It’s Free Music Friday at Synthtopia – so I ask you this:

How much free music do you want to download today?

• 10 tracks?
• 50 tracks?
• 500 tracks?

It’s time to make sure you’ve got some empty hard drive space, because Synthtopia readers have uploaded over 500 electronic music tracks that you can listen to online and, in most cases, download for free.

We’re talking ambient, techno, symphonic electronica, IDM, not-so IDM, abstronica, DJ mixes, remixes, downtempo electronica and more from some the most talented electronic musicians in the world.

Click the “Listen to Music” link at the top of the page to open the Synthtopia player in a new window, or check out the most recent tracks below. If a track has a “Download” button, you can download it for free.

And don’t forget to make sure you’ve got some free space on your hard drive when you’re done!

Image via the awesome Caesar Sebastian

Tomorrow is Halloween, and DJDeedle has produced a Deedlecast to frighten and delight.

The horror movie genre has brought us so many deliciously terrifying moments, Deedle just couldn’t pass up exploring the music of horror film.

You can preview the Horrify Deedlecast below. You can listen to two previous editions of DJ Deedle’s Halloween podcast at his site.

The track is a plunderphonic sound mashup.

If you’re not familiar with plunderphonics, it leaves behinds the limitations of legal sampling to create works that aren’t defined by our current copyright law.

“This is a sample-based collage,” explains Gel-Sol, “made with over 7 years of collected samples.”

You can preview gel-sol’s adventures beyond the plunderworld below:

If you’re not familiar with plunderphonics, it leaves behinds the limitations of legal sampling to explore works that aren’t defined by our current copyright law. Plunderphonic pieces often contain so many samples that it would be unrealistic to even attempt to clear them.

What sort of diseased mind would conceive of something such as this?

Seattle’s Gel-Sol is producer/musician Andrew Reichel, whose sound spans from ambient soundscapes to complex, rhythmic electronica, creating a dynamic psychedelic universe with heavy emphasis on improvisation.

In 2004, Gel-Sol released the critically-acclaimed Gel-Sol 1104 (aka Music Made For You…And By You, I Mean Me.) on the UK’s cult ambient label Em:t Records.

Gel-Sol’s follow-up album Unifactor continues the tradition of his unique, amorphous sound collages, and was released on Upstairs Recordings (Vancouver) in April 2007. Gel-Sol’s third album IZ, released by Upstairs/Psychonavigation in 2008, is an all-ambient excursion written for his niece, and is a bit of a departure from his previous two efforts.

Andrew is also a member of the electronic group KIDS FOR TOMORROW, an improvisational trio focused on experimental ambient music.

Find out more about Gel-Sol at his site and MySpace page.

We put the group together to make it easy for Synthtopia readers to share their original music with other readers. Synthtopia readers have now shared well over 200 original tracks in the group. The tracks range from DJ mixes, to remixes, to Berlin-school electronics, to synth pop to ambient.

You can listen to all the tracks online. Better yet – most are available as free downloads.

Check out the music below, or see our original post for more information.

Thanks to everybody that’s added a track so far!

Just click the Listen To Music link at the top of the page:

This should open up a new music player window that looks something like this:

Here’s some of the things you can do with the player:

• Click the play button if you just want to listen to the latest tracks.
• Select any track from the list and play it.
• Jump to any point in a track by clicking on the sound wave.
• Get info on the track
• Download over 100 free tracks! If the artist has enabled the free music downloads option, the player will show the Download options.
• Share the track to social networks like Facebook & Twitter, get an embed code or email it.

If you want to add your own electronic music tracks to the mix, check out this post: sharing music with Synthtopia readers.

Let me know how the new feature works for you and if you have any feedback on it!

There are now over 100 tracks available for you to listen to online, and most of them are available as free MP3 downloads, too.

There are house tracks, DJ mixes, ambient music, electro, synth pop and even some sweet Berlin-school style synth rocking.

Give this music a listen and, if there’s a track you really like, remember that SoundCloud gives you all sorts of ways to share music that you like.

You can embed a sweet media player on your blog, like this:

That is just the beginning, though.

