Get Started Building Your Own Instrument

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Guitar Hero: Good? Evil?

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Could Guitar Hero Be Coming to the Small Screen?

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Odd, Unusual, and Downright Weird Instrument Links

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Musical Illusions Abound

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Fun Music Flash Visualisation

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CBC Composing Contest

Where does the time go? I was listening to the CBC on the drive into work one morning when I heard a mysterious ad for ‘Evolution’. Well I bit and went to CBC.ca/evolution. Turns out it is a contest. A contest whose deadline is coming soon. Let me give you the run down:

CBC is looking for composers to promote. Five finalists get sequestered away in Banff to compose a piece each to be performed at The Banff Centre and broadcast live on CBC Radio 2 with a $20,000 grand prize going to the winner.

How can I let an opportunity like this go by? I’ve jumped on it and have been frantically pulling together a composition that I’ve been lazily toying with for the past year. In my single-minded focus I’ve neglected to write a post. For that I apologise. I know the timing is tight, but maybe some of you will be interested in laying your work on the line. Go over to the CBC Evolution page and read up on the contest.

On a related note, I have to say that the pressure of a deadline is really making me produce. Knowing that you only have until X date and that is it. After which you’re dead in the water, finito. It’s motivating to say the least. I was taking so long to get this composition recorded that I lost all focus. Now I have tackled it with renewed vigor and have hope again that I will see it finished.

 

Mouse Around With Strings

Looking for for some musical play? Contrapunctus Variations is an awesome way to waste time on the internet. You get to compose ditties with mouse gestures for a string quartet. It’s pretty easy to use, my only qualm is that it’s a bit confusing as to what is going on, making it hard to control. Still, the chaotic nature leads to some gems, little snippets of musical goodness that float up so that you may snatch them. Try it out, you may get inspired or may find the basis for a full song,

 

You Put Your Violin Where?!?

Here’s an interesting thing you can do with a cane, play music on it. I came across in my web travels this wonderful gadget cane whereupon a working violin was stuffed into a cane. Now I can’t attest to the sound of it (though I have dug up video on youtube of a Pochette Fiddle which is very much related to a violin cane in size, and no doubt timbre), I’m sure the it’ll do in a pinch for when, say, you’re in a fiddle contest with Satan. Having a fiddle stowed away on person for such occasions could be a life saver. This whole business reminds me of The Steel General in Roger Zelazny’s “Creatures of Light and Darkness” who had a collapsable banjo that fit into a compartment where his heart used to be.

For the perversely curious here are some gorgeous pictures of a mid-19th century violin-cane. Also here is some information on the history and use of these canes. As well here are some more pictures of another such cane.

 

How Can You Live In an Instrument?

Continuing on the theme of an earlier post on unsual instruments here is this awesome musical house. It seems that someone decided to make their house into an instrument, or a house sized instrument depending on your perspective.

All the Architectural instruments are based around strings. The Architecture becomes the structure, bridge and resonator for these giant stringed instruments. Specially developed brass wire and piano wires are used as “the strings” of the instruments. The use of long string technologies developed by Bill Close allow for the instruments to be architectural in scale. The complex patterns of strings are extension of the architectural lines of the house and become an integral part of the visual experience.

 

Rap Hates Classical and Classical Hates Rap

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. That saying is never more true when talking about one’s taste in music. A cute little story coming down the pipeline recently: Judge sentences rap music fan to Bach, Beethoven. Now I suppose the lesson in all this is don’t subject others to your trash or you will be subjected to theirs. Words to live by, and really, the cornerstone of civility.

URBANA, Ohio (AP) — A defendant had a hard time facing the music. Andrew Vactor was facing a $150 fine for playing rap music too loudly on his car stereo in July. But a judge offered to reduce that to $35 if Vactor spent 20 hours listening to classical music by the likes of Bach, Beethoven and Chopin.

Vactor, 24, lasted only about 15 minutes, a probation officer said.

It wasn’t the music, Vactor said, he just needed to be at practice with the rest of the Urbana University basketball team.

“I didn’t have the time to deal with that,” he said. “I just decided to pay the fine.”

Champaign County Municipal Court Judge Susan Fornof-Lippencott says the idea was to force Vactor to listen to something he might not prefer, just as other people had no choice but to listen to his loud rap music.

“I think a lot of people don’t like to be forced to listen to music,” she said.

She’s also taped TV shows for defendants in other cases to watch on topics such as financial responsibility. As she sees it, they get the chance to have their fine reduced “and at the same time broaden their horizons.”

 

Canadian Songwriting Contest With a Cash Prize

You have just over two months to get your award winning song crafted. Astral Media Radio and Canadian Music Week are presenting the 16th Annual National Songwriting Competition.

The deadline is on Friday, December 12, 2008, but don’t take my word for it read the rules and regulations. I must admit it’s a sweet Grand Prize too:

• $10,000.00 in cash (first runner up receives $2,500.00 cash)
• TASCAM 2488 NEO PortaStudio – 24-track Self Contained Audio Work Station
• NEUMANN TLM 49 Professional Studio Microphone
• 30 hours of mixing and mastering time from METALWORKS, Canada’s #1 Recording Studio
• Complete Website Design & One Year Web Hosting from J.E.T. MEDIA AND DESIGN
• $5,000.00 National Radio Promotion Package from dB PROMOTIONS & PUBLICITY INC.

