cooltunes

Does she tap her toe or bob her head back and forth discreetly when she has the earbuds on? Did a committee decide what to put in the playlist?

Did you find it so? For some, it was during the performance of John Williams’ Air and Simple Gifts. Others were moved by the historic nature of the occasion.

I made it through without too much misting up, but totally lost it when I saw this:

A family member has remarked that attending a concert that consists solely of the performer onstage with his laptop lacks a certain visual excitement.

In the world of classical music, technological advances are moving the usual group-of-musicians-with-conductor scenario into a more futuristic realm. Nowadays, a concert-goer might see the conductor decked out in a specially wired jacket that allows a Wii-minded directing of an orchestra.

This orchestra would include a section that is not visible to the audience, but gleaned from a database of digital sounds that gives an unprecedented depth and range to the listening experience.

When experts listen to samples of computer-generated music embedded in a Beethoven symphony performance, they find it difficult to tell the difference from the real thing.

The aptly named ‘Stayin’ Alive’ has just the right beat that emergency workers need to remember when they perform chest compressions. The right tempo for cardiopulmonary resuscitation is 100 times/minute, the song is paced at 103/beats/minute.

According to the link, a Queen song also fills the bill - ‘Another One Bites the Dust’. However, some might feel this one might not be as appreciated by patients.

At his site, you can see and hear some of the instruments he’s developed, including the phonoharp, much loved by the Kronos Quartet. There’s a wind-powered turntable, another turntable that can play a composition powered by an earthquake, and many other fascinating devices.

His photographs are awesome.

Just as some can see colors while listening to music, others can hear the sounds of a moving image, such as a screen saver. Kind of a crossover of the senses, as it were, called synaesthesia. This article contains a test you can take to see if you have this ability.

A small, secluded monastery comes close to topping the UK pop charts. Can one really be isolated if there is internet access? The story of the monks is here, and a video is here.

Are they able to handle the fame and subsequent fortune? Well, the abbot has an MBA, and a CD deal with Universal Music has been signed. Their PR person is on the cell constantly, when he is not dealing with the day-to-day of monastery life. There is perspective.

Almost everyone, it seems, except musicians that the heartland holds dear.

Maybe. But the rumor is that users would expect to pay a high price when they buy iPods and iPhones in order to get the free pass to the iTunes library.

So how high are we talking about? How will other companies compete?

Incoming freshman in the fall will receive new tools to help them through their college years. Other university reps attending the ACU information officer’s presentation at Apple headquarters in Cupertino include those from UCLA, Oxford, Princeton, MIT, Yale and Harvard.

Talk about a nifty welcoming packet.

Info via Briefing.com

She uses a Land 250, and the show will be at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. Here are some sample shots taken from an earlier exhibition.

Something about a linkup with Amazon and the Super Bowl early in February. Via The Register.

Bands such as Arcade Fire and RyanDan are letting fans control the movement on their videos, and embedding links to further info and shopping.

They covered some songs the crowd didn’t quite expect, including Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms and Rare Earth’s I Just Want to Celebrate.

From ages 5 through teens in the UK, it’s fast becoming the instrument of choice.

Across the pond, journalists are wondering if all the best names are already taken, one citing the example of the group, Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jongs.

I always thought that when naming time came, there were two, maybe three hats. Someone tossed random words in them, and there was some gathering of members and others. Beer and other substances generally involved. They just kept putting these words together till something sounded good enough. Is that close?

The author of the Guardian blog offers up ‘Red Mist’. This certainly does not work for me. It wasn’t so long ago I read Widow of the South by Robert Hicks, in which he describes the vaporizing of soldiers (via close contact with cannon, I believe) using that very term. It does stick in the mind, but perhaps not so well for a band.

The Boilerhouse Boys, music producers from across the pond, are tinkering with the lost data issues of digital music files. Inspiration for their work goes all the way back to the technical aspects of the Motown sound.

Ragnarawk, the brainchild of five UK design students, wins the prestigious Dare to be Digital contest.

In this corner of Cupertino is Apple and iTunes (80% market share), and over here in another corner of Cupertino is gBox. Google is involved, but only via their ads, they say.

Outside of Silicon Valley, Amazon enters the fray, with Wal-Mart and Best Buy stepping up efforts to topple iTunes’ dominance.

Will the price of a song go down?

From Rolling Stone, a report on the how and why, with grim statistics.

