Luigi Russolo was a futurist painter, experimental composer, and instrument builder. In his 1913 manifesto "The Art of Noises" he declaimed the death of traditional Western music and foresaw the dawning of a new music based on the grinding, screeching, moaning, crackling and buzzing of mechanical instruments. He and his assistant Ugo Piatti built the Intonarumori to bring these new sounds - "the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags" - to life. Listen to them, then and now.
posted by fire&wings on Oct 28, 2009 - 10 comments

Moon Music: moonbell generates sounds based on lunar topography. (via) [more inside]
posted by Korou on Sep 3, 2009 - 13 comments

[musicnewsfilter]: European copies of Dinosaur Jr.'s new album Farm have been recalled after duplication software "doubled the sound layers, resulting in a 3 dB increase in the overall sound volume." [more inside]
posted by auralcoral on Jul 12, 2009 - 61 comments

Last year we discussed a recently discovered 10-second audio recording from 1860 that was thought to be the oldest known recorded human voice, a girl or woman singing the 18th century French folk song “Au Clair de la Lune”. Turns out, it was being played too fast - slow it down and it's the voice of the inventor himself. As well, a number of other recordings have been found, pushing back the oldest recording to 1857. Hear it all on NPR (5-min). [more inside]
posted by stbalbach on Jun 1, 2009 - 24 comments

Seattle-based German artist Trimpin makes sculptural musical instruments. He was profiled in a mini-documentary by Washington public TV station KBTC a couple of years ago. Here are videos of some other works of art he's created, Fire Organ, Liquid Percussion, Cello, Sensors and Record Players, Contraption at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, MIDI-controlled Player Piano and Sheng High. Kyle Gann wrote an essay by that placed Trimpin in the tradition of John Cage, Harry Partch and other avant-garde American musical inventors. The audio of a nearly hour and a half long 1990 interview with Trimpin by Charles Amirkhanian can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Another, more light-hearted interview in connection to his show at this year's SXSW, where a documentary about him premiered (trailer).
posted by Kattullus on May 4, 2009 - 5 comments

Friday Flash JavaScript Fun! Balldroppings (ha.) is a gravity-based game where balls drop at regular intervals from a particular point in the screen and you draw lines to make them bounce. The excellent part: every time the balls bounce off a line, they sing. [more inside]
posted by LMGM on Mar 20, 2009 - 19 comments

Western musical intervals are derived from speech tendencies, according to Duke scientists. Specifically, "most of the 12 chromatic scale intervals correspond to peaks of relative power in the normalized spectrum of human vocalizations." A somewhat more layperson-friendly summary of the study is here. [more inside]
posted by univac on Mar 15, 2009 - 42 comments

Phil Minton | Jaap Blonk | Ami Yoshida | Maja Ratkje | Henri Chopin | The Littlest Sound Poet
posted by Beautiful Screaming Lady on Dec 3, 2008 - 8 comments

"Next-generation loudspeakers could be as thin as paper, as clear as glass, and as stretchable as rubber." Making sound from heat and vice versa is nothing new, but a flat loudspeaker sure would be cool, provided nothing goes wrong. [previously.]
posted by arcanecrowbar on Nov 5, 2008 - 14 comments

Walter Kitundu is one of this year's MacArthur Fellows, a musician and artist who invents and builds new instruments from turntables, strings and the interactions of the elements. His recent invention, the Ocean Edge Device, uses the flow of the rushing tides to provide energy for on-board accordion and turntable instrumentation.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Sep 25, 2008 - 7 comments

SoundJunction is all about music. You can take music apart and find out how it works, create music yourself, find out how other people make music and how they perform it, you can learn about musical instruments and voices, and look at the backgrounds of different musical styles. Over 40 musicians talk on film about their experiences. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Aug 21, 2008 - 3 comments

Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison
The Phonoautograph
The history of the Phonoautograph. A technology in which you can still buy stock.
posted by y2karl on Mar 27, 2008 - 34 comments

Elisha Gray could have been known to us as the inventor of the telephone. Instead, he goes down in history as the accidental creator of one of the first electronic musical instruments, the "Musical Telegraph." There are many other examples of early electronic instruments, including: the Teleharmonium, the Audion Piano, the Optophonic Piano, the Trautonium, the Ondes Martenot, the Rhythmicon, the Theremin Cello and the better-known Aetherphone (aka Theremin) to name a few. MetaFilter discussed odd music previously.
posted by terrapin on Mar 25, 2008 - 7 comments

Ron Murphy cut records, but not just any records. Responsible for cutting the actual vinyl master plates of much of the now revered Detroit Techno including Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Underground Resistance's seminal Knights of the Jaguar, and much more - he demonstrated impeccable craftsmanship and skill in both mastering records for sound and aesthetics at company known as Sound Enterprises source link AKA National Sound Corporation. Schooled in Motown, dubplates and jukeboxes, he is the bespoke-crafted, analog link between the digital future and analog past that is the roots of Techno music and modern techno DJ culture. [more inside]
posted by loquacious on Feb 13, 2008 - 15 comments

