6/9
2011
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I Want One! #1: the Cloud Harp
Nicolas Reeves —architect, sculptor and creator of the cloud harp— gave this instrument/art installation its premiere in Amos, Quebec in 1997. I encountered it for the first time in downtown Pittsburgh, PA about two years later. Pittsburgh is an incredibly suitable location for a cloud harp because it is cloudy all the @$#^ng time. As in I’ve enjoyed more cups of coffee this morning than clear-skied days during high school. So what is a cloud harp?
Think of it as a CD player; a macro version that —instead of reading the microscopic bumps on the surface of a compact disc— reads the clouds passing overhead.
A standard compact disc is made of several layers, including a polycarbonate plastic layer imprinted with pits and lands (bumps, basically), a reflective layer (usually aluminum) and a layer of lacquer to protect the delicate reflective layer. To produce sound from the disc, a 780nm semiconductor laser is shot towards the reflective layer through the plastic one as the disc spins. The varying height of the bumps in the plastic affect how the laser’s light is reflected, and a photodiode helps translate these variations in light intensity into digital data that speakers convert into audio content.
Analogously —and awesomely!— the cloud harp fires an infrared laser beam five miles high into the sky (sorry, but that has got to be the most EPIC way to make music of all time). Using that beam and a telescope that share optics, the cloud harp translates information like cloud altitude, density, speed, luminosity and temperature into musical phrases. The best part? It’s polyphonic. None of this one-note-at-a-time business for the cloud harp; it produces multiple voices at once, using data from distinct altitudes for each. It literally lets clouds sing with themselves.
The only thing is, I don’t think Reeves had much of a musical background, and as you’ll hear in the video above, the music doesn’t even pretend to match the instrument’s potential. Give me five minutes on the programming end of this baby and it would be unstoppable.
I want one!
5/6
2011
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Pull Over & Listen to This #2 “Civilian” by Wye Oak
(Video 1) Directions for use: put this CRACK ROCK OF MUSICAL EXCELLENCE IN YOUR EAR; JAM; REPEAT.
(Bonus video) A live version in Amsterdam, an equally haunting & compelling masterpiece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVaeAu_noFM
Wye Oak is Jenn Wasner (vocals, guitar) and Andy Stack (drums, keys, vocals) out of Baltimore, MD. They formed in 2006 as Monarch but had to change their name due to crappy bands having the name before them. But forget the whole metamorphosis deal— they’ve really come into their own, signing with Merge Records, releasing their third album and achieving an impressive unity both in the studio and on the stage. A friend of mine was lucky enough to see them play as Monarch at a middle school, and he tells me the students were captivated. They’ve got an amazing dynamic range, which is refreshing. Lots of bands are like, “We play loud song! Now we play one soft song, show we know how music.”
In addition to being musicians, they’re truly humble and relatable people. In an interview with FaceCulture, Jenn says, “I never expect people to like or be interested in what I’m doing.” She notes the challenges of allowing other people into the creative process, like needing to leave the room at times while producer John Congleton was mixing the record. Andy: “It’s like a loved one in surgery. it’s a really scary feeling.” Well, Civilian definitely worked out pretty well, and Wye Oak is a band to watch.
4/22
2011
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Isle of Tune, available online and as an app for iProducts in the next three weeks, marries the visual familiarity of games like Sim City with the time-murdering pleasures of beat sequencing. Check it out- (http://isleoftune.com).
Music software is progressing at an incredible pace, and I think familiarizing tweaks like this go a huge way towards putting creativity in the hands of… everyone. A brave and insane few are going to sit down and learn the ins and outs of Cubase or Fruity Loops, but programs like Isle of Tune and ToneMatrix (http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix) replace the tedium with videogame-like enjoyment.
Music for all: I like it.
4/10
2011
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Cloud music takes its first steps
Imagine the ability to play your music on any device… without storing any of it on any device. It’s coming— cloud music. Rumors of Google and Apple’s upcoming “music lockers” (upload all your music to their cloud and stream it from any device) have been rampant for months.
Well, last week, Amazon quietly beat Google and Apple to the punch and launched its own music locker, Amazon Cloud Drive. And surprise! Amazon’s service might just be the best of the soon-to-be Big Three— their cloud computing has led the pack for years, used by everyone from DropBox to banks and pharmaceutical companies; such services now account for more bandwidth than the Amazon.com site itself.
