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I found this and it can give you cold chills. You'll have to suffer through a couple of minutes of explanation - which isn't too bad - unless you can get the timer thing to about the 3 minute mark. I couldn't.
What was done: History Publishing Company took the one recorded version of the original Rebel Yell, given by 90 year old Thomas Alexander in 1935 at an SCV meeting, and had it worked to sound like several hundred men charging across a field. You gotta hear it to believe it. If you can close your eyes and imagine you're a Yankee seeing and hearing them coming, it will give you goose bumps.
From all the contemporary descriptions of it from the Union side, it was indeed a fearsome and terrible sound that struck fear in many a stout heart.
Ambrose Bierce, in his '"A Little of Chickamauga" wrote of his experiences at Snodgrass Hill on the disastrous 2d Day of battle wrote "At last it grew too dark to fight. Then away to our left and rear some of Bragg's people set up 'the rebel yell'. Taken up successfully and passed around to our front, along our right and in behind us again, until it seemed almost to have got to the point whre it started. It was the uliest sound that any mortal ever heard -....... ." "There was, however a space somewhere at the back of us across which that horrible yell did not prolong itself; and through that we finally retired in profound silence and dejection, unmolested."
I've read several accounts of the yell, and they all say about the same thing. I've hunted the net high and low for something that would approximate what it must have sounded like coming from a number of men. Who'd a thunk I'd find it by accident on, of all places, YouTube?
I'll add this. My wife's computer is about ten feet from mine, in our little home office. I cranked the sound up halfway, not expecting much. She almost jumped out of her chair. I'm relegated to using earphones from now on.
Definitely go to youtube to see this. Its an old veterans gathering at what appears to be the 'high water mark' and an old veteran apparently does the yell in the background and the Confederate veteran turns to the camera and says, "that's the rebel yell"
Not so fearsome when yelled by one aged Confederate veteran, I could see how it could inspire fear if 1,000 soldiers in line of battle were screaming it....
There are several things on YouTube, some just pictures made during reunions, others of battle re-enactments, etc. The one you mentioned is similar to the yell I found and, if made by men 70 + yrs younger and in full voice, could be almost the same. I read somewhere that those were cavalrymen, but don't know for sure.
I found this and it can give you cold chills. You'll have to suffer through a couple of minutes of explanation - which isn't too bad - unless you can get the timer thing to about the 3 minute mark. I couldn't.
What was done: History Publishing Company took the one recorded version of the original Rebel Yell, given by 90 year old Thomas Alexander in 1935 at an SCV meeting, and had it worked to sound like several hundred men charging across a field. You gotta hear it to believe it. If you can close your eyes and imagine you're a Yankee seeing and hearing them coming, it will give you goose bumps.
I have actually had this on CD for a while, now, and I file it away under Easy Listening, with my other war music, Bagpipes and War Drums!
Yip - baouwwwwwwwooooooo!
Beowulf
PS
Nice set of pipes for an old guy, huh?!
There's like three parts to this thing. If you take the two CLEAR parts (where he didn't get too close to the microphone, and too loud for the VU levels, and went into distortion static), and you separate them into three parts, and take the YIP and the Indian-Warble (the two clear parts) and you feed them into your iMac, and Sound Soap them, to preserve the voice and filter out some more of the static, and then rip them into iMovie, and then hit CATHEDRAL echo for a pass, and then repeat these clips at random in the two sound bands...
Mix in some whistling shells and some actual gun and cannon play from a reenactment...
I have actually had this on CD for a while, now, and I file it away under Easy Listening, with my other war music, Bagpipes and War Drums!
Yip - baouwwwwwwwooooooo!
Beowulf
PS
Nice set of pipes for an old guy, huh?!
There's like three parts to this thing. If you take the two CLEAR parts (where he didn't get too close to the microphone, and too loud for the VU levels, and went into distortion static), and you separate them into three parts, and take the YIP and the Indian-Warble (the two clear parts) and you feed them into your iMac, and Sound Soap them, to preserve the voice and filter out some more of the static, and then rip them into iMovie, and then hit CATHEDRAL echo for a pass, and then repeat these clips at random in the two sound bands...
Mix in some whistling shells and some actual gun and cannon play from a reenactment...
and it REALLY IS CHILLING!!!!
And clear as a bell!
Thanks, Beowulf. Those of us with Micro$oft machines envy you. I can't make this barely year old XP Pro machine do any of the above. I might have similar, umm, Windows friendly type programs on it, but mostly I use Firefox browser and a couple of word processing softwares. Never got into sound editing since Windows just doesn't work as well as a Mac.
I found this and it can give you cold chills. You'll have to suffer through a couple of minutes of explanation - which isn't too bad - unless you can get the timer thing to about the 3 minute mark. I couldn't.
What was done: History Publishing Company took the one recorded version of the original Rebel Yell, given by 90 year old Thomas Alexander in 1935 at an SCV meeting, and had it worked to sound like several hundred men charging across a field. You gotta hear it to believe it. If you can close your eyes and imagine you're a Yankee seeing and hearing them coming, it will give you goose bumps.
Before you get too excited about rebel yell recreations, one old rebel at a reunion was asked to demonstrate the rebel yell. He said you just couldn't do it right with a belly full of food and a mouth full of false teeth.
Some have suggested that the rebel yell likely had its genesis in the high-pitched foxhunter's "yip." And some have contrasted it to the more manly Union soldiers' deep bass shouts of "hurrah" or "huzzah."
As to inciting goose bumps, somehow it seems unlikely that men inured to the ballistic crack of rifled musket fire and the blasts of artillery would be all that upset by any noise that a human being could make. I would hazzard that the both the rebel yell and the Union huzzah did more for the the morale of the shouters than it did to the morale of the shouted at.
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The Rebel Yell - what it must have sounded like 
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