Edward Samuel's Illustrated History of Copyright A fascinating illustrated historical tour, looking at how different technologies have shaped how we think about copyright and intellectual property.
posted by carter on Jan 31, 2008 - 4 comments

What do you call capturing sound the way the human head hears it, that is, three-dimensionally? Nope, not stereo. Binaural recording. Holophonics. Dummy head (no, not you) recording. [more inside]
posted by artifarce on Jan 29, 2008 - 14 comments

The Death of High Fidelity
posted by chunking express on Jan 5, 2008 - 97 comments

AEROTONE. | Hello!
posted by hama7 on Nov 10, 2007 - 16 comments

Serein v3
posted by hama7 on Nov 9, 2007 - 50 comments

HOMOPHONI
posted by hama7 on Oct 7, 2007 - 37 comments

Steve Mann's hydraulophone with sculpture gallery and performance video snippets: [1] [2] [3]
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 27, 2007 - 9 comments

A veritable plethora of online sound toys to tinkle your fancy.
posted by Twang on May 5, 2007 - 17 comments

The idea of treating everyday, ambient noise as music is not terribly new, but Noah Vawter's device turns ambient sounds into music (in a somewhat more traditional sense of the word):

Ambient Addition is a Walkman with binaural microphones. A tiny Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chip analyzes the microphone's sound and superimposes a layer of harmony and rhythm on top of the listener's world.

posted by 2or3whiskeysodas on Dec 18, 2006 - 33 comments

"Sonic fabric (woven from 50% cotton and 50% audio cassette tape) emits sound when you run a tape head over it. Because the tape retains its magnetic quality through the weaving process, it acts as a big wide band of tape." Here's an interview with the creator. {via Apartment Therapy}
posted by dobbs on Oct 29, 2006 - 26 comments

What does the Digilog Dynamicator (DD-301), the 3P-III Palindrometer and the AP-302 Algorhythmic Prosecutor have in common? They're all products of Funk Logic; a company that designs filler panels for studio/live sound racks (or to quote them: "rack filler panels with stuff all over em'"). Notable: Their "Ideas That Never Made It" section.
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Sep 29, 2006 - 24 comments

Color of My Sound. Choose a color of a sound or song and see how others have voted with their comments. Add your own audio files. (more)
posted by nickyskye on Aug 22, 2006 - 7 comments

The tabla is the most popular and widely used drum of North India. Origins (embedded sound and mp3) of the tabla and tabla bols, the fascinating spoken sounds of the percussive beat. [more]
posted by nickyskye on Aug 12, 2006 - 19 comments

Sonic Postcards - winner of the New Statesman New Media Award. Explore sound. Via the Sonic Arts Network, UK exponents of Electroacoustic music.
posted by nthdegx on Aug 2, 2006 - 1 comment

A Piano In A Gallery. David Cunningham (the guy behind The Flying Lizards! Wikipedia because the main at-least-quasi-official site's down, but while you wait 16 days for that, why not read this interview with Deborah Lizard for your FL Fix) and his new project... A Piano In A Gallery. No, he's not actually PLAYING the piano -- the visitors are. It's a sort of similar thing to both Brian Eno's gallery work with ambient tape loops on different time cycles, creating an ever-shifting collage of sound and David Byrne's recent Playing The Building. The room is mic'd, and the sound is run through a piano, and amplified, both bringing background noises to the foreground AND creating feedback-style loops, as those sounds are also run into the mics and so forth. So... if you happen to be in London.... [via WFMU]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me on Jul 15, 2006 - 5 comments

David Webber makes awesome sound art things from christmas trees, pot plants, household stuff, food blenders and hard drives. His good friend Ray Wilson builds awesome modular synths. Ray will also show you how to make your own Weird Sound Generator.
posted by nylon on Jul 5, 2006 - 8 comments

Len Lye: New Zealander Len Lye was a restless maverick - a pioneer of films without cameras (drawing directly onto the celluloid) and kinetic art (CD available through Atoll, sound samples here and here), and he was also quite handy with poems and inks. More about his Windwand and recently installed Waterwhirler on Flickr. Coralised open directory of short Waterwhirler movies here.
posted by nylon on May 30, 2006 - 7 comments

Super Mario Brothers sound effects. Boing! Boing! CRUNCH! Ding! Ding! Ding! Whoop! Boing!
posted by Robot Johnny on Feb 3, 2006 - 23 comments

Mathematical proofs in sanus, with some visualization from Martin Wattenberg's The Shape of Song. "The music here...is a raw and unadorned representation of the mathematics itself, involving few human preconceptions beyond a basic mapping needed to accommodate the Western tonal scale."
posted by Rothko on Dec 4, 2005 - 13 comments

The Song and the Singer For many he is the greatest Lieder singer of the 20th century. As he turns 80, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau reflects on his long career.
posted by matteo on Sep 8, 2005 - 7 comments

Let Them Sing It For You. Alternatively, you can Låt dam sjunga det åt dig. Also, a tree with birds in it, and Sound Carpets. Potentially lots more sound fun at the Swedish Radio page, although the exact quantity of fun you'll have depends on your ability to speak Swedish.
posted by nylon on Aug 18, 2005 - 9 comments

