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Remember when Just Blaze ripped Akai a new one over the state of the MPC 5000?

Here’s a different view, from a What’s the 413 TV Havoc & Alchemist interview.

Good to see another viewpoint - but Blaze makes a pretty harsh case.

via Crate Kings

I’ve been enjoying raphdub’s videos for Harold Budd & Brian Eno’s tracks from The Plateaux Of Mirror.

The others, like this one for Not Yet Remembered, are simple but hypnotic, too.

This could be just about the best scientific discovery ever: dance music could save your life.

Scientists have found that listening to just 50 minutes of uplifting dance music not only increases the levels of antibodies in your body, but it decreases your levels of stress hormones, which can weaken the immune system.

Volunteers who played a percussion instrument along with the music also benefited from the immune boost.

No word on the dudes that stood around in corners getting wasted and shoe gazing.

Nurse Techno Is Here To Give You Your Medicine

It gets even better, though. The researchers, from Sussex University and the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, say their findings demonstrate how dance music could be used to help aid patients’ recovery while in hospital.

They found that playing music while a patient was under anesthetic during an operation helped to lower the levels of harmful stress hormones.

“We think the pleasant state that can be induced by music leads to special physiological changes which eventually lead to stress reduction or direct immune enhancement,” said Dr Ronny Enk, a neurocognition expert at the Max Planck Institute. “Stress reduction probably plays an important role, but the stress reducing effect seems to be different for various types of music.”

The researchers tested 300 people, asking them to listen to 50 minutes of happy, joyful dance music or to a random collection of tones (the stuff I usually listen to).

They found:

• People that listened to dance music had significantly lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, compared to a control group.
• After listening, the levels of the antibody immunoglobin A, the immune system’s first line of defense, were heightened.

“Listening to music in hospitals might show benefits for patients and may for example lead to shorter recovery times,” added Enk.

So next time you’re sick, remember that a dose of dance music could do your body some good.

Image: Simon Davison

Slate has the scoop on one of the strange DJ gigs ever - Djing beach volleyball at the Olympics:

Attending beach volleyball matches in Beijing raises a few inevitable questions: How is it possible for the wave to circle an arena five full times? Where do all those perky, underdressed Chinese cheerleaders come from? Did I really just hear “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)” at the Olympic Games?

To solve these mysteries, I turned to a man named “Geeter.” If you’ve watched any of NBC’s beach volleyball coverage, you’ve probably heard Geeter, who in civilian life goes by the less dude-tacular name of Chris McGee, shouting in the background. During matches featuring American teams, Geeter serves as the emcee—a role he often plays on the U.S. professional tour—introducing the players before the games begin and pumping up the crowd once play is underway.

In Beijing, Geeter has proved willing to meet the Olympic spirit halfway. When a point ends, he speaks for only half as long as usual—maybe five seconds instead of 10—to give his Chinese counterpart the chance to rile up the crowd as well. (The two announcers tend to say roughly the same thing, although Geeter gets a little more animated.) In this brief window, Geeter says something, anything to get the crowd cheering. (”This is a tough ticket to get! Let me hear you enjoy yourselves!”) In a nod to the audience’s unfamiliarity with typical beach volleyball parlance, he’s cut down on AVP lingo—you don’t hear much talk of a “UC state” or a “Kong.” Rather, he ingratiates himself by dropping in the omnipresent Chinese cheer jia you—literally, “more fuel”—several times a match.

And then there’s the music, which fills any time that’s left over. The song selection at Chaoyang Park suggests that the DJs have ransacked a teenager’s Case Logic from 1998. Reel Big Fish, Blink-182, and Smashmouth are in heavy rotation, along with “Uptown Girl” and (strangely) John Philip Sousa marches. (Most out-of-place song: “Sweet Home Alabama.”)

How many DJ’s can get away with mixing John Philip Sousa marches with Billy Joel and Lynyrd Skynyrd?

Image: TerenceKearns.com

DJ-1800, a mac DJ application, has added new features with its v3.2 update, including the ability to stream DJ mixes to the Internet!

New features:

• A new full-screen mode
• Full integration with Nicecast from Rogue Amoeba, to turn DJ-1800 into an internet radio station
• Support for the Hercules DJ Console Rmx
• Many other improvements and fixes

Nicecast and Hercules DJ Controller Rmx support is provided via two new plug-ins, available to download from the Controller Plug-Ins page.

DJ-1800 v3.2 requires Mac OS 10.4.9 or later and QuickTime 7.3 or later. Download v3.2.

