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

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.
posted on Feb 13, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Jan 31, 2008 - View this thread

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.
posted on Jan 29, 2008 - View this thread

The Death of High Fidelity
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

AEROTONE. | Hello!
posted on Nov 10, 2007 - View this thread

Serein v3
posted on Nov 9, 2007 - View this thread

HOMOPHONI
posted on Oct 7, 2007 - View this thread

Steve Mann's hydraulophone with sculpture gallery and performance video snippets: [1] [2] [3]
posted on Aug 27, 2007 - View this thread

A veritable plethora of online sound toys to tinkle your fancy.
posted on May 5, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Dec 18, 2006 - View this thread

"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 on Oct 29, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Sep 29, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Aug 22, 2006 - View this thread

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 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

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 on Jul 15, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Jul 5, 2006 - View this thread

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 on May 30, 2006 - View this thread

Super Mario Brothers sound effects. Boing! Boing! CRUNCH! Ding! Ding! Ding! Whoop! Boing!
posted on Feb 3, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Dec 4, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Sep 8, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Aug 18, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Aug 7, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Jun 5, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Mar 11, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Mar 3, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Mar 1, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Jan 9, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Dec 1, 2004 - View this thread

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

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 on Mar 20, 2004 - View this thread

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 on Mar 16, 2004 - View this thread

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 on Oct 23, 2003 - View this thread

< 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 on Jun 27, 2003 - View this thread

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 on May 19, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Nov 29, 2002 - View this thread

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

The Silophone - turning abandoned industrial farm equipment into musical instruments. "Located in Montréal's old port, Silo #5B-1 was built in 1958 and has been cited by Le Corbusier as a masterpiece of modern architecture....These tall parallel cylinders, whose form evokes the structure of an enormous organ, have exceptional acoustic properties: a stunning reverberation time of over 20 seconds. Anything played inside the Silo is euphonized, made beautiful, by the acoustics of the structure. All those who have entered have found it an overwhelming and unforgettable experience."
posted on Mar 2, 2001 - View this thread