Posts tagged as:

music

Always stand in the sweet spot for your music

by stephanlange on March 29, 2010

did you spend hours setting up your sound system at home to have the perfect tuned sound for your recliner in the living room?

Now the guys at the TU in Dresden, Germany, have developed a program that uses your webcam to determine your position in the room and automagically adjust the loudspeaker signals in real time to give you the best listening experience for your position.

And they called it sweetspotter – classic

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you can download version 1.0 from here and give it a go

@maniac13

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Enter the Jelli

by amnesia on February 10, 2010

The clever music nerds over at http://www.jelli.net have just made internet radio a wee bit more interesting.

You sign up, pick a tuner, there’s a ridiculously long list of tracks (and you can place suggestions to add more) that each have a vote count. Cast your vote, and move your favourite tracks up the playlist.

Need to hear something ASAP? Use a precious power-up (a Rocket) and shoot that tune into the public view, call for votes, team up with other listeners, and get it on the air. See something you desperately need to never hear again? Use a Bomb, send that garbage to the very bottom of the list.

It gets a little more interesting than that, if you Rocket a song into the player, for all to hear – and The Majority are loving your choice, they’ll click the “Rocks” button, should the rock metre fill up, you’ll get your Rocket back, giving you the power to choose again. If not, too bad, at least you got to hear your song.

If the track is filling the listeners with bile and rage, they’ll hit “Sucks” – enough suckage and that track is pulled off the air, immediately.

After a week or so of testing, Jelli has proven to be addictive through the game-ish aspect, but also excellent for discovering new music through the choices of fellow listeners. Honestly, I can’t recommend it enough.

That should be reason enough to take it for a spin, but there’s one more tidbit that bears mentioning. They’ve managed to ally themselves with 2dayFM via http://www.choosethehits.com.au – and this occasionally leads to Jelli voters controlling the 2dayFM radio waves for various timeslots.

So if you like the idea of having a say in what the radio plays, and forcing everyone to listen to the music you like… then you probably want to head on over and exercise your right to vote.

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Designer Michael Deal embarks on an impressive if not somewhat obsessive effort to illustrate the work of The Beatles in infographics.

Here’s an example showing the musical key distribution of their albums and a conclusion that on average they played mostly in a major key:

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Looks kind of like Magical Mystery Tour had the most minor key of any of them. Wasn’t that their least popular album? Coincidence?

http://www.mikemake.com/media/72772/Keys2.5-webfull_o.gif

Other samples here:
http://mikemake.com/#72772/Charting-the-Beatles

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The relationship between music and graphics begins with musical notes on paper ahead of a recording session. Interesting to see graphics at the other end.

@iclazie

HT Flowing Data

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What to do when Dyson takes over the world

by stephanlange on December 11, 2009

the vacuum cleaner world that is.

You make a really quiet vacuum cleaner and implement an iPod dock and speakers.

and then you sell it by making a report about how you clean your house faster, more thorough and you also loose weight doing it.

Check out the Elektrolux UltraSilencer

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here are some insights into the study

great study – but I am sure I read somewhere that people think their vacuum doesn’t clean properly when they don’t hear the all so familiar sound of sucking.

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This breathtaking video was made by coordinating dozens of fans of the Japanese music group Sour. The only way I can think of describing it is “webcam synchronised swimming”. Watch it. It is pure genius.

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Posted by @eunmac

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A robot that can keep a beat

by iclazie on July 29, 2009

We blog about robots quite a bit. Here’s one that finds objects it can turn into drums, beats the object, records the sound and then plays with it until it gets bored.

Amazing.

(As far as drumming goes it’s almost as cool as this: http://amnesiablog.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/best-product-demonstration-ever-m/ )

The Share.tv video is from a while back. It’s an interview of creator Frits Lyneborg of letsmakerobots.com.

Interesting thoughts on AI.

@iclazie

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Mos Def’s new album, The Ecstatic, is released in the US today but it’s taking a refreshing approach to distribution. Rather than offering up a CD (who buys them apart from me) people buy a T- Shirt with the album artwork on it, along with a code embedded into its tag so you can download it.

I love this kind of blurry stuff that is digital, traditional, social and a product innovation all rapped up in one (excuse the gag). It’s such a simple idea I can’t believe it has been used more often. Imagine how much The Ramones could have made with all those millions of walking adverts – it might also have ensured the cool kids actually listened to the music as well.

Not only that, it has raised the price to $39, probably reduced the production costs and generated cheap, peer 2 peer advertising. Genius.

@carlmoggy

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This is great fun (here) – turn the band members on or off and change the instrument they’re playing (using the coloured bars at the top). In theory I this would give you about 256 different versions of the same song.

Only thing missing… the ability to download and buy the track you created :)

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http://www.mtvmusic.com/artist/coldwarkids.jhtml

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In the latest in the great flashmobs being put together by T-Mobile, people were asked to show up to Trafalgar Square at 6pm on April 30th. Some were expecting dance lessons, but instead they got microphones before joining a massive sing-a-long to the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” Pink makes a subtle appearance (a brand’s gotta get what it paid for, after all), but all in all it’s more feel-good than down-your-throat advertising. Love it.

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Ikea Rhythm – is this new site on drugs?

by eunmac on July 16, 2008

Probably. It’s like some crazy Japanese Creative director just took control of IKEA marketing. I have absolutely no idea what this is all about …but I like it. The fact that it’s in Swedish doesn’t help but nothing really stopped me enjoying this “stop-motion music madness”. Go Play. http://kominigarderoben.se/

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Whatever happened to IKEA family values? :)

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