Billy Alexander won’t put Tony Monaco out of business anytime soon.

But for a guy without fingers, or even with fingers, he plays an amazing Hammond B3 in the traditional style.

via Tom Whitwell

Remember Andy Moog Boy’s Transistor Ladder Filter tattoo?

Last time we saw it, it was looking a bit sore and nasty.

Now it doesn’t look sore at all.

The tat reproduces the circuit design of Bob Moog’s seminal Transistor Ladder Filter. Now that’s hardcore!

Ueberschall has released Crunkzilla, a crunk sample library

Description:

This mammoth release provides 2 GB of delights in the form of 40 construction kits ranging in tempo from 67 to 145 BPM.

Kits include main and variation folders with all loops used to make the structure of the mix as well as single shot folders for the drum samples.

Crunkzilla offers a jumbo variety of style accurate drum loops, synth patterns, bass lines, chord progressions, atmospheres, percussion and fx-sounds which can be painlessly bonded to one another. BPM information and root key (key signatures) are embedded in all loop file names, streamlining the selection process.

With the included Elastik Player content comes setup for direct use. Elastik also provides effects processing such as filter, pitch, reverse and others for each key in the Elastik interface. Instantly modify BPM, Pitch and Loop point settings for an ideal fit. Highly effective organization and tools to quickly develop new arrangements.

Crunkzilla retails for $119 USD / €99 EUR / £69 GBP.

via Tha Bizness: A short demo on making beats on an iPhone 3G using the new program Intua Beatmaker.

Peace Love Productions (PLP) is giving away four free sound kits formatted specifically for Intua’s BeatMaker iPhone app.

Genres include Drum n Bass, Jungle, Downtempo, Hip Hop, Crunk, Electro, House, and Trance. Each Sound Kit contains a minimum of ten loops organized by genre and tempo. They are 16 bit stereo files in the .bmkz file format. Read more…

A hidden hoard of recordings made by Delia Derbyshire, the electronic music pioneer behind the Doctor Who theme, has been found - including a dance track that some think is 20 years ahead of its time.

David Butler, of Manchester University’s School of Arts, Histories and Cultures has revealed for the first time the existence of 267 tapes found in Ms Derbyshire’s attic when she died in 2001. Strangest among these is a dance track that Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll says is “quite amazing”.

“That could be coming out next week on [left-field dance label] Warp Records,” he noted. “It’s incredible when you think when it comes from. Timeless, really. It could be now as much as then.”

“I find it spell-binding,” says Hartnoll. “I’ve got a shedload of synthesizers and equipment, whereas Delia Derbyshire got out of the Radiophonic Workshop when synthesizers came along.”

If you’ve ever wondered how pictures of you French-kissing a giant chicken ended up on Flickr, you’ll be glad to know there’s a scientific explanation: bars use loud dance music to get you drunk.

A study to be published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research on the effects of music levels on drinking in bars found that loud music makes you drink more in less time.

Scientists randomly varied the volume level of music played in bars, and then observed how frequently patrons ordered drinks. They found that high sound levels led to increased drinking, within a decreased amount of time.

Gueguen and his colleagues offered two hypotheses for why this may have occurred.

“One, in agreement with previous research on music, food and drink, high sound levels may have caused higher arousal, which led the subjects to drink faster and to order more drinks,” said Gueguen. “Two, loud music may have had a negative effect on social interaction in the bar, so that patrons drank more because they talked less.”

“This is the first time that an experimental approach in a real context found the effects of loud music on alcohol consumption,”said lead investigator Nicolas Gueguen.”

So next time you’re at a bar, some great music comes on and you find yourself ordering another drink, it’s probably the result of some barroom science.

bechillnow’s awesome Rave Cat.

Like trashy 80’s hits & free music? (mp3)

Then you’ll want to check out Buffet Libre. It’s a site that features the Rewind project- covers of 80’s hits by modern indie bands and DJs.

There are lots of quirky electronic takes and some fun bands that you probably don’t know about. Check out Dragonette’s Sharp Dressed Man,  Pomomofo’s Ride The White Horse, The Cloud Room’s Blue Monday or Mono4’s Just Can’t Get Enough.

