If I’d been one of Pythagoras’ akousmatikoi around 500 BCE, I’d have known about it. And if I’d been part of the musique concrète movement during the sixties, I’d have known about it. If you’re involved in radio, TV, movies or games, you need know about it too...
Before the internet, when each morning’s post brought a new pile of vinyl to my desk for listening and review, I came to regard the schoolyard as one of the music biz’s most underrated assets.
Here, boys (exclusively) shared the fruits of hours of bedroom listening. Personal musical explorations were enthusiastically pooled for the greater good. Later, commitments and kids would take it all away.
It was Fatboy Slim who first put me wise to the ‘democratisation of music’. In a staunch defence of music sampling’s domination of the late-’80s music charts, his arguments were a taste of things to come…
Major labels and big-room recording studios were struggling in the face of project recording and on-line distribution. Now, WholeWorldBand and Songkick Detour are offering fresh takes on music recording and gig promotion.
Once again, it began as a throwaway Facebook exchange. Why, a Friend asked, do DJs have to invent new words and stupid spellings for everything?
Moving on from DJs posturing and muso disdain, there is a wealth of worth in the language of the music business. It is constantly evolving to define, enable and exclude, responding to events, technical advance and outside forces. And we need it as much as we need mics and mixers or ambition and opportunity…
For most players, the ‘feel’ of an instrument is an intrinsic and essential part of its character and its use. It can even be the most important part of your relationship with a particular instrument. To separate sound and feel would be laughable – unless you’re a keyboard player.
We’ve done this twice to date. First, when we used electronic keyboards to imitate other instruments. And now we’re doing it again with ‘soft synths’.
Two years ago, I blogged about apps ‘shaping future computer operation’. Not a bad call, on reflection – but I completely missed their potential role in ‘second screen’ television viewing.
Here the convenience and mobility of a tablet or smartphone conspires with a suitable app to become a companion device to live TV. Sounds trivial? Big broadcasters and serious numbers say that it’s not…
Wanted: Keyboard player/tape recorder technician for BBC Radiophonic Workshop tribute band. Knowledge of British 1960/70/80s TV and strong technical background essential. Must be able to patch unreliable synthesisers, splice tape and change valves in live performance setting. No time-wasters, breadheads or planks.
No takers? No surprise, really... Yesterday’s World is no place for today’s Tomorrow People. Or is it?
Midi has enjoyed a lot of press recently. In honour of its 30th birthday, it’s been in the news everywhere from tech blogs to the broadsheets, from Twitter to TV. And deservedly so...
Against the odds, Midi has provided electronic music making with its lingua franca and rewritten the future of electronic musical instruments and music making. Thirty years ago, it was 1983 and Midi changed my life.
Just as a well-crafted thriller kicks up a gear when apparently unrelated threads converge, the collapse of UK music and media retailer HMV seems to have greater significance than ‘just’ the failure of another high-street shop in an economic crisis.
It feels designed. As if an unseen hand has pushed Nipper – presciently posed on His Masters’ Coffin – into the front line against the sinister forces behind the music download. And that a big reveal is just around the corner.
Putting a new spin on the early work of Cecil Sharp and ethnomusicologists such as Alan Lomax and David Lewiston who have followed, Sabine Kämper has released Chorus and Cuisine – adding a unique culinary angle to the mission of documenting and preserving endangered music.
But she is not alone in her mission, or in taking on the technical challenges of remote field recording…
The recent UK Reproduced Sound conference invested heavily in acoustic modelling and auralisation. Among the event’s speakers, conference chair Paul Malpas looked at ‘the role of auralisation in interdisciplinary design’, questioning the neglect of sound in the early development stages of buildings. Good man.
On the surface, it wasn’t an issue that should have needed raising at an acoustics conference. But if not here, then where?
Fast-and-Wide Blog
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Music and Obsolescence: An Index of PossibilitiesAs a Tyrell Corporation Nexus-6 replicant, Blade Runner’s Roy Batty had a predetermined life span of just four years – and he wanted it extended. Remonstrations...Read More...
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Our Infatuation with SaturationWhen professional digital audio made its entrance, the limitations of early technology combined with the excitement of some advocates made it a soft target...Read More...
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Controlling InterestThe very first synthesiser I owned was a Moog. And my second; and my third. I still have two of them, a Micromoog and Minimoog, but sold the third, an...Read More...
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Sport in Absentia: The Sound of the CrowdSo sport is back, in part, but fans are presently unwelcome at the matches being played – unless you count the cut-outs that the likes of Brighton &...Read More...
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The Last Seat in the HouseWe were just a few days into the UK coronavirus lockdown, when a copy of The Last Seat in the House: The Story of Hanley Sound arrived on my doorstep....Read More...
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Knocking Back CoronaWith only 13 countries presently likely to be remaining Covid-19 free, the live music and club industries worldwide have taken a heavy blow. The games...Read More...
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Après MidiWhen it appeared in 1983, Midi changed my life – as it did for countless other keyboard players around the world. Like any revolution worthy of...Read More...
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evolution: Sennheiser’s revolution Pt.2Having explored the thinking and story behind the evolution concept, Sennheiser’s exclusive show-and-tell session in London gave the floor to the a handful...Read More...
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evolution: Sennheiser’s revolution Pt.1‘Twenty years ago, a question was posed: should Sennheiser continue to produce dynamic microphones? Our prices had gone up and our profit had gone down...Read More...
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The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal RemainsReleased in March 1967, ‘Arnold Layne’ was the first of eight singles from the fledgling Pink Floyd that year. Fifty years on, and with an unassailable...Read More...
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Making Waves: Cause and Effect in Kit ReviewsSharing time and a couple of bottles of Asahi with another former pro audio magazine editor in the bar of London’s Metropolis Studios recently, the...Read More...
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The Heydays of PhaseSometime around 1975-76 I wanted an MXR Phase 90 for my Wurlitzer electric piano – I wanted what the ‘real’ keyboard players of the time were using....Read More...
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The Vibe RevivalWith the ambition of the first Leslie emulation pedals finally fulfilled, the story of the Shin-ei Uni-Vibe has come full circle. In its wake we have phasers,...Read More...
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Second Screen Sports: Off Tube, On TargetMy local pub has a split personality. Or, maybe, it’s more like a secret identity – a single location but with two roles in life. For some of us,...Read More...
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Sound of Story: Chapter 3I once read that smell is our strongest associative sense. I’ve since tried to establish the relative ability of our other senses to evoke memories...Read More...
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Flange Theory: How I Miss My MistressIt seems to have become a common misconception that guitar fuzz boxes and distortion pedals predate more eloquent effects, such as phasing and flanging. OK,...Read More...
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