As the first decentralised digital currency, Bitcoin claims to be ‘changing finance in the same way that the web changed publishing’. If so, then pro audio is lined up for another game change on the scale that digital audio wrought on the recording industry and online distribution wrought on record companies.
That’s no small claim, but the signposts are there for those prepared to follow them. So, who is onboard for the ride?
Second screen viewing took another decisive step towards your living room with the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One games consoles last week.
Now lined up in direct competition with smart TVs to provide a domestic media hub, both Sony and Microsoft are looking to cover all bases… including making use of second screen working to expand their gaming. How is the next-gen console shaping up?
I struggled to get my head around computer viruses to begin with. The whole concept was at odds with my understanding of what real-world software was about. And I frowned at the first mention of self-healing DSP. Doesn’t intelligent technology belong to Asimov and his Three Laws?
American neuroscientist Christof Koch reckons that ‘consciousness arises within any sufficiently complex, information-processing system’…
My viewing of the episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot that aired on TV last week wasn’t what anyone had in mind when she penned the story or when the television series began in 1989 – or even when ITV Studios recently made the final run of four episodes. Very much has changed in the intervening years.
And there are more changes in the wind, as the second screen is poised to reshape TV broadcasting – and music could see the greatest changes of all...
It’s been a while – 22 years, in fact – but as I start to retell the story, I lift my hand and it’s trembling gently. Just as it did then.
For a few moments I am transported back to a quiet London hotel room, where I am reading from the transcription of an interview I had done a few days earlier. I’m telling David Sylvian what the other members of his band have said about him and their work together on their most recent album. It’s a bit tense…
Where vinyl and cassette once conspired to carry music in a beautiful symmetry of quality and portability, they have been brought head-to-head by the launch of Cassette Store Day. Rather than reuniting the old team, this has divided opinion over their relative worth.
We’ve become used to the succession of ‘format wars’, but this has to be the first engagement fought between obsolete and obsolescent media…
The recent collateral blocking of the UK’s Radio Times website as a result of a dispute between the Premier League and an unrelated copyright infringing site is just the latest in a series of warnings over internet control.
There is a strong argument for regulating internet content. But if new censorship arrives, what is its likely impact on broadcasting, music and the wider audio industry? The signs are that it’s a disaster in the making...
‘Games art teams are ten years ahead of audio. We have some catching up to do – we need to ride their coat-tails...’
While some are celebrating the achievements of games sound designers, others are convinced that we are not making the best of the opportunities on offer. And with next-gen consoles and cloud computing in imminent prospect, the ‘others’ may well be right...
I’m not sure how I managed to miss the term ‘acousmatic’ until now, but having found it, I have a whole new take on sound.
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.