Music Hack Day heads back to Boston October 16 and 17. Music Hack Day is a free-to-attend 24-hour convergence over two calendar days designed to throw together programmers, musicians, artists, conceptualizers, and, of course, marketers and promoters. "Music + software + hardware + art + the web. Anything goes as long as it's music related."
Music Hack Day London just ended (September 4, 5). My favorite (and the MHD-London winner!) was
Speakatron, which is WebCam + Software = Goofy Fun! (
related, previously)
[more inside]
posted by beelzbubba
on Sep 21, 2010 -
4 comments
The
Vocaloids,
1 anime-like characters created for the singing synthasizer program by the Yamaha Corporation, have been capturing the imaginations of Japanese fans for more than a year. They've inspired and starred in a large body of fan-produced songs and animated videos,
2 ranging from macabre to sorrowful to dramatic to humorous. [Massive MLYTP]
[more inside]
posted by anthy
on Jan 28, 2009 -
7 comments
Animata is an open source real-time animation software, designed to create animations, interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Dec 8, 2008 -
14 comments
To work around the proprietary whims of digital audio software developers and laptop processor limitations during the mid- and late-1990s, a small band of technically-minded people, including the electronic musician
Blitter, pulled together in the late 1990s to engineer the open-source
OPEN DSP EZ-Kit platform, a 16-bit computer designed entirely with a focus on low cost and extensible control and DSP arithmetic capabilities. While this project and
similar commercial offerings never seemed to gain the critical mass needed to sustain long-term interest, perhaps the new
Arduino hardware project from MIT's
Processing hardware group may gain a foothold with
Processing and
Pure Data audio software hobbyists and artists alike, allowing the creative community to extend, enhance and share inventive uses of new technology. Arduino's use has
already begun in
fascinating museum installations around the world, and has become a part of this year's
SONAR and
Ars Electronica festivals.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Aug 12, 2006 -
10 comments
Pandora. Bound to draw comparisons to
Last.fm,
LAUNCHcast, and
Musicplasma, Pandora (formerly Savage Beast) is a music discovery web application that recommends music based not on popularity, usage habits of other users, or genres/categories but on the deconstructed elements of how the music itself sounds. Fruit of the
Music Genome Project, music analysts have for more than five years spent 20 minutes analyzing each song in its ever-growing database for nearly 400 distinct attributes, so when you ask it, "Why is this song playing?" It answers, "Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features electronica influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, surreal lyrics, use of call-and-response vocals, and string section beds." (YES! Thank you!) Currently live on public beta.
[Flash, 128kbps streams]
posted by Lush
on Aug 29, 2005 -
44 comments
Ninjam lets you play music (not MIDI) collaboratively with random people in real-time
offset by one measure.
Samples.
posted by Tlogmer
on Jul 15, 2005 -
3 comments
New Winamp So the design guys over there quitely release this update and down played its coolest feature. Perhaps the coolest feature ever for any program. A database of searchable music videos and song offering on demand and fastforwarding and rewind. Sons are censored but there are well over 2000 videos with the promise of more to come.
posted by sourbrew
on Aug 10, 2004 -
42 comments
Winamp 2 + Winamp 3 = Winamp 5 (download
lite or
standard) . After it's admittedly dissapointing and rushed effort with Version 3 of their popular media player, the Nullsoft team seeks to make amends with their newest release, combining the stability of 2.x with the extras of Winamp 3, adding several new features while they're at it. Though already long-considered the standard for Windows machines, Winamp 5 puts more pressure on other competing, low memory-footprint audio players that have cropped up like
Foobar and
QCD. More cheerleading/zealotry inside...
posted by lotsofno
on Dec 15, 2003 -
44 comments
Computer generated singer, $200. Vocaloid software, which is due to be released to consumers in January, allows users to cast their own (or anyone else's) songs in a disembodied but exceedingly life-like concert-quality voice.
Vocaloid will be able to "sing" whatever combination of notes and words a user feeds it. The first generation of the software will be available for $200. [NYTimes link]
posted by Outlawyr
on Nov 24, 2003 -
23 comments
Thanks Again, Frauhofer! "Software developed by Germany's Fraunhofer Institut, the creators of the MP3 ... called "Query by Humming," -- a type of melody recognition software program that identifies a song by title and composer based on a person humming a few bars into a microphone."
Sure, it'll put quaint sites like
this out of business, but think of the fun you'll have walking by your co-workers cubicle only to hear them furtively humming into their PC so that it can search for that pesky tune they can't get out of their head.
(This technology sounds familiar, so advanced apologies for a double post. I did a search, really.)
posted by chandy72
on Jan 22, 2003 -
4 comments
Ahhhhhh Synaesthesia.... Industrial Strength Colour-Note Organ - Pictures to Sound. Make yourself some sci-fi soundtracks. Worth the download, although I expect you'll be the judge of that....
posted by Spoon
on Apr 16, 2002 -
4 comments
Does anyone care that nobody needs to sing well anymore? Spot-on piece about the way that digital music tools aren't just making rotten singers sound OK (with software that shifts their pitch upwards), but good singers lazy ("hey that's fine, just copy'n'paste it into the next chorus").
And removing the excitement from studio performance. Is the only honest response to this electro-fakery to go all
Daft Punk? Or am I just an old Stevie'n'Retha'n'Marvin nostalgist?
posted by theplayethic
on Feb 14, 2002 -
53 comments
iTunes 2 was released recently. Some poor OS X users
lost all their data after installing this seemingly innocuous software. (about a third of the way down)
Is being on the bleeding edge worth it? What responsibility does a software manufacturer have to prevent from damaging your data? Any other horror stories from installing just released software? Not bashing Apple, as I'm using a Mac myself.
posted by the biscuit man
on Nov 5, 2001 -
25 comments
The warez, mp3-traders, hacker and terrorist industry just got a just got a boost in the arm. the goverment and all the music companies are going to see that the internet is not to be regulated. You cannot stop individuals from sharing files between themselves and everytime you start to ban one program another one more innovative than the last pops up. I am going to stop my little rant here because I don't want to seem like i am anti goverment ...viva la revolution.
posted by neo452
on Apr 10, 2000 -
0 comments
Napster Is this the best thing ever? What's the future of this software?
posted by chaz
on Mar 21, 2000 -
8 comments