If Moby is struck by lightning, we’ll all know why.

I didn’t know that evangelicals blamed Katrina on a Gay Pride Weekend in New Orleans. There’s a Gay Pride Weekend going on in SF right now. Should we be worried?

The Swedish government will be paying disability benefits to a man who claims that his fondness for heavy metal renders him unable to work from time to time.

Swedish occupational psychologists obviously were not consulted on the matter.

At Moffett Field, there are old bombers on display this weekend. For a price, you can ride one for 30 minutes, and for a much lower fee, you can just walk through them.

Around here, we tend to rush outside when screaming jets cross the skies. This morning, I dashed out when I heard the low, heavy, distinctive sound of the bombers as they flew by, just as exciting in their way as an F-16.

Working with a software engineer and a mathematician, Townshend’s brainchild creates music from your personal data.

In an attempt to help the environment, Crow suggests we limit our use to one square per bathroom visit.

While this would certainly prolong the life of a toilet paper roll, one wonders how practical this idea really is.

Elsewhere in the article, she also brings up the use of a ‘dining sleeve’ to replace napkins. No comment from this very messy diner.

Do you know the term ‘wet burping’? Perhaps you know what it is, but call it by another name.

Italian researchers found in a recent study that opera singers not only belt out songs but their stomach contents as well. Much more so than the rest of us.

Parents of gifted adolescents will be happy to hear that listening to metal doesn’t automatically make your kid a follower of Satan.

According to a new study out of Canada, kids who take music lessons do better on memory tests than their nonmusical peers. The research was performed on children ages four to six, duration of the lessons was one year.

In a new report, researchers find that iPod users seldom buy from iTunes. Where does all that music come from then?

According to the study, most of it hails from the owner’s CD collection or from file-sharing. File-sharing?

More on this later.

Discussions regarding copyright issues are not going well, and lawsuits are being readied. Via Briefing.com.

Perhaps the only one around, actually. SFGate talks to Matisyahu.

Is MySpace going to be iTunes biggest rival? Did you see this coming?

Patients in the cardiac care unit of Morristown (NJ) Memorial Hospital are showing positive responses to the daily visits of Alix Weisz and her harp. She is part of a month-long study of the effects of music in hospitals, and she sticks to a calming repertoire of lullabies, chants and Celtic songs.

She underwent gastric bypass surgery, and dropped 200 lbs, but the voice remains intact, according to this report on a recent performance.

Threats of copyright lawsuits are shutting down sites where players share tips on how to play their favorite songs.

Within a year and a half, Youtube expects to be offering every music video ever made. Free to users. They are currently in talks with EMI and Warner Music Group.

About the sweeping game. But then he’s had his share of the annoying crowds.

Nokia gets ready to enter the the music service world with its acquisition of the company started by Peter Gabriel.

The service will be aimed at Nokia cellphone users, and launches sometime next year.

Sony BMG, Warner Music, Universal Music and EMI will split the $100 million that Kazaa will cough up in an out-of-court settlement.

Just what crime did Richards commit in Arkansas back in ‘75 that he would receive a pardon for now?

At one time, it was fashionable to castrate young boys in order to keep their voices at the desired high pitch. At maturity, this voice was produced by the lungs of an adult male, making it invaluable in royal courts and churches.

The body of the most famous castrato, Farinello, will be exhumed by Italian scientists, who hope the answers to his remarkable voice lie in his DNA and bones.

Music producer Dallas Austin, who has worked with Gwen Stefani, Madonna, Michael Jackson and Pink, among others, was convicted of cocaine possession in Dubai. It took the efforts of several top names in the music world and one well-placed politician (also a singer) to get him out of the country.

That is, if you can afford the 100,000 pound price tag for the guitar on which Paul learned his first chords.

The youthful drunks set up their beer crates and ball game near the band, which was performing for 300 elderly couples. When the conductor was hit by a ball, the concert-goers were incensed. The band began to play the theme from The Great Escape. Almost as one, 20 audience members, former soldiers many of them, some using walkers, some carrying sticks, got up and marched toward the drunken group.

Even though they outnumbered the veterans by 10, the drunks ran for their lives.

A ‘band’ with no experience whatsoever is propelled to instant fame by cleverly working the MySpace network.

No matter what’s happening on the field, the players will interpret and improvise. That’s the premise at the Vortex Jazz Club, a tiny spot in east London, where fans are treated to spontaneous music from teams of musicians who strive to match the game’s actions with appropriate responses.

