June, 2008 archive

Omer Yosha’s AirPiano is a new musical interface which lets you play and control software instruments by moving hands in the air.
Above the AirPiano is a virtual matrix of keys and faders, each assigned with MIDI messages and ready to be triggered. The length of a triggered note is equivalent to the time a [...]

Keyboard Choir, a band described as “a journey through the history of electronic music” is a collective of six musicians who try to make music with the turbulence and dynamics of traditional ‘ensemble’ performance, using purely electronic sound sources and ‘found sound’.
“When we started we toyed with the idea of being a loose, random collective [...]

There’s a new interface project to watch at MachineCollective.org that looks to be like Legos for computer interfaces:
In spite of all the smart, multifunctional and state-of-the-art controllers that are commercially available today, there has always been demand for custom physical interfaces and specialized controllers. That’s why we have developed a modular prototyping platform. The prototyping [...]

Director Michel Gondry, who made a name for himself making music videos for the likes of Chemical Brothers, Björk, Daft Punk and others, has compiled a list of 25 music videos that you should see, and it’s got some classics:

Michael Jackson – ”Billie Jean” (1983)

Peter Gabriel – ‘Sledgehammer” (1986)
Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Give It [...]

What?
You’ve still got some money left after getting that $24,000 Avid Acutus turntable?
Then you may want to check out the new Thorens Jubilee turntable:
 The Jubilee is a cost-no-object design that puts it firmly in the camp of ‘the world’s best ever’ vinyl replay machines. The Jubilee celebrates 125 years of the Thorens name and allowed the company [...]

This is insane, dangerous and, yes, awesome – the Mundo Piano Bike. It was a special project for Bicycle Music Festival:
Paul Freedman of Rock the Bike mounts a seat and instrument rack on a Mundo utility bicycle. Watch as Janaysa performs her song, London Bridges, on the back of the bike on its maiden voyage.
Very [...]

NIN has released another interesting bit of Internet media for its most recent release, The Slip (our review).
They plotted the downloads of the album onto Google Earth, so you can browse interactively and see where the Nine Inch Nails fans are:
We’ve had just over 1,400,000 people download The Slip from our site since its release [...]

Remember David Byrne’s Julio – the creepy realistic animatronic singer?
Byrne has written a post from the opening, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. In the post, he elaborates on the show and his throughts on his man-machine:
I don’t think what I’ve addressed thus far really engages the supposed theme of [...]

SPEAR (Sinusoidal Partial Editing And Resynthesis) version 0.7.1 is a free application for Windows & OS X for audio analysis, editing and synthesis.
The analysis procedure attempts to represent a sound with many individual sinusoidal tracks (partials), each corresponding to a single sinusoidal wave with time varying frequency and amplitude.
Something which closely resembles the original input [...]

HV Synth Design has released Trumpet Collection, the first in a planned series of acoustic modeled instruments, created with SynthMaker and based on a unique modeling method for creating sustained instruments.
While the modeling is not slavishly strict, the results are nevertheless amazing. Demos are available at the site.
Trumpet Collection Features:

Instruments: Bass Trumpet, Classical Trumpet, Jazz [...]