Sunday Synth Jams: Edison’s latest jam:

• all one shot sounds…
• no loops running….
• 64 buttons
• 64 noises….
• shot on 2 HD cameras, 720p, 1 live take…..
• with audio captured right to camera…..

Check out Edison on Myspace.

This video captures Edison performing live at Love Tech, using:

• monome lunchbox
• the lovebox
• WTPA sampler
• nintendo ds (running proteinds)

via Matthew Davidson

via IVDT comes Edison’s Not What Ships Are Built For, a full album of catchy glitchy tracks.

Edison’s been seen here previously, doing amazing stuff with his monome.

You can preview the first track from Not What Ships Are Built For, The Nobility Of Being First In Line, below:

Download the full release here.

Here are the details:

Artist: Edison
Title: Not What Ships Are Built For
Release Number: mp3.069
Duration: 37 minutes 44 seconds

01. the nobility of being first in line (3:49)
02. the interworkings of the human hand (3:34)
03. bandaids eventually fail, but always leave a ring (4:19)
04. the kill tone two (edison’s new filament remix) (3:16)
05. the blue bike (3:45)
06. oh brother, this is where things began to burn (3:18)
07. don’t get all sentimental, bro (3:31)
08. the ghosts in this building are absolutely serious (4:07)
09. we once used to keep things in jars, no longer (3:09)
10. these things are better left on an answering machine……late (4:56)

via stretta

2009 NAMM Show Preview

Here’s the latest from Image Line:

• FL Studio 8 - In the latest version, FL Studio 8, users have welcomed more than 100 new developments including an improved user interface, updated sound engine, revised mixer, addition of ‘event’ pattern clips to the playlist, new multi-link MIDI learn system and a suite of new and updated plugins. The XXL and Producer Editions come with FL SynthMaker, an FL Studio native version of the popular plugin development application, SynthMaker. Users can now create their own virtual instruments, effects and MIDI dashboards, use them in FL Studio and share them with other SynthMaker users without writing basic code.
• Deckadance. – the latest version (1.4) delivers many new features including a new sound engine with improved time-stretching/compression technology, new BPM setup panel and beatgrid system, new spectral waveform color feature, new pitch range selection, new equalization filters design with improved kill behavior and new autogain engine. Scratch and spinback native support have also been added to the following controlers: Hercules (MKII, MP3 Console, Rmx), Numark Total Control and Behringer BCD2000/BCD3000. Deckadance has matured into a stable cross-platform and, most importantly, has support for a wide range of controller types allowing DJ’s to use their existing controller & vinyl hardware.
• Edison - The wave editor/recorder comes in standalone, VST and FL Studio native versions. Edison loads into any mixer track (VST effects slot) and records or plays audio from that position. Users will be excited to learn that it is possible to load as many instances of Edison as their host can contain. Parallel or chained instances of Edison are all possible. The visually stunning and easy to use interface has more than enough features to satisfy even the most demanding musicians and sound engineers.
• Gross Beat - Gross Beat is a time manipulation effect designed for repetition and scratching effects. Gross beat is perfect for real-time or rendered gating, glitch, repeat, scratching and stutter performances. Gross Beat stores audio in a 2-bar rolling buffer under the control of 36 user definable time and volume envelopes, giving you unlimited creative control.
• Hardcore - Hardcore is a software simulation of the 10 most popular guitar effects pedals. Available for both PC and Mac users, Hardcore gives virtual access to Distortion, Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Reverb, Delay, Noise Gate, Equalizer, Compressor and Modulator ’stomp-box’ style effects, each with a unique sonic character.
• Ogun - Named after the god of iron (according to the Haitian Vodou and Yoruba mythology), Ogun is a powerful synthesizer for creating realistic metallic sounds. Ogun’s distinctive synthesis engine can generate more than 32,000 harmonics, modulated by ‘harmonic mapping’ functions that hand tonal control over the vast number of harmonics directly to the user.
• Sounds of India - Sounds of India, the latest sample collection from Image Line Software, contains over 835 samples weighing in at 1.5 Gb and includes 36 instrument and 2 vocal categories. The collection covers the foundations of the classic Indian sound – Tabla, Sitar, Shenai, Harmonium and Bamboo Flute, but what makes it really unique is the collection of South Indian instruments as Veena, Ganjira, Maddalam, and rare Indian folk instruments (Edakka, Udukku, Darbuka, etc.) The diverse Indian spirit is further enhanced with the inclusion of sounds from many different temple bells and ethnic percussion instruments.

This little snack cake of goodness from Edison may just be the most fun ever coming out of the Monome.

“This is the roof of my house,” says Edison, “and just what i always needed……..clones!”

Snazzy video work courtesy of Mike Landry.

Let me know what you think – is the Monome all that after all, or is Edison just a funkmaster potentate?

I’ve been skeptical about the Monome & Tenori-On as musical instruments, since they are basically a collection of on-off switches. 

This video, though, by Edison, challenges my preconceptions and offers a tempting preview of his upcoming album.

Should be very cool!

via Matthew Davidson 

Boxes of on-off switches don’t offer the most expressive musical interface – but check out what Edison does with his Monome. 

Here’s what he has to say about the track:

simple track utilizing mlr’s preset function for change ups…. electric guitar, breaks, percussion and synth bass. kaoss mini set to loop. video version, the great richie simantic will be gracing this with some vocals….soon……..papervehicle homie……sting!

Not sure what all that means but…..I like how it sounds…..sting!

For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words “Mary had a little lamb” on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.

The 19th-century phonautograph, which captured sounds visually but did not play them back, has yielded a discovery with help from modern technology.

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

“This is a historic find, the earliest known recording of sound,” said Samuel Brylawski, the former head of the recorded-sound division of the Library of Congress, who is not affiliated with the research group but who was familiar with its findings. The audio excavation could give a new primacy to the phonautograph, once considered a curio, and its inventor, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer who went to his grave convinced that credit for his breakthroughs had been improperly bestowed on Edison.

As you might imagine, it sounds horrible. Give it a listen below and let me know what you think.

Anybody want to remix the oldest recording in the world?