You can click the down arrow in the player and download the track, if the artist enables that option.

You can also click the embed link in the player and view all the other options for sharing the track, like Twittering about it, emailing it or posting it to Facebook.

Check out the music here! And thanks to all the readers that have participated!

Free Music Friday: Modulator ESP (Jez Creek) produces improvised experimental music using analogue and digital synthesis, analogue sequencers and processed sounds to create strange worlds of sound somewhere between ’70s space music, prog rock and dark ambient drone.

Creek has shared a large collection of his synth music at the Modulator ESP site. You can preview several of his tracks below.

Creek has this to say about his Modulator ESP project:

I decided to ‘form’ Modulator ESP as an outlet for my desire to produce improvisational electronic music. I compose my music using synthesizers, sequencers and samplers and spend far too much of my time on sound design. I am into a wide range of music from ambient electronica to thrash metal via all points between and tend to like weird or progressive stuff. I listen to music because it takes me away from the humdrum reality of everyday life and into new worlds of imagination. I play music so I can design my own new worlds. I am happy to include in my musical influences such diverse acts as Airsculpture, Dream Theater, IQ, Jean Michel Jarre, Radio Massacre International, Redshift, Tangerine Dream and Yes.

Free Music Friday: Air is releasing their latest single, Do The Joy, as a free download for subscribers to the Air newsletter.

via airofficial

Each week, we try to highlight some of the great music that people are making available as free downloads around the Internet.

This week we’ve got something special, though: a huge collection of awesome electronic music from Synthtopia readers like you:

Check out the tracks in the player above and see what you like. Download some tracks. And check out the artists to find out more about them and their music!

Got tracks of your own to share? Here’s a music dropbox link so that you can add your tracks to the Synthtopia group list:

Send us your track

We’ve published multiple posts highlighting the music of Synthtopia readers in the past – but now SoundCloud has added a new “Group” feature that should make this even easier.

We’ve created a SoundCloud group for Synthtopia that lets anyone add tracks to share and lets anyone download them. Here are the most recently added tracks:

Synthtopia

Thanks to everybody that’s added a track so far!

Got tracks to share? Here’s a music dropbox link so that you can add your tracks to the Synthtopia group list:

Send us your track

Give this a try and let us know what you think. If you and other readers like this approach, we’ll find a permanent place for this on Synthtopia.

And let us know if you’ve got other suggestions on how we can help electronic music fans connect with electronic music artists!

DJ Dog image: jmatthew3

Noisekoncept has released nK009: Various Artists – The Bent Life – a free album download of circuit bent music.

Download Complete Album:

nK009 – The Bent Life (54 MB)

Tracks:

01 Datura 1.0 – A Spider of Clear Gel That You Can Not Kill (9 MB)
02 Exuviae – Inebriation Sequence (5 MB)
03 Bunk Data with LTC – Signals Intelligence (9 MB)
04 Squid Fist – Gender (6 MB)
05 Bureau Of Nonstandards – Untitled 1 (10 MB)
06 Cogwheel – Desktop Fondue (3 MB)
07 bigCityorchestrA – Garuda (9 MB)
08 Grid Resistor – Critters (6 MB)

You may download the recording as a free MP3 85 meg or full bandwidth 1.1 GB aiff.

Free MP3 download

Description:

The Tree Of Life is a continuous 61 minutes of music, inspired by two trips to see the redwoods of the Yosemite Valley in California. Some of the trees there are over 2000 years old.

Inspired by the space of where time is slow and bends over centuries, the sound of this project emerged.

