#7daysofVGM: a thrilling compositional sprint
The #7daysofVGM Composition Challenge is a semi-regular week-long event coordinated by the Video Game Music Academy. It’s basically a compositional sprint—or rather, seven of them in a row. There is...
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Music In The Round… On Your Headphones
With a virtual reality headset you can experience The New Dublin Voices performing Thomas Tallis’ “Spem In Alium” in the round—right in the middle of it.
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”:
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.
Bone-cam.
I can’t believe I’ve never seen anyone do this yet. Dave Finlayson, trombonist with the New York Phil, gets clever with his video camera. The performance is great but… I just can’t stop laughing.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soDn2puEuL8&w=420&h=315]
Aside from the entertainment and the performance itself, anyone who wonders how a trombone works is getting a close-up look. You can actually see the various distinct positions the slide has to be held at, and the quick but fluid motion necessary to get between them for a clean change of pitch.
Old Spice Muscle Music.
In case you haven’t heard / seen / tinkered with this yet… you have to watch “Old Spice Muscle Music.” And be sure to noodle around with it after the short video is done. As a drummer and sound guy I was weirdly entertained!
Old Spice Muscle Music from Terry Crews on Vimeo.
Voiceover Funnies: great V.O. artists read the Star Wars screenplay
A table full of top-notch V.O. artists reading the original Star Wars screenplay in character as Pinky, Brain, Bender, Yosemity Sam, Poof, Cartman, Batman, Inspector Gadget, Bill Cosby, William Shatner, Kramer from Seinfeld, and tons more.
The mysterious power of music: hearing four pieces at once.
If I ask you to think about the song “Happy Birthday,” your brain can probably recall it for you and you can hear it playing in your head. This is called audiation.
Well, what if I asked you to hear “Happy Birthday” in your head… and at the same audiate “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” as well? Can you do it? I can’t either. Suddenly we’ve dropped off from a nearly universal, inborn ability to a very rare skill.
Now that you’re thinking about that… you HAVE to hear the Radiolab piece called “A 4-Track Mind” about the stunning and unique gift of ragtime pianist Bob Milne.
The physics of music, illustrated.
Check this out: guitar strings silhouetted against the sky, filmed from the inside of a 12-string guitar as someone plays a tune called “Lick Mountain Ramble.” The “stop-motion” effect induced by the very nature of video lets us see the lengths & shapes of the waves which are resonating through each string.