows you to increase or decreach the pitch while keeping the tempo the same. I also used a special effects filter or two in a few places to make some pars more squawk-like. The bird can talk if he wants to.

You mentioned castrato. So far as I know, the only castrato recordings were recorded in the Vatican in 1902 and 1904. You can hear a soprano castrato at

. This is a Real Player play list of several selections in several formats, all from very old acoustic recordings. The castrato recording, from the Vatican in 1902, is the second on the list. The 3'rd and 4'th selections by Yaw(a lady) likely contain the highest notes ever recorded by a human The Skylark written for Yaw likely is too difficult for anyone else to sing. People were known to take tuning forks to her concerts to verify the extremely high pitch she reached.