When it’s my iPod’s turn in the car, and the driver gets sleepy, sometimes I’ll play Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head. The last time this happened, I had complaints that Kylie was still going on and on in the passengers’ heads for days afterward.

Not surprisingly, her song is at the top of this list.

Working with UC Berkeley physicists, Roberto Morales-Manzanares has produced software that enables users to create music from solar data. That sounds rather dry, but Morales sees this as a stepping point to access aural events happening in space. The technology exists to make our listening experiences much, much richer.

How a band’s development has been heavily influenced by their leader’s obsession with the sport of cycling.

In a story from the Beeb, Apple is checking into reports that workers at their iPod factories are toiling under sweatshop conditions.

Can music affect the content of your dreams? The Sky Orchestra, developed by Dan Jones and Luke Jerram in collaboration with hot air balloonist Peter Dalby, will find out.

Their music/art project consists of seven speaker-equipped hot air balloons. Each balloon will play a separate part of a musical score as the group floats over a city. Performance time is dawn, when most of their audience is still asleep, presumably in REM sleep mode.

More details from Futuremusic.

To keep teens from loitering in front of stores, a high-pitched sound called the Mosquito was devised by a Welsh security company. Adults over 40 or 50 cannot hear this sound due to the inability to detect certain frequencies because of aging.

The technology has been seized by the enterprising young, who have turned the sound into a very popular ringtone. Who needs an ear-splitting ringtone? Why, the countless numbers of students who are forbidden to use their cellphones in class.

Now they know when a text message is incoming, and their teachers are none the wiser. Unless, of course, said teachers are youthful too.

Especially if the man is Billy Ray Cyrus, who is still looking for his second hit.

The operating room has a wide-ranging soundtrack, and in some cases, you can bring your own.

Dancing is generally frowned upon.

At a dog shelter in Somerset, England, the animals find that music relieves the trauma of the surroundings. Not pop tunes, but Bach or Mozart.

Unfortunately, your life’s soundtrack includes music you didn’t choose. The BBC asked for music diaries, in which listeners discussed what assaulted their ears each day.

Participants reported an average of one hour and sixteen minutes of this music, some of which came from shops, restaurants, and public transportation. One surprising source of annoyance came from coworkers singing badly.

A few months ago, Albertson’s, a local supermarket that will be closing soon, installed monitors beside the checkouts. These continually featured cooking instructions at high volume with accompanying music and other sounds. The store’s soft rock selections played behind that. Various ringtones of other shoppers chimed in.

It’s noisy out there.

At the International Community School in Oakland, third-graders, 80% of whom are Latino, sing enthusiastically in Mandarin and play the erhu, the yue quin, and the dizi. Parents are happy as well.

He plans to run in 2010. Residents troubled by the overpopulation of white-tailed deer in the state will be relieved to know this.

Portions of the article are not suitable for reading during a meal.

After the arrival of the H5N1 avian flu virus on the Ivory Coast last month, a young DJ decided to offset the gloom by introducing a new dance. Local nightclubs are filled with enthusiastic dancers, whose movements mimic the frantic flappings of poultry in the last stages of the illness.

What if the guitar part was stripped out of your favorite songs just so you could play along as if you were part of the band?

At the DreamMusician site, you could do just that. Drum and keyboard parts can also be removed. So far, they offer 50 songs, and expect to bump that up to 1000 by the end of the year.

Instead of using up to ten pounds of tone woods from rain forests, the manufacture of this IDSA-award-winning guitar requires less than two pounds from local wood sources. Plus, it’s very colorful.

Underworld has been awfully quiet for the last few years. The Independent takes a look at what they’re working on.

It’s billed as a digital instrument for modern times. The interface is a square filled with LED switches. Press the switches, and you get music and a light show composed and designed by you.

Toshio Iwai collaborated with Yamaha to produce this dandy device.

Those who object to the words of the original, controversial anthem now have the option of a parody in English, which uses words that sound like the Japanese ones.

His latest, Surprise, is a collaboration with Brian Eno. An interview with The Independent sheds some light on his marriages, his ties with Garfunkel and Dylan, and his thoughts on Bridge Over Troubled Water recorded by Johnny Cash.

In a recent study, researchers found that patients experienced up to 21% less pain when listening to music.  

Half of the patients chose their own music, while the rest listened to tapes of relaxing music chosen by the testers.