Music, reality and science-fiction are moving into alignment once more. Continuing in a similar vein to the 639-year concert in Halberstadt, we now introduce a 10,000 year clock and an album of acapella music by futuristic alien monks, courtesy of Neal Stephenson and the Long Now Foundation…
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Music Technology Posts from August, 2008
Music For Monks, Mathematicians And Millennia
Thursday, August 28th, 2008Music Production – Enhancing Actor Stature
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008Last week I developed a somewhat strained audio production metaphor, which likened the stereo soundfield to a stage, with the individual sounds/instruments being the actors thereon. The first thing a director/producer needs to do is decide which actors to use, then to place them on stage. However, if an actor isn’t imposing enough, there are ways to make him stand taller…
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Music Production Mistakes – Fat Actor Overlap
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Although high-quality audio production gear is now within reach of pocket-money producers, most bands (and solo electronic artists) still make the same basic mistakes when laying down their tracks…
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Slowest Concert Hits Sixth Note
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008The pace of life seems to be getting ever faster, and even music is bombarding us with more production, more loudness, more beats than ever before. However, there is one musical performance currently underway that aims to buck this trend – this concert began in 2000, and has recently moved on to its sixth note…
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Analog Devices Take Us Back
Thursday, August 14th, 2008We live in an analog world, but much of what we experience is in the process of being digitised – our music, our films, our social networks. Fortunately, there are still plenty of analog fans out there, and we can still go backwards…
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Four-Hour Workweek For Musicians
Monday, August 11th, 2008Derek Sivers recently handed over control of the mighty CD Baby independent music outlet to Disc Makers, primarily to allow himself time to work on new musical ventures. He is already heading in interesting directions, as his interview with Tim Ferriss (author of the infamous Four-Hour Workweek) shows…
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Touch Screen Technology With Knobs On
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008The ways in which we interact with computers are continually (albeit slowly, at least in mainstream terms) evolving. Touch screens are gaining widespread traction, and it seems that the boundaries between display and interface are converging. Devices such as JazzMutant’s Dexter brought a new level of interaction to DAW controllers, but now Girton Labs have devised a way of sticking physical knobs onto a computer screen…
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iPhone Music – Sounds Like A Mac
Monday, August 4th, 2008The iPhone has generated a huge amount of hype, but its greatest strengths lie not in what it does by default but in what it can be made to do via developer applications. Musicians have been particularly excited by the iPhone, not because it’s a phone, but because it is essentially a hand-held Mac…
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