New Yorker music critic Alex Ross has a book coming out this fall, a history of 20th-century music.
Category: music
I’m pretty much fascinated with the Whitney Music Box, which explores some of the ideas in John Whitney’s 1959 book Digital Harmony. I like the microtonal variation, and the sine wave harmonics are cool because harmonics are inherently cool. Jim Bumgardner wrote more about this project and some of the mathematics of the patterns in his blog.
Scans of some absurdly complicated musical scores. Those bring back memories of a few marimba solos I’ve attempted. Composers can get a little carried away sometimes.
Here’s the not-horrible music video for Midlake’s song Roscoe, perhaps one of the most catchy tunes I’ve heard in a couple years.
A video with animated mechanical devices playing jazz/funk. I’d love to have a circular vibraphone or a conveyor marimba.
A list of names of books combined with names of bands, like “Jane Eyre’s Addiction” and “The Cat Power in the Hat” and “My Friend Lynrd Skynrd.”
Well said:
This is not meant to put down anyone elseÄôs musical taste, or point out how cool I am. I could (and have) walk into any college radio station and get that attitude aimed at me by some DJ with a crate of out-of-print Lithuanian ska-tech remix 12Ä?s. ThatÄôs no fun! If you want to club people with Äòtude, explain to them why their favorite API sucks. You talk about music to share it, make friends, and find more of it, not to alienate people.
Mental note: be nicer when talking about music.
Here’s a great parody video, a performance of Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C# minor (pdf). An assistant brings out a specially-cut chunk of wood to help play those huge chords.
The video for Daft Punk’s song, Around the World. I hadn’t seen that in about 10 years. Michael Gondry says about directing the video: “I was sick to see choreography being mistreated in videos like filler with fast cutting and fast editing, really shallow. I don’t think choreography should be shot in close-ups.”
South by Southwest Festival has released a ginormous .torrent file for our enjoyment. It’s 3 gigs: 739 songs by 739 showcase groups. Surely there will be at least a couple songs that I’ll like. [via waxy]
The latest album from Feist is due out on May 1—which is far too long to wait. In the meanwhile, the album cover is absolutely incredible, and a single has surfaced: “My Moon, My Man”. Go look for it on the Hype Machine.
LilyPond looks like an interesting musical notation program. It relies on ASCII text input, and translates it into high-quality graphical notation, harking back to the professional engravings of yore. This reminds me of the LaTeX markup and typesetting language—you get to focus on your product and stop futzing around so much with the visuals. I’ll have to give it a try. The developers have written an interesting essay about the nuance and perfection that most computer-generated notation lacks, and thus, the inspiration for LilyPond. Typography in music! Sweet!
Here’s a cool animated interpretation of John Coltrane’s tune, Giant Steps. “The musical theme defines a space and the musical improvisation is like someone drifting in that imaginary space.” Pretty darn cool. I wish there were a full length version—where’s the piano solo?
Okay, so I’m pretty much amazing. A nice little voiceover parody of a John Petrucci guitar instructional video, working the metronome. He pulls off some nasty chromatic scales.
I wish I knew about the Hype Machine 10 years ago. Not that I care about hot new music that much, but it’s made it much easier to stumble across some old and rare recordings.
Pretty cool to see that Lasse Gjertsen was featured in the Wall Street Journal back in December for his music videos on YouTube, Amateur and the earlier Hyperactive.
If you’re a Steve Reich fan and you’ve heard tunes like Come Out, It’s Gonna Rain, Piano Phase, and those other early works, you might like Pez Phase.
Thanks to Anil Dash for the Pre-Superbowl Prince Primer. I had a feeling Anil would be uniquely qualified to share this. Thanks for coming through for all of us.
Prog Rock. One of my favorites from the past couple weeks of Prom Night Fist Fight.
Mark Larson 
