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24 Jul 2010 21:14

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Music, Tech: Chiptune nerd turns old electric organ into ultimate blip machine

  • When you imagine someone playing the Super Mario Bros. theme song, you don’t think of some guy hopping on a keyboard to do it. Instead, you think of a nerdy programmer type futzing away at a NES. But this guy just upped the game – Linus Åkesson turned an old organ into a multi-faceted chiptune device, capable of playing a perfect-sounding Mario just as much as a diverse blippy opera. Note to Dan Deacon: Record your next album in Sweden. With this guy. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

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

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

17 Apr 2010 12:10

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Culture: False advertising: Your Nike shoes won’t be as awesome as these

  • Unfortunately, the blurb that goes with this Nike commercial gives some devastating news: “The NIKE FREE RUN+ is absolutely a running shoe. Shoes sold at retail will NOT make music when bent or twisted.” So, don’t get your hopes up that your shoes can double as a beat machine.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Oct 2009 13:08

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Music: Meet the Eigenharp: The future of music or the future of hype?



It’s not often that we can say that we've seen something truly original. But the Eigenharp certainly fits that bill. It's loaded with technology that takes the best of synthesizers and mixes it with the best of traditional instruments. It's been a good 60 years since we've had a game-changing musical instrument. To paraphrase The Strokes, Is This It?
  • What it is A mix between a MIDI-sample-powered synth and a responsive, tangible instrument, it’s completely portable and (smartly) comes at two price points – a super-expensive one (the Alpha, which looks like a mix between a Chapman Stick and a hookah) for the musical nerds and the pros, and a cheaper one (the Pico) priced within the reach of normal people.
  • Post-guitar? The electric guitar, in the grand scheme, has held its status as the most influential instrument for about 60 years. Others have tried, but electric guitars had just have the right mix of portability and shape that make them make sense in thousands of settings. That’s what intrigues us about the idea of the Eigenharp: It has the same appeal the electric guitar did.
  • A reference pointYears ago, we used to live in Milwaukee. We knew this guy named Jim Bartz, who had an interesting artistic outlet in the form of the Stringstation, a musical instrument with 40 strings meant to convey a huge sonic experience. In a lot of ways, this reminds us a lot of that. It’s got that wild, out-of-nowhere experimental tinge to it that Bartz’ instrument does. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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