Audio Pad

Audiopad is a composition and performance instrument for electronic music which tracks the positions of objects on a tabletop surface and converts their motion into music. One can pull sounds from a giant set of samples, juxtapose archived recordings against warm synthetic melodies, cut between drum loops to create new beats, and apply digital processing all at the same time on the same table. Audiopad not only allows for spontaneous reinterpretation of musical compositions, but also creates a visual and tactile dialogue between itself, the performer, and the audience.

Audiopad has a matrix of antenna elements which track the positions of electronically tagged objects on a tabletop surface. Software translates the position information into music and graphical feedback on the tabletop. Each object represents either a musical track or a microphone.

Audiopad was developed by James Patten and Ben Recht aka localfields.

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I Met The Walrus

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview. This was in the midst of Lennon’s “bed-in” phase, during which John and Yoko were staying in hotel beds in an effort to promote peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries traditional pen sketches by James Braithwaite with digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.

Video Arcade

Montreal art-rockers Arcade Fire have posted two excellent interactive videos on their website — and you can have more fun with them in five minutes than you’d get from a day’s worth of MTV.

In “Neon Bible,” the band’s lead singer, Win Butler, appears against a black background; click on his hands, mouth, and eyes to affect his voice and motions. In the “Black Mirror” video, you control the arrangement — lose the vocals, drop the bass, or (for a supercreepy effect) hear the string section all by its lonesome. The chance to connect with your inner Phil Spector — that’s creepy, too, but rewarding enough to make you consider music as a second career.

http://www.neonbible.com/yope.html

Why you should mix records on crap speakers

Bill Moriarty, record producer and Highrise customer (case study), offers some interesting advice to other producers at his blog: Mix Records on Crap Speakers.

“It’s the very naive producer who works only on optimum systems.” -Brian Eno

It’s unlikely whoever is buying your records has anything better than an average hi-fi, boombox, car stereo, or ipod. I’d bet they don’t have studio monitors.

Recording & mixing solely on studio monitors is foolish. All that low end in the guitar? It’s useless in the small speakers. It’s just taking up frequencies the bass or drums or organs or tenor instruments can occupy. You have to be ruthless in cutting away useless frequencies so the record is loud & jumps out of all speakers. Make the record sound outstanding on little crap speakers since that’s where most people will hear it. I’ve found when I do this it still sounds great on the fancy speakers.

Love this. It’s not about the gear. In fact, gear can distract you from the essence of what you’re working on. Strip what you’re doing down to its bare essentials and evaluate that. If that comes off great, then it will work as it gets louder, starts to grow, or whatever. (And web designers can definitely apply the same idea to bandwidth speed, screen size, etc.)

Source: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1449-why-you-should-mix-records-on-crap-speakers

Exclusive First Listen: Paul McCartney

Hear The Entire Album, Featuring McCartney And Youth As The Fireman

November 18, 2008 – When The Fireman released its debut album in 1993 — the instrumental dance and electronica mix Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest — the band’s identity was a mystery. U.K. music magazine Melody Maker eventually exposed The Fireman as a duo featuring the bassist and producer known as Youth and, to everyone’s surprise, Paul McCartney. Reviewers praised the collaboration as “staggeringly brilliant,” but it was a strange and entirely unexpected direction for the former Beatle.

McCartney and Youth followed their debut five years later with Rushes, another instrumental album the two described as “ambient dreams in rainbow arches.” But The Fireman fell silent for the next decade, as the two returned to their own projects.

Last year, McCartney and Youth returned to work as The Fireman for their third release together, Electric Arguments. Unlike the previous albums, The Fireman’s new studio disc features vocals. McCartney entered the studio, without any material, and recorded 13 songs in 13 days. He played all the instruments, with Youth at the helm as producer. The Fireman offered the first single from the album, “Lifelong Passion,” as a download from the band’s Web site for anyone making a donation to the Adopt-A-Minefield charity.

Electric Arguments is sometimes bluesy and gritty, with McCartney howling against fuzzy guitars (“Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight”), sometimes delicate and beautiful (“Two Magpies”) and sometimes lush and elegant (“Sing the Changes”). At times, the album veers off into entirely experimental directions, like the mash of ambient noises and sound effects on “Universal Here, Everlasting Now.”

Electric Arguments will be released on Nov. 25 on ATO Records. In the meantime, the label and The Fireman are offering this free, exclusive preview of the entire album, as a stream.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96952621