Bebe Barron, 82, Pioneer of Electronic Scores, Is Dead. Best known for the soundtrack to the 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet -- the first full-length feature to use only electronic music -- she and her husband Louis Barron recorded the film's pre-synthesizer "electronic tonalities" with electronic circuits of their own invention. She never scored another feature film, but remained active in the avant-garde music scene.
posted on May 8, 2008 - View this thread

Edgard Varèse : Ionisation. Iannis Xenakis : Rebonds. György Ligeti : Artikulation and Poème Symphonique For 100 Metronomes. [NOTE: see hoverovers for link descriptions]
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

Yamaha's tenorion gets unveiled in Montreal this week. Going head-to-head with the Beamz music-maker linked here earlier, this baby has lights!
posted on Apr 10, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Mar 25, 2008 - View this thread

Autobahn, a 12 minute animated film by Roger Mainwood, was commissioned by Kraftwerk's record label in 1979 to be released on one of the first ever laser discs.
posted on Mar 2, 2008 - View this thread

The ultimate in nerdy tattoos? "Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin."
posted on Feb 27, 2008 - View this thread

Bloody balls! Make sure to stick around for the surprise ending.
posted on Jan 30, 2008 - View this thread

Dance music toys. Get your cheese on. Via Music Thing.
posted on Jan 15, 2008 - View this thread

Making your own transistor is probably beyond the abilities of a dedicated hobbyist. However, making simple triode vacuum tubes is practical. Many hobbyists have done so over the years. In this video, French ham-radio operator Claude Paillard shows you how. HIs model is the WWI-era type TM of 1915. (and btw, 2007 was the 100th anniversary of electronics, since de Forest made his first vacuum tube in 1907.)
posted on Jan 4, 2008 - View this thread

RIP Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1928-2007.
posted on Dec 7, 2007 - View this thread

Radiophonic Workshop - Alchemists of Sound.
posted on Nov 20, 2007 - View this thread

Electronic, animated tattoos [scroll down to video, which is nsfw]. The latest body jewelry, Skintile Electronic Sensing Jewelry.
posted on Oct 24, 2007 - View this thread

HOMOPHONI
posted on Oct 7, 2007 - View this thread

arhiva7
posted on Oct 6, 2007 - View this thread

Musica Excentrica.
posted on Aug 7, 2007 - View this thread

Fuck Yuo I Am a Robot are offering their album Compensator for the Accelerator for free download from their site. Infectious ass-shakin' Estonian electro-pop. Lyrics to track 2 NSFW, likewise sleeve art jpgs if you opt for the .zip download. You can sample one of the tracks, Hydraulic, on YouTube if you don't know them and would like to check them out first, though personally I can't get enough of Zukunft (direct mp3 link).
posted on Jul 12, 2007 - View this thread

Growing.
posted on Jul 7, 2007 - View this thread

Classical hits on the Theremin: Thomas Grillo performs Rachmaninoff's Vocalise, and the inimitable Clara Rockmore plays Cassado's Requiebros and Saint-Saëns The Swan.
posted on Jul 1, 2007 - View this thread

How many drummers does it take to change a lightbulb?

None, they have machines to do that now. If you don’t like the 909, check out the Roland TR-330, or perhaps the Suzuki RPM-40, or even the classic Electro-Harmonix Rhythm 12, and many, many more
posted on May 15, 2007 - View this thread

The Wii Loop Machine. Via.
posted on Mar 22, 2007 - View this thread

Tod Dockstader.
posted on Feb 2, 2007 - View this thread

Electronic Literature Collection, volume 1
posted on Jan 24, 2007 - View this thread

Man has become machine.
posted on Jan 17, 2007 - View this thread

A massive collection of live DJ and PA sets of electronic music sorted by year and genre. Enjoy.
(Coral Cache link. Please use this to help archive and propagate the files.)
posted on Dec 31, 2006 - View this thread

Get in on the stream while there's space, because Autechre is doing a boomtastic live DJ set full of 80s electronica, mashed up weirdness and god knows what else... more links posted in the thread as I think of them but I have to hit post now because it's time sensitive.
posted on Dec 29, 2006 - View this thread

The Toriton Plus A new electronic music interface using water and light. (YouTube). Make your own. From Little-Scale, which is chock-full of cool and wonderous stuff.
posted on Nov 11, 2006 - View this thread

Circuit bending a personal computer. (Server slow? Mirror 1 Mirror 2) (more inside)
posted on Nov 8, 2006 - View this thread

