Noise for Airports 

3 tags

Jan 19th

23 notes

5 tags

At Most 10% Syncopation

From this post on Nazi responses to jazz: But maybe the single most remarkable example of 20th-century totalitarian invective against jazz that Skvorecky ever relayed was here in the intro to The Bass Saxophone, where he recalls — faithfully, he assures us (“they had engraved themselves deeply on my mind”) — a set of regulations, issued by a Gauleiter — the leader...

Jan 4th

10 notes

3 tags

Dec 30th

23 notes

3 tags

Nov 17th

1,923 notes

4 tags

Oct 21st

9 notes

5 tags

“Nestle, one of the world’s biggest makers of pet food, said on Friday it...”

– Nestle ad first to pitch at canine customers | Reuters

Sep 30th

42 notes

6 tags

Nothing More

Bruno Latour, on writing, in Reassembling the Social (2007):  Writing texts has everything to do with method. You write a text of so many words, in so many months, based on so many interviews, so many hours of observation, so many documents. That’s all. You do nothing more. (148) Otto Ortmann, on playing the piano, in The Physical Basis of Piano Touch and Tone (1925): What we actually do,...

Sep 25th

47 notes

5 tags

Sep 2nd

19 notes

4 tags

Aug 28th

57 notes

5 tags

Aug 28th

77 notes

5 tags

Then/Now

The Music Trades, 1924: Entire Piano Industry to Profit by Work of Newly Organized Research Department of American Piano Company “Among other things,” said Mr. Stoddard in discussing the plans of the new department, “we shall make a careful research into tone analysis. […] We doubt if there has been enough absolutely accurate knowledge in this whole subject of tone production. We...

Aug 26th

5 notes

5 tags

Aug 9th

15 notes

4 tags

Fight the (Tympanic) Power

A really awesome Kickstarter project ends in 5 days and is about $800 short of its funding goal. Here’s the description: Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI) is comprised of Troy Rogers, Steven Kemper, and Scott Barton. Since 2007, the group has been designing, building, and composing music for robotic musical instruments on a shoestring budget. EAR Duo—Dana Jessen (bassoon)...

Dec 29th

49 notes

4 tags

Oct 15th

3 tags

Oct 7th

21 notes

5 tags

Oct 4th

4 tags

Oct 4th

22 notes

5 tags

Sep 28th

26 notes

5 tags

Sep 17th

48 notes

3 tags

Sep 10th

36 notes

4 tags

Watch

Dick Whyte’s reconstruction of 4’33”, stitching together YouTube performances of the piece.

Sep 8th

4 tags

Sep 7th

15 notes

5 tags

Sep 6th

23 notes

5 tags

Aug 13th

107 notes

4 tags

Aug 5th

21 notes

5 tags

Jul 29th

4 tags

Watch

This is a nice and arty short video about R. Murray Schafer and his views on the soundscape. At the end, there is a very nice touch when Schafer holds up a sign that says “Listen.” and the audio fades out so you can listen to your own environmental sounds. (The effect is changed a bit if you’re wearing noise-canceling headphones like I was.) I (obviously?) disagree with his...

Jul 28th

9 notes

4 tags

Watch

Andrew Spitz documents an attempt at time-lapse phonography over at his blog. I wrote a program in Max/MSP to automize the whole process. Every 144 seconds, the software capture one frame from the webcam and a 100ms slice of sound, with a 5ms fade in and out to attempt ironing out the non-zero crossing clicks. Each new sound slice gets appended into a buffer containing the other sounds, which then...

Jul 28th

5 tags

Watch

“Playing Guitar With Power Tools.” (via Music of Sound

Jul 27th

17 notes

4 tags

For those of you who saw Inception, an experiment...

Jul 26th

3 tags

Jul 25th

13 notes

5 tags

Jul 23rd

20 notes

7 tags

Jul 22nd

6 tags

“Before the New York Philharmonic presented its first concert of the season in...”

– (via NYTimes)

Jul 21st

5 tags

Jul 21st

5 tags

Jul 21st

5 tags

Jul 21st

4 notes

5 tags

Jul 20th

6 notes

6 tags

Jul 19th

3 notes

4 tags

Jul 19th

5 tags

Jul 19th

5 tags

“Heavy decibels are playing on my guitar We got vibrations coming up from the...”

– AC/DC’s “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution,” in observance of World Listening Day. I very much enjoy how the song seems to be a direct rebuttal of R. Murray Schafer’s list of noise types in his Book of Noise: Noise has a variety of meanings and shadings of meaning,...

Jul 18th

3 notes

9 tags

Cory Arcangel’s “Iron Maiden’s...

Jul 18th

1 note

5 tags

Jul 18th

3 notes

4 tags

Jul 17th

4 notes

4 tags

Jul 16th

4 tags

Watch

I blogged Niklas Roy’s Binary Beat a while ago (although I can’t find it anymore), but that video has been making the rounds again recently, so I thought I’d elaborate with another of his experiments: ternary music! Counting in base 3 instead of base 2, this rhythm is much jerkier, but kind of awesomer?

Jul 15th

1 note

4 tags

Jul 15th

4 tags

Jul 14th

16 notes

4 tags

Have fun experimenting with sound! →

A fun looping app for Mac and Windows from the MIT Media lab: (via educationalrap)

Jul 13th

185 notes