June 18th, 2010 – Signal to Noise has created something they’re calling the Analogue Tape Wall which is a traveling installation. It consists of a glove that users can use to stroke over a wall of analogue tape. The glove contains a tape head on the finger tip which allows the tape to be played. In the video embedded below, it seems like the collection of tape doesn’t have much to do with each other in a specific arrangement.

Imagine if it was segmented into specific areas and samples, so that it was an analogue sampler played with the fingers. That would be so cool! Hmm…if I was more industrious, I’d try to make my own. Each “picture” would be a different song that I could play. Too bad I lack the skills or motivation to make one. Signal to Noise is onto something very cool.

Signal to Noise via Gizmodo

October 26th, 2009 – Do people still burn mix CDs to give to one another? Well, if you do, here’s an Instructable for creating a pretty insane “origami” paper CD sleeve. Not only does it look crazy, it will kill a good chunk of time if you have nothing better to do.

You can even print onto a provided template, so you can personalize the CD case with whatever you want. As you can see in the picture above, you can be boring or you could spice it up with some nice paper and a bright palette. I actually stumbled across this while looking for cool designs for artist demo CD’s. This probably isn’t the best way to stand out from all the other submissions, but it’s certainly good for showing off to friends.

The Spiral Data Tato — A Curiously Complex Origami CD Case

Two runners up will get a skate deck and signed album, and 10 others will get the signed album. The contest is open now and they will be accepting submissions until the 15th of September. Head on over to IndabaMusic for more contest details. You know you want that MicroKorgXL!

Crystal Method contest page via Synthtopia

June 6th, 2009 – I have a fairly decent iTunes library which I cull fairly regularly. Problem is that, I don’t have an iPod that’s big enough to house all the music. I’ve looked at several solutions to stream my music online on a music server, but I’ve been discouraged by the number of steps required.

Enter pulpTunes. Lifehacker reports that it pretty much only takes opening a firewall port to the internet, besides installation of the program of course. That sounds pretty damn simple. A potential problem may arise if you don’t have a static IP address, required to point to your library. Apparently though, you can set up a dynds via dyndns.org and you’re good to go.

pulpTunes is free, but you can donate to a charity if you enjoy the software. Great software model!

pulpTunes via Lifehacker

Update: It turns out that the error was caused by the “Tweet This”  plugin I was using. It’s been disabled and everything should be working correctly. We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

December 30th, 2008 – A few days ago, I posted about learning and how I felt that a good mentor would go a long way in developing musicianship skills. Well, the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in the UK, is holding a worldwide scholarship audition. For each of its four main disciplines (guitar, bass, drums, and vocals), they offer one full scholarship, as well as one partial, to the Higher Diploma program. The Higher Diploma is a one year program that fast tracks your performance skills. You get lessons in many styles, and perform every week live with other instrumentalists.

It sounds like a pretty cool program and it can be used as a primer into their 3-year BMus program which is affiliated with the University of East London. Sound like something you’re interested in? Send a 3 minute un-edited video of yourself playing to impress before March 9th, 2009. As I stated earlier, the audition is open to people outside the UK, but you’ll have to arrange your own living arrangements. More information is listed here for the guitar side. Visit the site for other scholarship programs.

Update 3/1/2008 – The audition deadlines have been extended to March 27th. Check the website for more details.

ICMP Scholarship Auditions

Photo courtesy of Jose Goulao

October 15th, 2008 – According to LiveScience, a sport psychologist at Brunel University in England helped create a danceable “soundtrack” for runners in a recent half-marathon. Apparently many of the runners felt the soundtrack invigorated the race.

Professional runners, according to the report, “use music as a legal drug”. Before races, they listen to laid-back music, and then during the race, more upbeat tunes. Interestingly, the effects of music on your performance may not work as well if the music is always there. The suggestion is to listen to music twice for every one time you don’t. I imagine that if you listen to music all the time, you would eventually just tune it out. This might defeat the actual song being an influence, but I’m sure that you would still sub-consciously sync to the beat. For example, sometimes I notice that my breathing matches the rhythm of air conditioning units. Or maybe I’m just a freak.

So sports medicine is finally catching up to what music therapists, child psychologists, musicians, fans, heck, pretty much what everyone already knows. There’s no better representative than the rave kids…although it might be all that E.

via LiveScience