KRK Systems has updated its popular KRK10s to match the new RokitG2 monitors.

Description:

The industrial design of the KRK10s leverages KRK’s research and development into baffle design and fabrication. The subwoofer’s curved front now matches the Rokit and VXT monitors’ diffraction reducing shape.

Updated electronics include a ground-lift switch for combating less than perfect electrical and audio grounding and a bypass footswitch that allows the subwoofer and crossover to be easily enabled and disabled. The bypass footswitch allows users to easily switch a mix from stereo or 2.1/5.1 sound environments. Improved amplifier heat sinking results in lower distortion at high power levels and the KRK10s has a lower noise floor than its predecessor.

The voicing has been slightly enhanced to provide even better mix clarity and precision and the scientifically designed front firing port reduces wall coupling and port turbulence.

I use a pair of first generation Rokit 5’s, paired with a Rokit 10s and have been happy with them - but the bypass footswitch is a great addition, along with the other tweaks.

Pricing and Availability:

The KRK10s replaces the existing RP10s subwoofer and will be available to buy in the UK from all good pro audio dealers for £299 inc. VAT

DMGMITE-01 is the title a free album of chip music - the Australian Chipmusic Compilation.

Track listing:

• The LOLstralians - Advance LOLstralia, ‘n That
• Raptorface - Scarlet
• little-scale - Antarctica
• Ten Thousand Free Men & Their Families - Trains (Part I, Part II & Reprise)
• Astro Zombies - Sky Lord (Part 2)
• Derris-Kharlan - Veracity
• Dot.AY - Qrist
• Jacko - Training Blues

Download link (.zip)

via little-scale

Antares Audio Technologies has released Auto-Tune Evo, the latest version of the company’s pitch-correction software.

Like previous versions of Auto-Tune, Auto-Tune Evo provides the ability to correct the pitch of a voice or solo instrument in real time, without distortion or artifacts, while preserving expressive nuance.

Auto-Tune Evo includes an Automatic Mode for real-time pitch correction as well as a Graphical Mode that displays the pitch envelope of the audio to be corrected, along with a selection of graphical tools that allow precise manipulation of the performance’s pitch.

Auto-Tune Evo is available now for TDM (Mac OSX and PC), RTAS (Mac OSX and PC), VST (Mac OSX and PC) and Audio Units (Mac OS X) at a U.S. MSRP of $399.00 for the Native versions and $649.00 for TDM versions. All Macintosh versions are universal binaries.

Upgrades to Auto-Tune Evo are available for purchase and download by current registered Auto-Tune owners.

Details below. Read more…

Electroacoustic pioneer Donald Erb, a composer that helped promote the acceptance of electronic music, died Aug 12th at his home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He was 81.

Erb’s Reconnaissance, one of the first chamber works for live synthesizer and acoustic instruments, premiered in New York in 1967 with Robert Moog on synthesizer. A more recent work, The Seventh Trumpet, has had more than 200 performances by more than 50 orchestras in the United States and overseas. It incorporates synthesizer, along with non-traditional instruments such as water-filled jugs and wine glasses. Read more…

The Second International Conference on Music and Minimalism will occur September 2-6, 2009, at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, directed by Kyle Gann and David McIntire.

All scholars in this area are invited to submit papers. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• both American and European (and other) minimalist music;
• early minimalism of the 1950s and ?60s;
• outgrowths of minimalism into postminimalism, totalism, and oher movements;
• minimalist music?s relation to pop music or visual art;
• performance problems in minimalist music;
• analyses or investigation of music by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, Louis Andriessen, Gavin Bryars;
• especially encouraged are papers on crucial but less public figures such as Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Jon Gibson, Eliane Radigue, Rhys Chatham, Barbara Benary, Julius Eastman, and so on.

Contributions are welcomed in the form of individual papers (20 minutes). Abstracts containing a maximum of 500 words should be sent as email attachments, by October 31, 2008, to kgann@earthlink.net and compositeurkc@sbcglobal.net.

The Society for Minimalist Music exists to promote the intellectual and scholarly study of the music known as minimalism, and originating in the 1960s activities of composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Tony Conrad, Terry Jennings, Jon Gibson, Charlemagne Palestine, Phill Niblock, Barbara Benary, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and others. The Society’s interests are not limited to the music of that period, but also to ensuing streams of music developed from minimalist origins, and also in the relationship of music to minimalism in the other arts. Specifically, the Society recognizes minimalism not only in its familiar idiom of motivic repetition, but also its more general concern with drones and stasis.

Image: Martin Captures