Starting next month coldplaysucks.com will have a new feature of special interest to computer musicians; gear review.
This will be a combination of reposts from other streams that I follow in the music industry as well as a place to post my own experiences with the hardware that I’m using.
Enjoy!
Edited: January 31st, 2010
Lady Gaga and Elton John’s Performance! Awesome!
Edited: January 31st, 2010
Henry Jenkins talks about how “Transmedia” is changing the way we interact with media.
By Alex Massaad
The old media system is dying and a new system is being born. The major shift has been from spectatorial media where we participate one way, and participatory media where we can all collaborate and contribute.
This puts culture back in the hands of the average citizen. They can tell their own stories.
Historically important culture has been passed down orally. In the last couple hundred years important stories started to become owned by companies, limiting their free propagation. Now in the digital domain, we are rebalancing the “copyright” and innovating, recontextualizing and responding to the culture that is supposedly “owned” by companies.
Convergence culture means that every image, story etc, plays out over the web, cell phones, and all technologies through all topographies. And the result is a culture more complex than any individual could construct on their own.
The example that Jenkins uses is Obama’s presidential campaign. This had social media links which allowed official and participatory media to be uploaded on youtube and seen by everyone giving a way to new perspectives.
Henry Jenkins on Transmedia – November 2008 from niko on Vimeo.
Edited: January 29th, 2010
Steve Jobs today introduced the Apple iPad, a handheld multitouch computer, and it’s likely to be the biggest music technology introduction of the year.
The iPad will be immediately useful as a musical tool, because it runs existing iPhone apps. As developers adapt their apps to the larger real estate, though, the Apple iPad should come into its own as a platform.
Pricing in USD:
Look at what has been happening with the JazzMutant Lemur as a malleable music controller and what has already been happening with iPhone music apps, and it’s clear that music developers are going to have fun with the Apple iPad.
Take that as a starting point – day 1 for the Apple iPad as a music platform.
The iPad won’t replace the power of a dedicated music computer – but it is creating a new platform that will support new types of mobile music making and new ways of controlling and playing music.
And, while think the iPad is going to prove to be a big deal – we’d like to know what Apple has planned for multitasking, file management, access to the iTunes library, third-party device support and more.
Check out the specs for the Apple iPad and let us know what you think.
Is this thing going to change the way you make music this year?
Apple iPad Features:
Edited: January 28th, 2010
Film 4002 – “Is our future becoming less free?
By: Alex Massaad
Featured Article until March 2010
Course Description:
The proliferation of high-speed Internet and multimedia-capable computers has opened up an information highway that has changed the way modern audiences interface with audiovisual media. New information sharing technologies such as YouTube and Bit Torrent have enabled the swift dissemination of almost any commercial audio or video recording, while concurrently causing a furor within legal systems internationally.
This course will look at audio and video separately in order to understand how technology is altering culturally coded norms within media. As the course develops we will be looking at various binaries such as: copyright/piracy, free/paid, corporate/independent and original/remix in order to understand how our use of media and technology can alter both the media and the technology.
Edited: January 27th, 2010
The iPad is out, and its awesome!
Edited: January 27th, 2010
This NPR video looks at the history of the boombox:
The boxes had to be big, to make that bass boom. The speakers in early boxes had extra-large magnets to push all that air around, and they were housed in heavy metal casing to deal with the vibrations from all the bass. Fab 5 Freddy says they got pretty big.
“I remember some boxes so big, they required 20 D-size batteries to an already heavy box,” he says. “So these boxes were so heavy that some cats that would carry their boxes all the time, they would develop massive forearms and biceps.”
The boxes were part of a style that included white Adidas and big gold chains. Freddy was a filmmaker and artist at the time, and he says he took his box everywhere.
“I traveled with my massive boombox,” Freddy says. “That thing moved with me, you know. I remember, like, being on the plane — it couldn’t go in the overhead bin, but that was my baby. It traveled first class right along with me.”
Doesn’t it make you want to go hunting for a vintage boombox?
via noiseforairports
Edited: January 27th, 2010
Hahahah, this is fantastic, looks like he just booted up inthe morning, having his first smoke . . .and what breaks the silence. . .? His face is priceless. The sweet serenity of morning cigarette broken by the worst fucking sound on your mac.
Watch here:
Edited: January 26th, 2010
The Fake Blood remix of Little Boot’s “Stuck on Repeat.” Awesome track!
Little boots – Stuck on Repeat (Fake Blood remix) by davidporter
Edited: January 25th, 2010
Watch: RiP: A Remix Manifesto (2009)
Listening: Download and listen to a copy of Girl Talk – Night Ripper
Reading: 1) Bermingham, L.B. “CULTURE JAMMING or a culture jammed? RiP!: A Remix Manifesto.” Screen Education. Winter.54 (2009): 44-47. Print.
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Ripper (for list of sampled songs)
Week eight was a central week in my course since I really feel that the film RiP!: A Remix Manifesto (2009) talks about very important current issue within media studies. I also assigned the album “Night Ripper” by Girl Talk since the artist’s work forms the basis for the documentaries subject matter. Ever since Napster first breached the copyright boundary a decade ago we have needed to update our copyright infringement laws. I think the film does an excellent job of answering not only the problems with copyright laws but also whether or not they should be changed or updated. The reading would prepare students for some of the issues that the documentary looks at such as how our future is becoming less free and Girl Talk’s creative process. What I really felt makes this film valuable was how it makes the leap from media copyright into scientific copyright and patents. The film hints that laws that are in place to protect intellectual property limit research in the cure for cancer and AIDS. This makes the issue of copyright infringement much larger than just about protecting someone’s ideas or musical property. Each of the samples that are used by the artist Girl Talk are examples of copyright infringement but the Bermingham article makes the point that Disney has been appropriating classical stories for the basis of their content for years and asks the question “what is different about their use?” Finally I included the wikipedia page for Night Ripper because it lists all the samples used in the album that I’m sure many students will recognize from their own music libraries. An idea for class this week might be to poll students about which albums from Night Ripper they already own in order to see what percentage of the album the average fan might have already paid for.
Right now you can check out this snippet of the documentary looking at how our culture is becoming less free
Edited: January 25th, 2010