Tracks:

• Part one: The seedling
• Part two: Heaven above the canopy
• Part three: Half Light *
• Part four: Immortal
• Part five: The gentle giant
• Part six: Speaking to trees
• Part seven: Shanti, Shanti, Shanti

Music composed, produced, recorded, mixed & performed by: Michael Whalen

Electronics, ambiences, piano, keyboards & programming: Michael Whalen

Vocals; Amanda Homi

About Michael Whalen

Whalen has more than 500 television scores and dozens of feature and short film credits to his name.  He created the uplifting opening theme to the ABC News morning show “Good Morning America”, music for the “Oprah Winfrey Show”, Martha Stewart and the news magazine “Inside Edition”. He is a two-time Emmy award-winner and a multiple Emmy-nominated composer, music supervisor and sound designer. His most recent Emmy was in 2008 for PBS’ 8-hour “America at a Crossroads” series. You might have also heard his sprawling score to the acclaimed four-hour 2005 PBS series “Slavery and the Making of America” or his  music for the 2004 indie film “What the Bleep Do We Know”? His music is currently featured on over a dozen shows including the CBS/P & G soap opera, “As the World Turns”.

via Travis (hiddenplace on Twitter)

Free Music Friday

They’ve got 5,000 free MP3s that you can download already, and more in the works.

And yes – you can go straight to the electronic music.

Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by outdated copyright law. Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio? A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won’t put your audience to sleep? A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples? Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist? The Free Music Archive is a resource for all that and more, and unlike other websites, all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators.

Submit Your Music

If you want to share your music at the Free Music Archive, email artists “at” freemusicarchive.org with a link to your work for consideration. Please indicate if there is a particular FMA curator who has showcased our work in the past.

via Chris Randall:

This is a video shot and edited entirely by my 16-yr old cousin Michael for one of my micronaut tracks while he stayed with me for his spring break. It was shot with a Cannon HV20, edited in Final Cut Express, with minor post in After Effects. It consists of footage he shot around PDX. Just to be clear, my input consisted almost entirely of explaining to him how quickly the edits should happen for “glitch” style videos, and showing him some Chris Cunningham work. Otherwise, he came up with this entirely on his own.

For the micronaut song, gear used is MKS80 for the melody, Goldbaby samples for the drums, Soniccouture Abstract Bass (pt. 3) for the bass, and some sample I had lying about that I can’t remember the source of for the electric piano part. Audio Damage effects, plus the Eventide H8000 for the pitch-shifted part on the melody and reverbs. Recorded and mixed in Cubase.

The track is embedded below, if you want to download it.

The tracks can be listened to online, downloaded individually or subscribed to as a podcast, using this podcast feed:
http://www.interdisciplina.org/microsound-repository/podcast/dircaster.php?project=pi_day_2009

You can preview one of the tracks, Piece of Pi by OCP, below:

About PI Day

Pi, Greek letter (pi), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi = 3.1415926535…

Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th.

Musicians featured:

• PHILIPPE JELLI
• JIMMY BEHAN
• VENUS VULTURE
• THOMAS ANFIELD & DAVID BIRCHAM
• RICHARD LAINHART
• CIMARRON CORPÉ
• SHIN ICHIRO A
• ROB THEAKSTON
• SIGHUP

InFrequency asked the musicians to submit their own interpretations of an 1860 recording by Édouard-Léon Scott that’s thought to be the first recording of the human voice.

The free release goes along with a limited-edition two CD release of the same name. Details at the Infrequency site.

Download link (zshare)

This project is a conceptual extension of breathing life back into this document through modern technology; deciphering a voice that was etched into a thin layer of oil lamp smoke, and featuring a diverse group of international contemporary composers, creating new works from this ten second piece of history.

The original recording was made by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on April 9, 1860 using his own invention, the phonautograph, and consists of a series of scratches on a roll of blackened paper. Scott had never developed a way to play back his recordings and they went unheard for 148 years. In 2008, scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory converted the thin lines back into audio, allowing us to hear a woman singing a segment of the folk song Au Clair de la Lune.

The MP3s are provided for “auditioning purposes – composer contact information is provided so that you may get in touch with the composer directly to arrange performances of his/her work.”