Apple aims to release their new MobileMe service this month, and while a version of Google’s service has been leaked in an attempt to keep Amazon’s success in check, no release date or name has been announced.
Amazon Cloud Drive doesn’t yet feature a recommendation engine, but I think we can soon expect augmented services soon: music lockers that suggest new music, link to artists Twitter, Facebook, & websites, offer live show dates and sell merch.
3/30
2011
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The first-ever music video by my “neo-electric skiffle” band (thanks for the best band description, James Sime!), This Can’t End Well.
A perfect example of a creative process that rose around limitation (limitations and I enjoy a storied love/hate relationship)— in this case, a wildly out-of-tune guitar missing a string. The song was written over a year ago, and the guitar —the very guitar in the video— hasn’t been restrung the whole time.
Video: Chad Michael Ward (http://digitalapocalypse.com/)
Music: This Can’t End Well (http://www.thiscantendwell.com/)
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“Fried egg, fried egg, gotta get down on fried egg”
Thank you for finding me on OKCupid, strange and wonderful girl!
If you don’t get my joke it’s because it sucks, but be sure to catch Steven Colbert (who I’ve loved since his Chuck Noblet performances in Strangers with Candy) when he sings Rebecca Black’s Friday live on Jimmy Fallon, backed up by the Roots. Memes: wow. There should be a B horror movie— Bow! Before the power of… The Meme!!! (bum bum BWAAAAAH)
http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/4affb32888/stephen-colbert-might-sing-rebecca-black-s-friday-on-fallon
3/29
2011
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Bizness - tUnE-yArDs.
tUnE-yArDs is the main project of Merrill Garbus, a singer and multi-instrumentalist based in Oakland, CA. She also sings and plays uke, violin & guitar for Sister Suvi (www.sistersuvi.com), a project with drummer Nico Dann and Patrick Gregoire (of Islands).
She’s pretty fresh— her first album, Bird-Brains, was released in June of 2009. I’ve been digging her since I heard her Powa, a soulful package of rhythm, uke, guitar and vocals (check out the live studio video from 4AD - http://4ad.com/sessions/001/). Her music appeals to me because she’s FEELIN’ it. Which makes ME feel it. To the point that I’ll be singing along to Powa and all of a sudden I’m being told that the car’s getting pulled over if I don’t stop *trying* to hit that high note.
People ask me what kind of music I like all the time, and I have to say: genre takes a back seat to the degree of release into music an artist achieves. Whether it’s a lullaby, death metal or some cozy Appalachain folk on the porch swing, all I ask of musicians (and myself, in general) is to go for it. No one wants you to hold back, so why bother?
3/28
2011
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Big labels get the bird in Germany
I had the amazing opportunity to attend a videosong workshop & concert by Pomplamoose (http://www.pomplamoose.com/) two days ago at CELLSpace in SF. One of the interesting things Jack talked about was licensing/copyright issues pertaining to YouTube.
Having just investigated sync rights for a documentary about a Pixies cover project, I know that they are *$#in’ expensive. Technically, you need to pay the large fees for sync rights if you plan to stream someone else’s music in video form online. But wait, what about YouTube, you say. There are billions of song covers on there, from your drunken Journey croonings last night to the shamisen cover of the Bed Intruder meme (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E7lY1kYrM). Who’s collecting all that dough?
Well, according to Jack, YouTube purchases tons of “blanket” sync licenses to cover their ass.
But that’s in the USA. In Germany, these copyright issues have prevented a bevy of videos from public availability, and a group calling themselves Bust All Major Labels has developed a bit of embed-able code that prevents the viewing of YouTube videos on computers with IP addresses registered to big labels like Sony and Universal.
“We can not see their content… so now they cannot see ours either!” claims the website. Instead of the video, corporate label execs are presented with a little guy flicking them off, saying “Der Inhalt dieser Seite ist für dich nicht verfügbar,” or “The content of this page is not available for you.”
3/22
2011
3/20
2011
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Dude. Von. Fucking. Thord.
Look them up.
They are Swedish and badass.
(Source: jennaboges)
