music history
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Filed under: Electronic Musicians, Software Effects & Audio Processors, iPods & Portable Media Players
iGendyn (App Store link) is a free iPhone synthesizer that lets freak it, Iannis Xenakis style, exploring GENeral DYNamic stochastic synthesis.
If you’ve never heard about GENeral DYNamic stochastic synthesis, or even electronic music pioneer Iannis Xenakis before, don’t worry. iGendyn offers psychedelic 3-voice polyphonic noise fun, and the fact that it’s an application of Xenakis’ ideas is just icing on the cake.
More on GENeral DYNamic stochastic synthesis below.
Give iGendyn a try, and leave a comment with your thoughts! Read more…
This documentary on prog-rock is narrated by a female robo-narrator. Strange, but interesting.
via ProgAlbums
The Acoustics Of Stone Age Rocks
This is off-topic, but Paul Devereux is an expert on the archaeoacoustics – megalithic acoustics & their possible applications. He’s written a book on Stone Age Soundtracks, the acoustic archaeology of ancient sites.
The video is a little dry – but the information is deep and interesting – and seems to tie into some of the ideas that Steve Roach has explored in his ambient music.
You can read more about Devereaux and Sounds From The Stone Age at The Music Of Sound.
And let me know if you remember the screwball comedy about an expert in the acoustic properties of prehistoric rocks!
Hip Hop Goes To College
Cornell Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections has announced that it has acquired “a significant archive on the history of hip hop and rap music, documenting its emergence in the Bronx in the 1970s and early 1980s.”
The collection includes nearly one thousand sound recordings, the photographic archive of Bronx photographer Joe Conzo, Jr., textile art, books and magazines, and a collection of more than five hundred original flyers designed by Buddy Esquire and others.
The collection aims to document the origins of hip hop as culture and community, and its influence on the history of music, art, performance, and activism in America during the final third of the 20th century and beyond. The hip hop archive provides original research materials for students and scholars in the fields of music, American studies, urban studies, theater, film & dance, art history, African American studies, government, literature, and history.
Cornell will host a Hip Hop Conference and Celebration Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 that will include music, performances and lectures by several of hip hop’s founders, and roundtable discussions led by prominent speakers from the hip hop and academic communities. Cornell University Library will host the event, which will highlight the one-of-a-kind historical materials.
“By paying tribute to those who laid the foundation, we tell our own history,” Bambaataa said. “Preserving hip hop’s early years will help future generations understand the places they come from.”
via Dial M
Image: Gabriel M.
Oldest Computer Music Found
The BBC reports that newly found acetate disks contain what is believed to be the earliest known computer music recordings:
The songs were captured by the BBC in the Autumn of 1951 during a visit to the University of Manchester.
The recording has been unveiled as part of the 60th Anniversary of “Baby”, the forerunner of all modern computers.
The tunes were played on a Ferranti Mark 1 computer, a commercial version of the Baby Machine.
“I think it’s historically significant,” Paul Doornbusch, a computer music composer and historian at the New Zealand School of Music, told BBC News.
“As far as I know it’s the earliest recording of a computer playing music in the world, probably by quite a wide margin.”
You can listen to the recording at the BBC site.