From The Experimental Music Studio at the University of Illinois, 1958-68, by Emanuele Battisti:

Many of those who experienced the environment of the School of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [UIUC] during the period between 1946 and 1970, remember it as .an era of grandeur..1 The quality both of the faculty and of the academic programs increased tremendously in those years, and contemporary music played an important role in this phase of growth. In particular, the Festival of Contemporary Arts . whose first edition took place in 1948 . immediately succeeded as an internationally renowned event. Although in 1955 the Festival became biennial, it maintained its prestige all throughout the 1960s, reaching one of its climaxes in 1969, in correspondence with the performance of John Cage.s and Lejaren Hiller.s HPSCHD, a composition for seven harpsichords and fifty-one tapes, enriched by a spectacular scenography.2

Moreover, Cage was having a great influence on the Urbana-Champaign music scene since the early 1950s: in particular, a lecture-concert he gave in 1953 on Music for Magnetic Tape was probably the first experience people of this university had to get acquainted with this new creative field, and supposedly was the occasion that instilled in Hiller the interest for electro-acoustic music. 3

Hiller, just appointed research associate and assistant professor of chemistry,4 began working with the ILLIAC . the first supercomputer built at UIUC . in order to experiment new compositional approaches. The result of this work was the ILLIAC Suite for string quartet, a composition in four movements . or .experiments. . completed in 1957 with the help of Leonard Isaacson.5 The first attempt ever made to write a score by means of a computer, the ILLIAC Suite at first received a warm response, putting Hiller in the spotlight. This sudden success, followed by many negative reviews, convinced Hiller that he needed to become a professional musician in order to be accepted by the academic music environment.6

Hiller represents emblematically the difficult search for a balance between the two fields of science and music, which Western History has often had the tendency to merge one into the other. In this case, the process found a main obstacle in the narrow-mindedness of certain composers, who felt they risked losing their caste privileges in favor of machines. As far as this is concerned, it can be noticed that

«Hiller.s music stands out as particularly characteristic of the University of Illinois. The university.s well known Department of Electrical Engineering, home of two time Nobel Prize winner John Bardeen, the inventor of the transistor, provided national leadership in the development of computer technology. Hiller established a long-term association between the music and engineering departments».7

Moreover, there is a scene in Kubrick.s film 2001: A Space Odissey (1968), in which the computer HAL 9000, progressively deactivated by astronaut Bowman, asserts to have become «operational at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois»: 8 a further confirmation of the leading position Urbana-Champaign has been holding in the computer science field since the 1950s. As a consequence, the association between music and computer, in this specific context, was somehow unavoidable. Hiller happened to be the one who actually realized it.

Free Music Friday: Here’s a free music compilation that will clean out your skull:

Subvert Punx 4 Way Split is an unrelenting aural assault:

4 punx from all over the world (Distonn/Russia vs. Clip/Belarus vs. Midi Fister/USA vs. Disbreakz/Croatia) decided to make a record/split featuring their vision of subversive breaks.

To spice things up, the record cover was drawn by Simon Gane, which makes this record 100% underground.

Subvert glitchy IDM jungle breakz meet punk diy vibe. This is breakcore.

Preview below. Free download here.

via Gutterbreakz

Awhile back, pianist Aron Kallay performed all of my microtonal electronic keyboard pieces out in Los Angeles. He recently sent me the mp3s, and I’m struck speechless by their quality.

He used a tremendously responsive keyboard (a Yamaha Clavinova), and I have to attribute much of the finesse to that – because the alternative is to admit that I’m a really lousy pianist by comparison. Anyway, he did a beautiful job and made me all impressed with my music all over again.

Gann’s pieces make very interesting use of the harmonies available with microtuning, but are also very accessible:

You can preview one of Gann’s pieces, Triskaidekaphonia, above. More at Gann’s site.

Let me know what you think. Is microtonal music an important frontier to explore with electronic instrument?

If you like dancing – or just music that makes you feel like dancing – you’ll want to check out this collection of dance music from Synthopia readers:

From Josh H, aka Silver Disco, comes Silver Disco Vs The Disko Starz – True Love.

From Belarus, mad_fed_head delivers a bit of 8-bit speedcore-disco, Now i know where mamy put my coockies Rendered.

From Coromandel, New Zealand, Mat Rapid (Matthew Sephton) breaks it up a bit with Wrapped in Aroha.

Finally, from Zett, comes VeryTitled – a demo from an upcoming EP.

If you like what you here, leave a comment. Check out the musician’s SoundCloud pages, too, for more info and music to check out!

Image: Renon-san