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20 May 2010 01:06

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Music: (Sine) Wave of the future: Multitouch musical instruments

  • what roger linn can do Linn has created a cool new musical instrument that plays music on a touchscreen in a pretty innovative way. The organization (in chromatic scale) is key to this setup being fairly easy to play. The downside: Amazon bought the technology Linn used to make the device.

  • What Bebot can do It’s actually kind of reminiscent of an iPhone app called Bebot, which allows you to play a touch-sensitive synth in a similar fashion. It doesn’t use a scale in the way Linn’s awesome instrument does, but it does have a cool robot who sings your tunes. Hooray!
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 May 2010 20:40

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Music: The National looking hot, but can’t get out of Justin Bieber’s shadow

  • good The National, everyone’s favorite indie band, got up to No. 3 on the Billboard charts with “High Violet.”
  • bad It was one of the lowest-selling weeks for the Billboard, ever, and Justin Bieber still beat them. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 May 2010 21:46

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Music: Andy Rooney of “60 Minutes” officially the oldest man alive

  • “How come I don’t know any of the bands on the Billboard chart? Who’s Lady Gaga?  Where’s my oatmeal? Get off my lawn! And change my Depends!”
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 May 2010 22:02

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Music: One-word album reviews: The National is this year’s Phoenix, guys

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 May 2010 12:31

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About, Music: Sad news: The Saturday Mixtape’s taking a break

  • why? Blame it partly on Lala’s closing,
    but we also think it’s  a good
    chance to reconsider our
    short-form musical approach.
  • next We plan on trying different music features in the future. Our first was “Non-Expert Opinion.” We’ll keep you posted, guys. source
  • » Will the mixtape return eventually? Probably, but its form might change. We might also move it to Monday. Who knows? We might get lucky and iTunes will have a similar embed feature that uses HTML5 (hint, hint).
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 May 2010 23:00

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Music: One-word album reviews: The Hold Steady wavers a little bit

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 May 2010 22:24

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Music: Non-expert opinion: Hip-hop icons who talk big game

  • Disclaimer: We know as much about rap as we do about gardening. We can tell you what a flower looks like, we can tell you if it smells pretty, but we sure as heck suck at putting seeds in the ground and making them grow. That’s kind of the idea behind this new occasional feature, where we try to explain things we don’t particularly understand all that well. Next week: Quantum mechanics.

  • he knows he’s arrived Drake has more buzz than any rapper this side of his inmate buddy Lil Wayne, and with “Over,” he doesn’t underestimate his abilities nor does he pretend that there isn’t a dark side to the fame. It’s kind of refeshing – like Kanye when he used to be headier.

  • The comeback kid Lupe Fiasco’s album sales haven’t matched his cred as a hip-hop artiste, but he doesn’t let the haters get to him. “I’m Beamin'” is a great I’m-still-awesome comeback anthem. (Disclosure: Our good friend Rob Simmons did the visual effects on this awesome video.)

  • too full of himself Diddy hasn’t done anything of note with his music career in about a decade, and even then, he was kind of seen as a sell-out. It’s with that image of him we show you this teaser to a blog that doesn’t even exist yet. Kanye already has the hip-hop blogging game won, man.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

04 May 2010 11:10

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Music: Good luck: The Hold Steady wants to be this year’s Phoenix

  • Like the Hold Steady, Phoenix were on a steady rise, then made an amazing record and got some important looks. (‘Saturday Night Live’), then the Cadillac commercial. Things happened in succession to move the band to the next level.
  • Vagrant Records COO Jon Cohen • Regarding the Hold Steady’s steady rise to prominence and their chance of a next-level breakthrough. Unfortunately for Craig Finn and company, Pitchfork just handed the band’s new album, “Heaven Is Whenever,” a middling review. The site’s rating, 6.2, is kind of a low number for a band that spent half a decade getting feted by critics. “this remains an uncharacteristically weak effort by a good band that may be in danger of running out of stories,” writes Stephen M. Deusner, who called it a transitional record. They might get past that, though – middling reviews never stopped Death Cab or Coldplay, did they? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 May 2010 23:54

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Music, Tech: WolframAlpha’s musical cousin the weirdest thing ever

  • Look, we realize that we’re bloggers first, musicians second. But good God, we didn’t know we could create music as godawful as this. The mathematical approach at music creates tunes that sound straight out of 1986 but otherwise has no equivalent. The most interesting part? It predates WolframAlpha by about four years. Waste ten minutes on this, kids. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

01 May 2010 09:29

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Music: This may be the greatest T-shirt in the history of ever

  • We want to see Henry Rollins wearing this shirt. Some dude put this amazing piece of work on Etsy the other day, and we’re positive that the members of Black Flag themselves would appreciate the subversiveness of this fine piece of work. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink
 
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