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”:
music performance
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:
composing/songwriting / entertaining / inspiring / media / music / music performance / technology / video
Virtual choir: performance, and technology, and… wow.
Composer Eric Whitacre, known for stirring choral compositions, has for several years been doing an experiment he calls “Virtual Choir”. He makes a guide track available for one of his pieces—something to sing along to—and asks the public to record themselves singing their part on camera and send it to him. In this particular rendition, “Virtual Choir 3,” you are apparently hearing 3746 voices from 73 countries performing together. Whoa.
Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 3, ‘Water Night’
Everything is a drum: large man edition.
Yup. This happened.
Musical instruments made of ice.
In Norway (them’s my peeps!) there’s an annual music festival where all the instruments are made mostly or entirely of ice. Look for the cello. That’s right, a cello.
For more info: icemusicfestival.no. Or watch this news piece.
Here in the U.S., there was a University of Michigan ice percussion concert in 2011.
Cool. Pun intended.
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.
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.