music downloads
Articles about music downloads:
The Experimental Music Studios of the School Of Music at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign released a 50th anniversary CD of experimental music that is available as a free download.
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 From Little Boots
Little Boots caught the synth world’s attention in the last year with her combination of looks, talent and gear.
Here’s the Baron von Luxxury remix of Little Boot’s Meddle. Get it why you still can!
Image: Guy Martin, via Fader
Free Music From Taiga
Taiga is a solo project of Denis Taiga from Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Bitter Tragic Joke is a collection of previously unreleased tracks, recorded in a period of six years, from 2002-2008.
Description:
Sampladelic experience and ethnic eclectic jazz are the basic lines of Taiga: we can hear a lot of samples from Soviet movie pictures and cassette tapes, mixed with authentic folklore recordings and modern electronics. While mixing, the source dissolves in some kind of deep sound clew, so even musician cannot understand where does it come from… He calls this Hypno.
You can preview Taiga’s Bitter Tragic Joke below.
This is almost to ridiculous to be true.
The major music labels are so concerned about Apple’s dominance in the world of digital music that they are betting their future on Napster.
The major labels have teamed up with Napster to offer what they are calling “the world’s largest and most comprehensive MP3 store.”
Yep – the labels are so intent on breaking Apple’s dominance in the world of digital music that they are giving Napster – the brand that RIAA head Hilary Rosen once called “both morally and legally wrong” – the opportunity to distribute more music as MP3 than Apple.
Per Napster’s announcement:
Napster’s download store is more than 50% larger than any other MP3 store and boasts not only the largest major label MP3 catalog in the industry, but also the largest library of independent music available anywhere. All Napster download sales in the U.S. will now be in the user-friendly, DRM-free MP3 format, which is compatible with virtually any MP3 player or music phone, including the iPod and the iPhone. Napster is the first music subscription service featuring major label content to offer 100% of its catalog in the MP3 format for download sales.
Pricing for download sales is 99 cents for single MP3 tracks and $9.95 for most MP3 albums.
DRM-free MP3s are great.
The music industry betting its future on Napster, though? Sorta pathetic.
Nine Inch Nails is offering its latest CD, Ghosts I, as a free download from its site. The collection is a teaser to promote their Ghosts I-IV, a new collection of instrumental tracks.The official download requires email registration at the site to get a download link. You can also download the collection officially via BitTorrent.
The download includes
- DRM-free MP3s, encoded with LAME at 320kbps
- A 40-page pdf book about the release
- A digital extras pack with wallpapers, icons, etc
The entire collection can be downloaded for $5, or you can order a $10 2 CD set and other deluxe and limited edition versions.
Here’s what NIN’s Trent Reznor has to say about the release:
This music arrived unexpectedly as the result of an experiment. The rules were as follows: 10 weeks, no clear agenda, no overthinking, everything driven by impulse. Whatever happens during that time gets released as… something.
The team: Atticus Ross, Alan Moulder and myself with some help from Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew and Brian Viglione. Rob Sheridan collaborated with Artist in Residence (A+R) to create the accompanying visual and physical aesthetic.
We began improvising and let the music decide the direction. Eyes were closed, hands played instruments and it began. Within a matter of days it became clear we were on to something, and a lot of material began appearing. What we thought could be a five song EP became much more. I invited some friends over to join in and we all enjoyed the process of collaborating on this.
The end result is a wildly varied body of music that we’re able to present to the world in ways the confines of a major record label would never have allowed – from a 100% DRM-free, high-quality download, to the most luxurious physical package we’ve ever created.
More volumes of Ghosts are likely to appear in the future.
- Trent Reznor, March 2, 2008
Reznor previously produced the debut CD by Saul Williams, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust, which was also made available as a free download.
