The Speaking Piano, and Transforming Audio to MIDI - Austrian Composer Peter Ablinger has transformed a child speaking so that it can be played as MIDI events on a mechanically-controlled piano, making the piano a kind of speech speaker.
posted by Burhanistan on Oct 7, 2009 - 53 comments

The Snyderphonics Manta . With a few exceptions like the rare Buchla Thunder and the ZenDrum, computer musicians were stuck with controllers disguised as traditional instruments, rolling their own, or using grids of generic rubber pads. The Manta, in the spirit of the Serge TKB's capacitance touchplate construction, attempts to do something new, and people are already doing interesting things with it. Videos: polyphonic keys, sequencer, technique, and lots more
posted by Señor Pantalones on Jun 18, 2009 - 7 comments

Have you ever wondered what the national anthem of Bolivia, Nepal or The Republic of Seychelles sounded like? Well wonder no more because NationalAnthems.info has got you covered! It claims to have the national anthem for every country in the world in MIDI format, along with downloadable lyrics and sheet music so you can sing and play along. But if the MIDI format isn't doing it for you, there's also other sites that you can visit that have downloadable MP3s of pretty much every national anthem this planet and its inhabitants have to offer, such as this one or this one, which is notable in that the anthems featured there were performed by the US Navy Band. And finally, for your further reading and listening pleasure, check out this forum which contains background information on and even more links to downloadable national anthems.
posted by Effigy2000 on Sep 22, 2008 - 14 comments

Rainbow Divider warning: sound; animated gifs; awesomeness
posted by Stynxno on Feb 11, 2008 - 56 comments

Midi plus Art plus Cleverness with video game nostalgia then put up on Youtube -- What does that equal? Beats me, but it sure looks and sounds cool. [more inside]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia on Nov 21, 2007 - 11 comments

What is the monome? A sequencer? A trigger? A sampler? A trippy rave machine? A general-purpose turing device? Just a toy or the open-source future of digital music? [more inside]
posted by Tlogmer on Sep 27, 2007 - 15 comments

Zenph Studios has developed a process (using high-resolution MIDI) which "re-performed" Glenn Gould's famous 1955 piano recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations in hybrid multichannel SA-CD format.
posted by chuckdarwin on Sep 4, 2007 - 48 comments

Gene2Music: "We assigned a chord to each amino acid," said Rie Takahashi, a UCLA research assistant and an award-winning, classically trained piano player. "We want to see if we can hear patterns within the music, as opposed to looking at the letters of an amino acid or protein sequence. We can listen to a protein, as opposed to just looking at it."
posted by Alvy Ampersand on May 17, 2007 - 30 comments

Engadget points out Sven König's Scrambled Hackz, an Ableton Live-like app that takes in sound samples, analyzes their spectrum, and builds a triggerable, interactive beatbox set upon which hilarious and remarkable performances can be built. A GPLed package will be released soon.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Mar 27, 2006 - 23 comments

The Unheard Beethoven - This website endeavors to make all of Beethoven's unrecorded music readily accessible to the public. These never-before-heard works are now available to anyone with a computer, a modem and a soundcard, in the form of MIDI files. At present, over twelve hours of Beethoven's music is available on this website and in no other listenable format.
posted by Wolfdog on Jul 11, 2005 - 16 comments

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you for your musical enjoyment: Intelligent MIDI Sequencing with Hamster Control
posted by NotMyselfRightNow on Feb 25, 2005 - 9 comments

John Nozum's Sleep Apnea page isn't particularly interesting unless you suffer from the condition. He spends a great deal of time discussing his treatment which included a Tracheostomy. Some of it's not pleasant to look at but then you stumble onto this page and things... well... what can I say? I just hope to God this guy never gets a colostomy bag. A few warnings: Although not particularly gory or gross, many of these pictures are unpleasant in one way or another. Also, there's an embedded midi file on every page. BEWARE (it's located at the bottom of the page).
posted by E_B_A on Dec 4, 2004 - 6 comments

"The Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee is a [computer] keyboard MIDI controller of my own invention based on changes of pitch, rather than fixed pitches. This scheme gives the performer the ability to perform extremely quick, rhapsodical lines." Perfect for the music nerd on your Christmas list. Complete with "instructional" video (53MB .mov) and mp3s. I'm on a Mac so I can't try out the freeware version.
posted by Cryptical Envelopment on Dec 1, 2004 - 17 comments

The Sound of Mathematics Mathematical functions whose output have been jammed into MIDI files. The results are disturbingly musical.
posted by Mwongozi on Mar 30, 2004 - 8 comments

PC Audio 'toy' now an inexpensive MIDI controller , thanks to this program. The Mixman DM2 is still a toy, but DM2 to MIDI opens up a world of soft/hardware options for this cheap device. I've tried it with NI's Traktor and Ableton Live, and it works very nicely.
posted by ewwgene on Jul 22, 2003 - 18 comments

The Chicken Dance inspires lunacy like no other piece of music. I found myself in a giggling fit over the silliness of the pictures on this page. Beware-it has the obligatory embedded MIDI file.
posted by plinth on Jun 12, 2001 - 10 comments

Inspector Clouseau as Greek Police role-model? Wait for the midi file to load... At first I thought the site was hacked but, no, I checked, it's the real "Hellenic police informatics dept" web-site. I'm not sure whether it's self-sarcasm or cluelessness. And I wont even start about the site's imaginative design...
posted by talos on Mar 6, 2001 - 3 comments

Did you ever play console games for hours on end? I bet you can recall the annoying MIDI music that went with them. Relive the good old days at the Video Game Music Archive.
posted by mathowie on Nov 3, 1999 - 0 comments