Moog-eyeFor 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’.

F1 TimingTwo 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…

Dark Side of the MoonWanted: 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?

Prophet 5Midi 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.

NipperJust 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.

WolwedansPutting 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…

London Aquatics CentreThe 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?

Higgs BosonThere’s a big problem with the Big Bang. A Big Audio Problem.

The background noise thrown up by the current rush of theories – p-branes, inflation, a bubble universe, multiple Big Bangs and their like – has drowned out the impossibility of a bang of any kind occurring where no gasses or fluids yet exist.

But then, you can’t believe everything you hear about sound…

In the beginningIn the beginning was the word, and the word was analogue. Analogue shone on the world of sound recording, and it was good.

For a long time, good people made good music with analogue, and looked no further for their needs. But then a shadow fell across the face of the music makers. The shadow was cast by a new force called digital. It broke analogue’s spell, and the world was remade...

vu meterThe attitude to audio taken by TV advertisers and gamers could not be more contrasting, more telling – or more damning.

While advertisers eagerly lay claim to the term ‘creative’, their antagonistic stance on loudness betrays a small-minded regard for sound and its applications. Gamers, on the other hand, appear to be getting the most out of audio on all fronts. And that includes loudness…

Hearing protectionI could almost hear the gentle shuffle of feet and slow intake of breath while courage was gathered. A long pause. Then the news. A fellow audio journalist and good friend has been told that he needs hearing aids. It's a confession...

Another silence. It is an awkward moment at both ends of the phone. Although we are the press, we do audio. We love audio. The unspoken question, then – is it all over for him?

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Fast-and-Wide.com An independent news site and blog for professional audio and related businesses, Fast-and-Wide.com provides a platform for discussion and information exchange in one of the world's fastest-moving technology-based industries.
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