Music Videos

This video showcases the Thingamakit, a fun DIY project that lets you build your own anthropomorphic noise maker.
Comes with:

detailed instructions
fully labeled components
simply layed out circuit board with minimal hand wiring.
2 ready to blink LEDacles
control panel and face stickers

The Alchemists of Sound is a great 2003 documentary taking a look at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
It features lots of fantastic archival footage, plus interviews that look at not just the history of the workshop, but the history of electroacoustic music and sound effects.

Last year, we published an item about the animatronic robots of Showbiz Pizza Palace/Chuck E Cheese getting reprogrammed to perform gangsta rap, including a cover of Miss New Booty.
Lots of people have fond memories of visits to see these cheesy robots as kids, and videos of the reprogrammed robots went on to become hits on [...]

touched echo is an electroacoustic artwork that uses bone conduction to take people back in time:
The visitors of the Brühl’s Terrace (Dresden, Germany) are taken back in time to the night of the terrible air raid on 13th February 1945. In their role as a performer they put themselves into the place of the people [...]

OT: Australian dance Diva Kylie Minogue became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) Thursday, receiving the award from heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles at a ceremony in London.
“It is an incredible honour for me to receive this award,” said Kylie. “It makes me feel both humble and proud to be recognized for doing [...]

AudiOdyssey is a free experimental computer game designed to be accessible to both the visually impaired community and mainstream gamers.
AudiOdyssey was developed with four research goals:

The visually-impaired and the sighted can enjoy the same level and quality of gameplay
Navigate game’s menus with ease and efficiency approaching that of conventional user-interfaces (UIs)
Create a fun [...]

This is a Pixar promo - but it takes an interesting look at the sound design of Wall-E.
Andrew Stanton, Jim Morris, and Ben Burtt share their process for creating the sound of a sci-fi animated feature.

Here’s something fun I saw highlighted at the Califaudio blog - the Theremug, a DIY project that turns your cup of coffee or tea into a theremin, of sorts.
Here’s Kyle McDonald’s explanation of the Theremug:
1 Prepare some tea
2 Expose the L/R leads on an 1/8″ cable
3 Immerse leads in tea
4 Plug cable into audio input
5 [...]

This is a rough cut of a new documentary, the Vinyl Revolution.
The video captures some wonderful characters that represent a disappearing world.
via Crate Kings

Trailer for the work in progress RAYMOND SCOTT: ON TO SOMETHING, a biographical documentary by his son, filmmaker Stan Warnow, about the 20th century musician, composer, and inventor whose musical career included the swing era, electronica, and everything in between, including use of his music in Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.
For more info [...]

Dr. Earth’s plan to save the world with sex, hedonism and clubbing seems a bit out there, so I did a little digging to find out more about sustainable clubbing.
I came across this YouTube video that looks at the Sustainable Dance Club in Rotterdam (NL):

While the video is a promo for Toyota as much as [...]

Wax Museum is a documentary view of the art of collecting vinyl.
Featuring DJ Capsize as he interviews friends and strangers on a search for the answer to “what is the future of records?”
via CrateKings

Weepr is a new free music application that is sort of like a software Tenori-On.
Not much information is available yet, and the site is in Italian, but you can download and try Weepr out here. Adobe’s Air is required.
It’s limited in terms of what sounds are available, and timing is a little shaky, but it’s [...]

Sonofcastille has published a set of videos demonstrating beautiful steampunk-style synths and noise generators.
Here are a few of the coolest:
WSG

This is Ray Wilson’s Weird Sound Generator circuit off of musicfromouterspace.com, plus audio amp scavenged out of a Radio Shack amp. The case was an old telephone from the 70s.

In this video, new age artist Kitaro explains how and why he uses the synthesizer as he does. He also offers some criticism about the “wrong” use of that instrument.