Imagine a massively multiplayer music studio, connected worldwide over the Internet. Log in, and everyone sees a set of synths, effects, sequencers, or other custom patches. Everyone’s looking at essentially the same screen, and can add beats, trip out effects, slide the bpm up and down, and reprogram synths — all at once. That’s the basic idea of netpd.
posted on Oct 25, 2006 - View this thread

WaxDJ.com - an excellent source for free downloads and streams of original electronic music mixes of all sorts, from seasoned pros to beginning bedroom amatuers, all told numbering in the hundreds or thousands. My current brand new favorite is the very diverse and well-versed Detriot/Chicago techno stylings of DJ Rubsilent. Recomended mix: Future Funk 23: (Direct MP3 link) (Streaming mp3 link) But don't let me divert you - search for your favorite local DJ or browse for new ones.
posted on Oct 11, 2006 - View this thread

[O]ne muggy day in mid-August [2002], [Diebold consultant Chris] Hood was surprised to see the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, arrive in Georgia from his headquarters in Texas. With the primaries looming, Urosevich was personally distributing a "patch," a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program. "We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do," Hood says. "The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done. . . . It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told me. "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level."
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Will the Next Election be Hacked?
posted on Sep 22, 2006 - View this thread

Magink has built the worlds first billboard using a type of e-ink, similar to the display technology used in the coveted Sony Reader devices - except it is 10'x20' and in full color. Advertisers nirvana and a colorized glimpse of the future of electronic ink devices.
posted on Sep 8, 2006 - View this thread

10 greatest beat-making videos ever* "*Or, you know, today." A Music thing thing.
posted on Aug 23, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Aug 12, 2006 - View this thread

Sonic Postcards - winner of the New Statesman New Media Award. Explore sound. Via the Sonic Arts Network, UK exponents of Electroacoustic music.
posted on Aug 2, 2006 - View this thread

Discovering Electronic Music (1983) pt 2, pt 3 [youtube, via linkfilter]
posted on Jul 19, 2006 - View this thread

A video broadcast of György Ligeti's Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes (AVI, French), with helpful background on the controversial piece located here. For those who know French, you may also be interested in 1993's György Ligeti: Portrait, A Documentary by Michel Follin, showing Ligeti as "the displaced cosmopolitan", through the metaphor of train ride through the European countryside. These and many other avant-garde films can be found at Ubuweb, including features with William Burroughs, a recent "performance" of Cage's 4'33", and Varése and Le Corbusier's 1958 World Fair collaboration Poême électronique, a 400-speaker soundspace installation predating later, more experimental feedback pieces.
posted on Jul 2, 2006 - View this thread

Switched on Game Boy (zip of mp3's) by Pharmacom , released on 20kbps rec. Wendy Carlos, beware.
posted on Jun 30, 2006 - View this thread

"Emergency Broadcast Network" has been mentioned before (EBN), but you have to see it for yourself: YouTube --> We Will Rock You, Sinatra, Get Up Get Down, Suddenly, Comply, Hello, Documercial, Psychoactive Drugs, and even Homicidal Schizophrenic.
EBN has something to do with MBM.
posted on Jun 1, 2006 - View this thread

Brian Eno is the godfather of electronica, the inventor of ambient music, and producer of the best work by bands like the Talking Heads and U2. Tchad Blake has helmed the mixing board for Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Soul Coughing and the Bad Plus, to name just a few. Paul Simon is one of the most recognized names in pop music both for his work with Art Garfunkel and for his fusion of American pop music with African and South American music. Surprise is the the album they collaborated on, the new Paul Simon record featuring Eno's signature sonic landscapes all over it, and the entire lovely thing, complete with liner notes, is available to listen to on Simon's website.
posted on May 9, 2006 - View this thread

The Linux Open Source Sound Project. Music made with open source software, published under a Creative Commons Sampling License, to download (or if you've created some yourself, upload). Each track lists the software used in it's creation. Download are mostly Ogg Vorbis (naturally). Mostly electronic music (in case you were wondering).
posted on May 8, 2006 - View this thread

Nam June Paik passed away on Sunday. We'll read educated commentaries in the next few days, but what I most affectionately remember about him is how his work made me laugh happily during the 70s and 80s. A precursor of video art, he was the first to use plugged tv sets as building blocks in the most playful ways. His TV Buddha is arguably an unsurpassed classic (a motionless moving image, an outside observation of an inner meditation, even -why not?- a premonition of a blogger) (this last one is a joke: I told you Paik made me laugh). R.I.P.
posted on Jan 30, 2006 - View this thread