Warning - the site has a mega-Flash banner that starts automatically when you hit the site. Read more…

Anybody else of guitar getting all the ______ Hero glory?

There’s no Keytar Hero or Synth Here game yet, but at least they’ve got some cool t-shirts for them at Band Geek Hero. They’ve got everything from Accordion Hero to Violin Here.

They join our list of companies making cool synth t-shirts.

“There’s nothing worse than knowing what you want to play but not being able to find it,” says DJ Richie Hawtin in a interview at BeatPortal. “The only way to really keep on top of all the music these days is multiple levels of organization and it’s good to go back and revisit the music from time to time to reorganize and restructure.”

“From March to June so much new music comes out in that period and it’s easy to miss some real gems, so it’s important to keep going through your folders revisiting the music that you have just in case there’s something you missed the first time around.

“I organize my music in folders on my computer labeled by the date that they are transferred onto my performance harddrive, sometimes using an event name also in the folder name,”

“At the beginning of the year I start out with about three or four new folders, but now there are about 26 folders which is making things a lot harder!

This unofficial video for Moby’s Ooh Yeah is a stop-motion animation of 8 funky headphones doing an 80’s style dancefest.

“We took over 1500 pictures in 3 days using 2 cameras,” says the creators. “We’ve enjoyed making it, hope you enjoy watching it…”

via APC

Musicrow has released Golden Ensembles 2, a massive collection of 38 ensembles for NI Reaktor-5.

The Golden Ensembles pack includes the new mega-synth Cobra, along with other synthesizers and instruments such as Orpheus 2, Oberline, Piano Magic, Trancoid and more. In addition, it contains vintage processor emulators like Vintage Chorus and Plate Reverb, and sound design tools such as Executer or White FX.

Golden Ensembles pack includes the following ensembles:

• Synthesizers: Cobra, Orpheus, Oberline, Bass Lab, Trancoid, CX, and Blue Crow
• Other Instruments: Piano Magic, Theremin, Brass Machine, Future Bass, Accordion, and Vinyl
• Sound Generators: Chaos
• Classics Processors: Plate Reverb, Tape Echo, Osmosis Filter, Green Tape, Tube Compressor, Vintage Chorus, Mood Filter, Ultraverb, Ultra Chorus, Tape Flanger, Preamp Emulator, Ultra Phaser, DX3, Graphic Equalizer, and Tremolo
• Sound Design Tools: Executer, Magician, White FX, GrainD lay, Electroverb, Drive, Space Boy, Golden Delay and Vocal Modeler

Golden Ensembles 2 is now available for €119/$159.
Version 1 users can upgrade to Golden Ensembles 2 for €20/$25.

The Metropolis Ensemble will perform what sounds like it will be an interesting take on Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, called The Rite: Remixed tonight at Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

Composers Ryan Francis, Leo Leite, and Ricardo Romaneiro have reimagined the Rite of Spring as a piece for chamber orchestra and live electronics.

You can hear this webcast live on NPR.org starting at 7:30 p.m. ET.

via Sequenza21

This video demos basic interaction with the TIMBAP digital DJing system.

TIMBAP is a new solution for the digital DJ, developed by students and assistants of the University of Ulm.

It provides a rugged tangible interface for browsing your music collection AND manipulating playback by scratching, pitching, skipping etc. Like many others, it is based on an acoustic timecode signal recorded to vinyl records.

In contrast to existing digital solutions, though, it completely releases the DJ from mouse, keyboard and monitor. Instead it relies on physical interaction with the standard club turntable only.

No laptop, no mouse and no keyboard is required.

The rotation of the turntable serves as a means for scrolling through the music collection automatically. The user stays in control though and can always intervene manually - for example by holding the record or winding it back.

The shown features include:

• Switching between browsing and playback
• Scratching, skipping and cueing of tracks
• Using the tone arm to position in the cloud of artist name initials

This looks like it could grow into something very cool - digital DJing, but without the geeky computer interface.

via Ronny Pries