Just what you need to kickstart your burgeoning music career.

 

Extreme Instruments

It’s been a while dear readers. I’ve had a lion’s share of my time taken by the arrival of my second offspring. But I’m here now to serve some music goodness.

I’ve found some wonderful examples of instrument making gone amok (much of it having to do with scale, hehe). For instance a real playable tiny grand piano or a giant accordian. If the size of an instrument is important to you, you might be interested to put something that is 36 inches to your mouth. If that’s not enough for you this one is 41 inches and requires two people to blow it. Still want more? Here’s a horn that needs 6 midgets to blow it.

There’s also the freaky instruments contingent. This guy built a giant bass banjo. In fact, for a whole whack of fun and wild instruments check out the gallery of www.oddmusic.com. This one looks like a metal horn of plenty spewing forth musical goodness. Speaking of the horn of plenty, ever wonder what vegetables sound like? Look no further the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. They play instruments carved from all manners of veggy goodness. The Harpejji is apparently what happens when you smoosh a piano and a guitar together. And this is what happens when you mix a Hurdy-Gurdy with Furbies. Maybe some instruments just shouldn’t be made, but how fun would the music world be if no one tried to do weird and wonderful things.

 

DIY Musical Mayhem

For those with a DIY bent, Instructables.com has a group devoted to audio projects. While there are many projects related to iPod speakers, there are some projects more related to music production. Take the Looper for instance. Many a time when I’m diddling on the guitar I come up with a lick I’d like to expand upon. It’s a bit of work getting set up to record, then edit on my computer just to loop a lick so I can jam over it. I don’t want to break the mood, I’d rather just stomp on a button to punch in and out then continue on vamping. Check out the cool Bass stick too. Making your own instrument is an awesome way to bring fresh creativity to your music as you try to find a place for it in the songs you compose.

 

Songs to Get You Laid

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5 Methods of the Music Snob

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Say NO to Angst

The following is just a short list of words whose inclusion in lyrics I feel should be seriously considered, rather than haphazardly sprinkled in.

While some are overused, others too obvious, most are blunt and do not convey any craftsmanship that may be present in the lyrics. In short, they’re a turnoff. As soon as I hear one of these words my expectations just drop. That’s not to say these words can’t be used well, but the more of them included in one piece, the less likely it is that the work is a brilliant gem.

When writing one should strive to ’show’ and not ‘tell’. The writing then takes on a more experiential tone and not one of a third grade book report on a teenager’s breakup letter. I felt used, then I felt angry, then I felt … blah, blah, blah. One can only hope that producers in the recording studio would have an intervention before anything was committed to tape. Alas, all too often terrible lyrics slip out into the wild and sully what would have been a perfectly listenable song.

The List:

Dark, Darkness, Black, Night, Pain, Hurt, Broken, Sad, Angry, Rage, Feel, Love, Understand, Cry, Tear, Empty, Cold, Stone, Want, Alone, Care, Blood, Hide, Mask, Heart, Everybody, No one, Run

 

Punk Rock Robots Pogo to the Music

BBC reports on robots that have learned to appreciate punk music. I like this story because it combines two of my favorite subjects. As far as building robots that evaluate music goes it’s an interesting reversal on the usual endeavor to have machines perform or write music. In the sci-fi vision of the future could there be a robot audience to a robot band? I can only see this as furthering the ability of computers to generate songs. If they have an ability to judge the musicality of a piece then by using genetic programming algorithms or even using a Monte Carlo approach there ceases to be a need for human interference guiding the process.

The robots can decide whether a song is punk or not within 30 seconds.

“It depends on the form at the beginning of the song. It flicks between thinking a song is punk and not punk at the start and then becomes convinced,” said Mr Jones Morris.

Professor McOwan added: “If you look at the audio cortex in the brain and the cochlea in the ear you find that’s exactly how the human system does it.

The robot reacts to the level of “punk” in the song.

The more punk it believes the song is, the more it pogos in a “happy and frenzied way”, said Professor McOwan.

Read more ….

 

Don’t Get Stuck

Magnetic Fridge poetry! I love this stuff. It forces you to put together thoughts in unexpected ways. It’s the constraint on word choice that does it; you have to think of another way to say what you want given the available vocabulary. Artificial limits are a great way to break writers block or spark creativity.

Brian Eno made a set of cards he called Oblique Strategies that he would use for this purpose. Each card contained a directive such as “Honour Your Error as a Hidden Intention” or “Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame”. Through having to carry out this directive you take yourself in a direction uncharted, or gain new perspective on a problem.

You can buy these cards on ebay, though the original sets can be pricey. They have since been put into many other forms like a program, placed on the web, and are even available as a dashboard widget.

SongsToWearPantsTo is the brainchild of a very talented musician. This guy takes on the most arbitrary and ludicrous restraints that are suggested by the public and pulls them off with great flair and humour. Be sure to check out “A Rap Song in Which None of the Lyrics Contain the Letter E”

So remember kids, next time you’re beating your head against something, put handcuffs on.