While for some of us the CD is far from obsolete, it is a fact that it is not as easy for an artist to sell a physical album as it was in the pre-iPod era. And as we can buy an album on iTunes for half the price we had to pay in the store, that is what many of us choose.
Limited editions of interesting boxes might convince music buyers otherwise. Like this design by Jaroslav Juřica. The first time you open the package the cover graphics are created. A limited edition: only 60 pieces are manufactured.
Friday, November 27, 2009 at 10:42tagged learning, toys
Original Sound Track is a simple but wonderful concept by Ricardo Seola: a combination of a wooden toy train and a music box. The metal keys on the train are plucked by the pins on the track.
The tracks can be put together in different ways, creating different arrangements of the same song. This will teach children about music and composition. The idea is to have more songs available so combining them would also be possible.
I think it is a great idea to combine toys with music in an original and educative way (not that plastic crap with noisy sound chips inside). For this train the question is: will it work?
While creating new and experimental instruments using technology is great, sometimes it is good to be reminded of where our musical instruments originate. In a big forest for instance, where a huge tree is growing for many years.
The Sound of Wood, a short movie by Anthony Edels, makes us aware again of the process of the creation of a great instrument, handcrafted with love.
Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 12:26tagged japan, writing
Denim inspired boutique Tenue de Nîmes celebrates her first anniversary with the third edition of the quarterly paper Journal the Nîmes. I'm honored to be one of the contributors to this Journal, with Japan as main theme.
I wrote an article about Japanese music, combined with reviews of two Japanese artists - YMCK and Susumu Yokota. So if you are in Amsterdam, head to the Elandsgracht and grab one, while Menno and René guide you through their collection of beautiful garments, or click on the image to read it online.
It's amazing to experience how a certain song can bring us back to a place, a situation, a feeling from the past. This is a highly personal experience. Most of us probably have experienced this, and some of us might even avoid listening to certain songs because of this.
As the experience is different for every person, you will not recognize the example I'm giving. I want to share it with you none the less. It's amazing how our brains can bring together music and images, even after years and years.
I was traveling to Prague by train. I can't remember if it was '97 or '98. I was going to stay there for about a week, together with a friend, in the middle of the winter. If you've never been to Prague I can recommend going during winter, the city was so beautiful!
It's quite a long trip so I brought a lot of CD's and a Discman - it was still the pre-iPod era. After being listening to mainly metal for quite a few years I got interested in electronic music. First the Prodigy, via Chemical Brothers to drum 'n bass. Along with New Forms by Roni Size, Colours by Adam F was one of my favorites back then.
And apart from the question if I still like the music today, I see the image of a snow white eastern German landscape flashing before my eyes, each time I play Music in my Mind by Adam F. For a moment I'm back on that train, on my way to a new wintry adventure.
Do you have an experience like this? I would like to hear about it!
My own humble digital music collection contains roughly 15,000 songs at the moment. The larger it gets the harder it is to browse through, and if I don't remember the name of an artist or song, I tend to forget I even own the music. Browsing trough my own music collection can be quite surprising. But I don't like using the old iTunes interface. Could it be a bit more intuitive?
Carles F. Julià explores this area with his research project SongExplorer: a tabletop system for exploring musical collections. It presents the user with a 'galaxy of songs'. By touching the table in an iPhone-like manner you can browse through the collection, create and manipulate play lists, and discover relationships between songs.
I'm very interested in new ways of organizing information. I think there still is a lot to be improved in this area, even in the organization of regular files on your computer. I tried tagging my files for some time, but still didn't find a satisfying workflow. I definitely think throwing everything in one big 'box' and using some search functionality and meta-data to find things is the way to go.
The very first post on Everyday Listening was about music making machines. And while we know these machines can't put a lot of expression in their music, they're really fascinating to watch. Somehow it's hard to disconnect the image of an instrument being played from the person playing it.
Roland Olbeter created Soundclusters 2, a group of mechanical string instruments and a drum. Pneumatic and electro-mechanical actuators operate the strings, which are picked like a guitar by two pneumatic plectrums.
The movie shown here is an older one, where the machines are playing Elena Kats-Chernins' Fast Blue Air. At the Sonar festival, which starts next thursday, Soundclusters 2 will play pieces composed by Jon Hopkins and Tim Exile.
We've already taken a look at the Singing Bizovik bridge and the abstract soundscape created from it, but Jodi Rose isn't the only one capturing the sound of bridges. Composer Joseph Bertolozzi recorded the sounds of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge and used them to compose his music with for this site-specific sound installation. Bertolozzi used various mallets made of different materials to strike the metal surfaces of the bridge.
There are two listening stations on the bridge itself, and there's a 24/7 transmission on 95.3FM within the parks surrounding the bridge.
The Futur en Seine festival takes place in Paris this week. The festival shows interesting new technological experiments and futuristic products. Voxstrumental is a sound installation shown by Voxler, a development team focused on vocal interaction, mainly for the gaming industry.
There are four pipes connected to the Voxstrumental sound installation. Singing into one of the pipes triggers a musical sequence. The pitch of the music changes with the pitch of your voice. The microphones are able to capture multiple parameters of expression. Four people can play the sound installation at the same time, you'll have to listen to each other to make it sound good together. And if you do, the robot in the middle starts dancing happily!
Watch a short movie about this sound installation on the Futur en Seine blog.
It’s so inspiring to see people who don’t like to keep things moderate. Why not transform a whole building into an instrument? That’s what David Byrne did with his sound installation ‘Playing the Building’. Three types of sound inducing methods are used in the sound installation - wind, vibration and striking.
The devices attached to the building structure don’t make any sound themselves, they cause the building itself to generate the sounds.The installation is controlled from a conventional musical interface: the keyboard of an old organ. It seems like quite an experience to be able to influence the sound in a huge building using just one finger!
You can see Playing the Building this summer at the Roundhouse, London, 8 - 31 August 2009.
Friday, January 29, 2010 at 16:29 tagged 
