Vibrations and how they get to your ears.
Noise for airports is a blog about culture, sound, music, and technology.
You can filter the posts to see just things I wrote or made.
Updated (sometimes) by Nick Seaver.
This “drum machine” uses photosensors and a rotating can with a light source inside to sequence beats. That is actually a terrible description of what it does, as it is basically a totally crazy batch photo-controlled oscillators that, according to this video, can also be used to modulate sound from external sources.
The video is long, but click around—this contraption does a lot of things.
(via SynthGear)
An in-browser, flash-based step sequencer, with multiple voices, drums, and volume/pan controls. Not to mention being embeddable! This is great.
Another great post from acousmata:
Raymond Scott: “Cindy Electronium” (1960-63)
From the album Manhattan Research, Inc. (2000)
A sprightly little ditty by American inventor, bandleader, and electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott. The title of the piece refers to a device created in 1960 by Scott and called the “Electronium,” which is thought to be the first musical sequencer.
“”In the music of the future, the composer will sit alone on the concert stage and merely think his idealised conception of his music. His brain waves will be picked up by mechanical equipment and channelled directly into the minds of his hearers, thus allowing no room for distortion of the original idea. Instead of recordings of actual musical sound, recordings will carry the brain waves of the composer directly to the mind of the listener.” (Raymond Scott, 1949)
This quote from Raymond Scott is fantastic. The idea of transmitting musical ideas with no mediation whatsoever is a wonderful techno-dream, and another quote I found from Scott on his Wikipedia page is almost exactly the same as how I introduced the idea of mediation to my sound class:
“The composer must bear in mind that the radio listener does not hear music directly. He hears it only after the sound has passed through a microphone, amplifiers, transmission lines, radio transmitter, receiving set, and, finally, the loud speaker apparatus itself.” —Raymond Scott, 1938
Scott’s implication in these two remarks is that hearing music “directly” means having it transmitted brain-to-brain, and that is awesome.
