Everything is a drum: two large men edition
By now these guys have been on late-night TV and tons of folks have seen them. But it’s so good I had to help spread the word anyway. Here is “Tummy Talk 2”:
entertaining
audio / entertaining / industry insight / inspiring / interviews / media / science / sound / sound design
Favorite feed: Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast by Defacto Sound
Twenty Thousand Hertz is a great, easy-to-listen-to podcast with stories and interviews about those hidden elements of sound and sound design throughout our world, the ones you might never have considered or even heard of before. The NBC chimes, the voice of Siri, the sounds of the cars we buy, the hum generated by a secret government project—lots of neat little explorations.
What a music recording engineer actually does.
Fantastic, short, hilarious video formerly known as “The profession of a sound engineer 2013.”
composing/songwriting / entertaining / inspiring / media / music / music performance / music recording / scoring / sound / sound design / video
Diego Stocco’s Custom Built Orchestra.
Now here’s a man living out his love of sounds. A great introduction to Diego Stocco via his Custom Built Orchestra:
Everything is a drum: frozen lake edition.
So apparently a woman slipped on the ice and it made a cool sound, which gave her percussionist husband the idea to write and perform a piece for this frozen lake in Siberia. The ensemble is Ethnobeat. The lake is Lake Baikal, which at one mile deep and 25 million years of age is the oldest and deepest freshwater lake in the world, and also the largest by volume. (Another interesting tidbit: there’s an annual marathon held entirely on the frozen lake.)
I noticed some comments on the video about how it sounds fake. Giving it a really close listen, in my opinion it’s the real deal, although they do seem to have “cheated” by layering on overdubs. In other words, it’s not all performed at once, live, on camera. But it does appear to be real, and that’s pretty awesome. You can read more about the group and their experience on the lake in the Siberian Times.
Vsauce asks: What is the loudest possible sound?
Although this is a “Best Of All Time” spinoff-version from the original V-Sauce, it’s the same host and the same basic format: Host asks question, host answers question with science, host goes off on tangents and more extreme questions. Fun and interesting little adventure into sound, sound pressure levels, and shockwaves.
The mysterious power of music: Bobby McFerrin and neuroscience.
In some circles this is a genuine oldy-but-goody. Vocal music wizard Bobby McFerrin was part of a panel discussing the intersection of music and the science of the brain, and this really fantastic little musical experiment was part of it.
For more music & mind from Bobby and a stage full of bright people, start here.
Tesla coil music.
Remember Tesla coils? You’ve probably seen them at a science museum or on TV. You probably haven’t asked yourself whether or not they could be used to make music.
Found object percussion: street and… otherwise.
We all know drummers like to bang on everything. (Especially those who are married to drummers. Sorry, Heather!) Here are three videos of some great found object percussion, featuring two different approaches: street and… otherwise.