Thursday, June 6, 2013

What the Future Sounded Like



Brilliant documentary about the birth of electronic music in Britain. The documentary enjoyed screenings at several film festivals around Australia and on ABC TV.

Official web site for the film:
http://www.whatthefuturesoundedlike.com/

Electronic Music Studios home page:
http://www.ems-synthi.demon.co.uk/
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Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Australian Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
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Friday, May 24, 2013

you hear with your eyes [in german]

Wem Musik vorgetragen wird, den beeinflussen auch optische Reize. Diese können die Wahrnehmung des Klangs sogar dominieren - und das selbst bei geschulten Ohren.

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/studie-mit-profimusikern-das-auge-hoert-mit-a-917390.html

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Neanderthal Bone Flute Music


Short film, full title is Playing the Neanderthal flute of Divje babe, is authored by Sašo Niskač, music is performed by Ljuben Dimkaroski, scientific adviser is Dr. Ivan Turk, archaeologist. Extraordinary find from 1995 in Divje babe cave site, western Slovenia, it is most comprehensively described in the paper athttp://www.cpa.si/tidldibab.pdf, was met with great enthousiasm on one side and with great scepticism on the other side of the scientific audience, for details see http://www.greenwych.ca/divje-b.htm. Only in 2009 the dilemma if the holes in the bone were accidental or purpose-made, was finally resolved. Ljuben Dimkaroski, member of the Ljubljana Opera Orchestra for 35 years (trumpet), was given a clay replica of the flute by the curator of Slovenian National Museum on occasion of Ljuben's exhibition "Image in Stone". In his dreams, about a year later, he got a clue of how to play this prehistoric instrument. The result you can see and hear by yourself, or live, performed on a concert, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38AFm-TUywE

Saturday, April 20, 2013

DarwinTunes | Survival of the funkiest

The organic world – animals, plants, viruses – is the product of Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Natural selection expresses the idea that organisms (more accurately their genes) vary and that variability has consequences. Some variants are bad and go extinct; others are good and do exceptionally well. This process, repeated for two billion years, has given us the splendours of life on earth.

http://darwintunes.org/

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Die geheimen Töne unserer Elektronik




Wir kennen alle das Rauschen von Computerlüftern oder das Pling beim Einschalten von Leuchtstoffröhren. Aber selbst die anscheinend geräuschlosen Elektronikgeräte singen leise Lieder. Ihr könnt sie nur nicht hören. Zumindest nicht ohne Hilfe. Redditor TheDanielHolt hat es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, Elektronik ihre Betriebsgeräusche zu entlocken. Manche summen und einige verursachen eigentlich gar kein Töne sondern magnetische Interferenzen. Er verwendet eine Canon 600D mit der 18-55mm-Serienoptik, ein Sony F-V5 Mikrofon und den Mixer Vivanco MX 800. Das Mikro wird in den Mixer gesteckt und der wiederum in den Toneingang der Kamera. Letztlich wird der Mixer so zu einem Verstärker. Zum Glück können wir dieses ganze Fiepen, Rauschen und Pfeifen mit unseren Ohren nicht hören. Ich glaube, wir würden irre werden.

ein Artikel von  Artikel von Andreas Donath  [via http://www.gizmodo.de/2013/04/08/die-geheimen-tone-unserer-elektronik.html]

Friday, April 5, 2013

#5 / So ist das Leben




So ist das Leben. 

Composition for Sounds, Body, Voice and Space.

Concept/Body: Léonard Bertholet
Concept/ Sounds: Antoine Léchevin

Video Arbeit / Travail / Work with Carnet de Bal.

Künstlerresidenz / Artist-in-residence / Résidence d'artiste - 01-06.2013 - Berlin

Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Wilhelm scream - most successful Sound Effect Ever.


The Wilhelm scream is a film and television stock sound effect that has been used in more than 200 movies, beginning in 1951 for the film Distant Drums.[1] The scream is often used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion.
Most likely voiced by actor and singer Sheb Wooley, the sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 western in which the character is shot with an arrow. This was its first use from the Warner Bros. stock sound library, although The Charge at Feather River is believed to have been the third movie to use the effect.[2]
The effect gained new popularity (its use often becoming an in-joke) after it was used in Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series, Disney cartoons and many other blockbuster films as well as television programs and video games.

[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream]

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

First attempt in history to record sound and moving image in synchronization (two men dancing).




This short film was a test for Edison's "Kinetophone" project, the first attempt in history to record sound and moving image in synchronization. This was an experiment by William Dickson to put sound and film together either in 1894 or 1895. Unfortunately, this experiment failed because they didn't understand synchronization of sound and film. The large cone on the left hand side of the frame is the "microphone" for the wax cylinder recorder (off-camera). The Library of Congress had the film. The wax cylinder soundtrack, however, was believed lost for many years. Tantalizingly, a broken cylinder labeled "Violin by WKL Dickson with Kineto" was catalogued in the 1964 inventory at the Edison National Historic Site. In 1998, Patrick Loughney, curator of Film and Television at the Library of Congress, retrieved the cylinder and had it repaired and re-recorded at the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound, Lincoln Center, New York. Since the Library did not possess the necessary synchronizing technology, Loughney - at the suggestion of producer Rick Schmidlin - sent multi-Oscar winner Walter Murch a videotape of the 17 seconds of film and an audiocassette of 3 minutes and 20 seconds of sound with a request to marry the two. By digitizing the media and using digital editing software, Murch was able to synchronize them and complete the failed experiment 105 years later. This 35mm film was generously made available to the Internet Archive by Walter Murch and Sean Cullen.


OTHER TITLES
Title on donor inventory: Dickson violin
Variant title: Dancing men in the Black Maria

CREATED/PUBLISHED
[1895].

SUMMARY
Experimental sound film made for Edison's kinetophone -- a combination of the kinetoscope and phonograph -- but apparently never distributed. This LC copy is silent. Features two men dancing to a violinist.
Shows W. K. L. Dickson playing the violin before a large phonograph horn connected with an off-screen reader while two men dance together. Part of Dickson's sound-synchronization experiments.

NOTES
Copyright: no reg.
Performer: W.K.L. Dickson or Charles D'Almaine.
Camera, William Heise.
Duration: 0:21 at 30 fps.
LC also holds a copy of the synchronized sound version in the videodisc collection, More treasures from American film archives, 1894-1931.
Additional holdings for this title may be available. Contact reference librarian.
Filmed ca. September 1894 to April 2, 1895, in Edison's Black Maria studio in West Orange, N.J.
This film was selected for the National Film Registry.
Sources used: Copyright catalog, motion pictures, 1894-1912; Musser, C. Edison motion pictures 1890-1900, 1997, p. 178.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

The book of the sounds of Star wars

Any Star Wars fan can mimic Darth Vader's voice or Chewbacca's roar with ease. But how many of them would be able to identify the lion's roar used in the sound of the Millenium Falcon's engine? In this aurally astonishing and visually engaging book, New York Times best-selling author J. W. Rinzler reveals the illuminating history of the sounds that make the Star Wars universe so believable, as recounted by their creator, legendary sound designer Ben Burtt. An attached sound module with an exterior speaker and headphone jack lets readers listen to more than 250 unique sound effects, and more than 300 photographs illustrate the epic's many memorable scenes. From the first films to the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, The Sounds of Star Wars is Star Wars as you've never heard it before.




[via http://www.chroniclebooks.com/soundsofstarwars/]