Kevin Blechdom is a girl. Along with Blevin Blectum, she was once 1/2 of the duo Blectum from Blechdom (R.I.P.). Kevin is now a solo artist (as is Blevin) living in Germany. Her website is chock full of fun and embarrassing things, such as dirty comics, her homemade patches for MAX/MSP (an amazing virtual synth program), the Blectionary (in case you need help deciphering her world), and four songs from the hit Broadway and theatrical musical 'Annie' as performed by a (hopefully) preteen Kevin. Complete table of contents here. (note: some links may be NSFW. Please be careful.)
posted on Jan 26, 2006 - View this thread

Bruce Haack Grandfather of Techno. "Bruce was always somewhat prophetic in his works and in predictions to friends - he once described a future age in which all music would be shared by everyone..."

MP3.com samples. Wikipedia. Incomplete discography. Weird interview. And the video documentary, Bruce Haack: King of Techno. (Warning: Flash, audio.)
posted on Jan 18, 2006 - View this thread

Hippocamp Ruins Sgt Pepper's A group of electronic artists have worked on a "ruined" version of the Beatles Sgt Pepper's classic. Designed to accompany and contrast with the ".... Ruins Pet Sounds" release from earlier in the year .... this ruined release exists to be compared and contrasted to the original album and its artistic competitor Pet Sounds. The original classic is recontextualised through the humour and vision of these artists whose approaches to the tracks aims to re-examine Pepper's through a filter of 2005 technology.
posted on Dec 10, 2005 - View this thread

Electro-funk is a often overlooked genre of dance music that is very influential for many genres of dance music that came around it and after it, including Hip-Hop, Dance, Disco, Electric Boogie, Freestyle, Techno and Drum and Bass.
One of the most prominent Electro-Funk DJs was Greg Wilson, who has set up electrofunkroots.co.uk to document the history and influence of Electro-Funk. Wilson interviews Quentin Leo Cook, (a.k.a. Norman Cook, a.k.a. Fatboy Slim) on Cook's impressions of Electro-Funk and how it has influenced him as a music producer and DJ.
Wilson has also provided a personal history and retrospective mix of top Electro-Funk songs to A Guy Called Gerald for Samurai.fm.
posted on Nov 29, 2005 - View this thread

Electronic Paper looks pretty neat, although I'm skeptical they could produce it for less than traditional paper anytime soon. Such inventions could even be better for our environment in the long run, although it appears to boil down to personal preference when it comes to Paper vs. Plastic.
posted on Jul 28, 2005 - View this thread

Bassline Bassline. Rock has its electric guitar, hip-hop has its turntable/mic, and electronic music has its Roland TB-303. One of the few single instruments that can claim to define the entire genre, its history is an interesting one: "Bassline Baseline is a video essay that investigates the invention, failure and subsequent resurrection of the mythic Roland TB-303 Bass Line music machine in the last two decades of the 20th century."
posted on Jul 18, 2005 - View this thread

Dewanatron : a family of electronic instruments ‘which hazard unpredictable behaviors and self playing tendencies.’ See, for example, the Alphatron, the Dual-Primate Console, and the Courtesy Modulator. Besides his work as an instrument- and furniture-maker, the Dewanatrons’ co-creator, Brian Dewan, is a musician and singer who has collaborated with They Might Be Giants, among others. He is also a visual artist, who has created numerous filmstrips, and who was responsible for the ‘flying victrola’ design for the the Neutral Milk Hotel album ‘In The Aeroplane Over the Sea.’
posted on Apr 21, 2005 - View this thread

Autechre Radio - Sounds like Autechre will be doing a radio broadcast of experimental sound on Sunday, April 10th from 3 PM EST until late. The feed already connects to some really weird stuff. Stay tuned, should be fun!
posted on Apr 7, 2005 - View this thread

By a weird coincidence, after reading this interview in New Scientist with three of the engineers who made electronic music possible, I walked by a poster for a documentary film about Bob Moog. One of my earliest memories of electronic music in the 1970s was an elementary school music teacher who was really into Wendy Carlos' and Isao Tomita's early arrangements of classical works for synthesizer. Of course, electronic music history goes back to the 1920s with the theremin developed as a classical instrument. It has its own web portal filled with lots of good stuff. And now for something slightly different, Conlon Nancarrow wrote piano compositions that could not be performed by human hands, demanding the use of a player piano.
posted on Apr 4, 2005 - View this thread