Making music entirely from non-musical things: McDonalds Happy Meals, Henry Kissinger, Bread, Salad Tosser, Fluorescent Lamps, the Bible, Hearts, Dot Matrix Printers, Photocopiers, Volkswagen [possibly nsfw], The Postal Service, Blank Tapes, Eiffel Tower, Deportation Orders [scroll down], Cakes, Cucumbers, Furniture [scroll down to #12], Skin, Roads, Underpasses, Frogs, Vinyl Run-Out Grooves, Radios, Natural Geophysical Phenomena, Carly Simon and other stuff.
posted by nylon on Aug 7, 2005 - 16 comments

rand()% is an automated net radio station streaming real-time generative music. All audio is generated by algorithmic software applications and programs written by sound artists and programmers.
posted by signal on Jun 5, 2005 - 18 comments

Location location location [mp3s] The Phonography Archives, field recordings from around the world. Also, DeadSCSI, a global collaborative remix/collage/reremix project of tracks all generated from a single original sound file of a SCSI drive breaking down. These and other music/art projects are on Radiant Slab.
posted by carter on Mar 11, 2005 - 3 comments

27-year-old professional recorder player can not only see colours when hearing music but can taste musical notes (see chart for details). More on synaesthesia, which has appeared here, here and here. [courtesy of CBC]
posted by boost ventilator on Mar 3, 2005 - 36 comments

Happy 10th Birthday "What? is Music".

This year's the 10th time around the block for Australian festival "What? is Music", which showcases new (and not so new), unusual, fascinating and strange directions in contemporary music and sound exploration.

Starting today such outfits as The Residents, Dead C., Black Dice, Chicks on Speed, and members of Boredoms and Sun City Girls tour Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Labels like Last Visible Dog, Touch, ElectrO-CD and Corpus Hermeticum are represented, and last year's festivities saw Whitehouse and Merzbow rip up the stage.

So MeFites, what other events are there out there like this that have tickled your collective pickles? Which festivals or bands have unduly influenced your aural development and/or rearranged your head musicwise?
posted by soi-disant on Mar 1, 2005 - 16 comments

The Torture Tape Experiment Create for combat purposes a tape so wretched and foul that anyone who listens to it for 24 hours will never be able to think straight again. Warning: dangerous MP3 files contained within.
posted by boost ventilator on Jan 9, 2005 - 62 comments

A Singular Christmas. You know how you're so busy during the holidays that you don't have time to listen to all that Christmas music you love some much? Brian Whitman and his Eigenradio have taken all the hassle out of holiday music-listening for you by "play[ing] only the most important frequencies."
posted by soplerfo on Dec 1, 2004 - 6 comments

SPREE: An Escape from Reality - music by Ethan Persoff, made from old records, bizarre noise instruments, circuit bent toys and other unusual sounds.
posted by Peter H on Sep 24, 2004 - 1 comment

SBaGen is software (Windows, Mac and Linux) that generates binaural beats - interactions between sound waves that mess with your brain, to induce sleep, relaxation, activity, and allegedly even hallucinogenic states. SBaGen relies on text-file presets (although it comes with dozens of files to experiment with) but if you want a "quick start", there's also the Windows-based Brain Wave Generator.
posted by Jimbob on Mar 20, 2004 - 15 comments

What does a scale in dorian modesound like? How about a dominant one-tension chord? Find out. Or maybe you'd just like to hear some intervals.
posted by sodalinda on Mar 16, 2004 - 19 comments

Videohelper.com sells music and sound effects to film/video producers. Here's their FAQ. It's the most fun FAQ I've ever read when I wasn't even trying to have fun. Though they are a serious business, their entire site is in this style. I want to work there!
posted by grumblebee on Oct 23, 2003 - 10 comments

< earshot >
Live improvisation with digital audio. Play, loop and compose with multiple sound file formats, including: wav, aif, aiff, aifc, mov, au, mid, mp3, swa, mpg, mpeg, snd... Found while Googlifying for links to the currently tanked Johnny Spencer's 'vanity site' directed towards fans of Black popular music c1940's to 1970's. I have not a clue as to the what or why of it but thought the teeming geeky horde might. Provided for your consumer testing.
posted by y2karl on Jun 27, 2003 - 6 comments

Infrasound : Elephants use it to communicate, the military have sought to harness its power as a weapon (.pdf). So have The KLF. Now, a group of avant garde musicians invite you to feel the bass. If reports of the Feraliminal Lycanthropizer are to be believed, that could be one hell of a gig.
posted by jack_mo on May 19, 2003 - 15 comments

Just say 'no' to Bose. Bose speakers may be the best known brand to many people, but ask an audiophile about them, and be prepared for flames. Is this just snobbery and elitism? This guy walks you through why Bose speakers are a very poor choice for the money, Bose's deceptive marketing practices, and even gives you a list of better alternatives. [more inside]
posted by Slithy_Tove on Nov 29, 2002 - 89 comments

bits & pieces a sonic installation for the web! my friend sez, "it's not random. it's complexity" :)
posted by kliuless on Mar 22, 2002 - 7 comments