... just "wow!"

I came across these clips on youtube: They feature popular scientists like Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and many more and then ... turn them into music, using Autotune.

Those tunes hit something deep inside me - they tell of the beauty and the wonder in the universe, and the fascination of trying to figure out how might work...

I'm a big "fan" of science - like music it's become an important part of who and what I am. And somehow "Symphony of Science" got together some of my absolute favourite quotes from popular scientists, exactly those who sum up what makes it so important for me that we try to find out all these things... :)

The cosmos is within us, we are made of star-stuff!

No, not Karl Bartos' old band I want to talk about, but making music not just with electronic or electric instruments but with the electricity itself.

Ladies and Gentlemen: I present to you: ArcAttack!

Those dudes built two Tesla Coils in their garage and use the distinct noise those make when unloading - which you can tune by adjusting the flux-phase-thingamajiggy - to play music at raves.

Now, it doesn't sound what you would call "nice". But it was never meant to be. Compare it to Scottish bagpipes, if you like. They weren't meant to sound nice either. They were meant to make you crap your pants in terror, because you were about to get you head cut off by some berserk Scottsmen!

ArcAttacks musical tesla coils work on a similar basis. They are meant to make you crap your pants in terror, because if you get too close to them they will fry you to a crisp. Literally.

If nothing else, then ArcAttack definitely can claim that they got the single most potentially deadly musical instrument in the world there.

Awesome!

I did a youtube clip for my arrangement of Gustav Holst's "Neptune, the Mystic" from the Planet Suite. I hope you enjoy it - and if so: don't forget to rate it. :)

A casting from "Germany searches the next Kraftwerk"? :D Damn groovy!

This is ... bloody well done!

Piracy is without a doubt, truly evil. It doesn’t help the artists, it robs them of their rightful revenue and is such a poor basis for a business model, it’s unworthy of consideration. Of course, new streaming sites are miles better, offering a legal way to listen to free music. Hmm – Lady Gaga got a million plays on Spotify and earned $167. (click for the full article on torrentfreak.com)

My own two cents:

Before mp3com was bought by some of the big companies they actually started a program, where they - without being asked/forced to do so - paid $1.000.000/month from their advertising income to the artists on the page, based on the hits each artist/band created individually.

Their position was "we earn enough to share it with you, so here you go".

Did it work?

Well, let me say it like this: I'm what I consider a "hobby musician" with my own homestudio and I had some moderate success there. Compared to a big hit on the radio that runs several times each day, my tunes were played like once a week, but they were played.

For a while that was enough to earn *more* than Lady Gaga's $160 in a smegging month.  read more »

This is just one of the many wonderful tunes Yoko Kanno wrote for animee TV series - in this case "Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex" (the TV series). It's basically the ballad of a modern Pinoccio/Commander Data/Frankenstein's Creature - an artificial being made to be "like a human" that wishes it could *BE* human...

Here's the series' title tune:

And just to bring home the point that Yoko is just one amazing composer in all kinds of directions - here's the tunes "Tank!" and "Green Bird" she wrote for "Cowboy Bebop", another great animated Science Fiction series:

Just another of those "Whoa, cool"-clips you can find on youtube from time to time.

Some quick background info first:

Nora is a cat. Like many other cats she owns a few humans - you know, for opening tins and playing with her when she's bored. As it turns out, Nora's humans sometimes like to sit down at a big, black box and amuse themselves and others by hitting keys on that box to make noises.

Nora knows about the human urge to play around of course and sometimes sits down with them to join their making noises on the big, black box.

Along comes another human called Mindaugas who contacted Nora's humans and got them to send him videoclips of her and plays them to a group of other humans. You know - to inspire them to make noises on a whole variety of boxes and pipes on their own.

For more info about Nora and those cute, musical, humans go to http://www.catcerto.com