The Burst Collective

themattsmith:

Awesome, I got some music in a “It’s Always Sunny…” promo (the song at the beginning and end)

Our very own TheMattSmith and kywillie have music in the new It’s Always Sunny promo?!! Righteous.

barthel:

This documentary is called Musical Minds, and is well worth a watch. It’s about how music works in the brain, and how little we really understand about it; it comes across as almost a kind of magic, as something unrelated to rational thought. That’s not surprising to musicians. You don’t play well when you think too much, after all. You play well when you relax and let those patterns developed through years of practice do their thing undisturbed by your worry.

The middle section is about a guy from upstate New York with severe Tourettes who can relieve his tics through drumming. Interestingly, he doesn’t drum in a keep-the-beat way, but does it free-jazz style, fills and riffs bursting out, less an ordering of his tics than a translation of them to an acceptable medium. But that’s not entirely true. Here’s how he explains why drumming makes his Tourettes better:

I was playing this rhythm in a very balanced form of my body, a very balanced form of tempo and everything else - It was almost like my brain was a puzzle, and some of the pieces were not in place. And all of a sudden, everything just kind of clicked in the two hemispheres of my brain. And I literally felt it like this: I was doing it and then all of a sudden it just clicked into place and it went down my body, this fast. It was a very symmetrical balance of my entire being.

The weird thing about music is that there aren’t a lot of rational standards to determine whether or not it’s right. Sure, there’s being on-pitch and on-beat. But beyond that, it’s just up to your feeling as to whether you’re playing just enough behind the beat, or bending the note just enough, or changing your tone just right until your part suddenly fits in with everything else. You’re looking for that feeling of alignment, that “click.”

But that mirrors the actual physical process of sound generation. Two noises sound “sweet” together when their waveforms align, building on each other rather than interfering and causing a “beat” separate from any rhythm you’re playing. Going on feel seems nebulous, but it’s really just the reflection of the physical experience of listening to music. We like a sound if it feels good when it vibrates our eardrum; we don’t like a sound if it feels not-good. Sure, we can’t touch or see music, but the hearing is just as valid a judge. We’re just listening to hear if things are aligned right, just as we would look at two pieces of wood to see if they can support each other.

Tourettes, too, is a kind of rhythmic experience. Your brain isn’t cycling right; instead of a steady beat, the impulses within (which are themselves waves) jerk and misfire out-of-sync. Music feels good in this context because you can overwhelm those impulses with something louder, injecting your brain with new waves that can overwhelm and preempt the bad ones, and if you play with a rhythm, you can reorder them, making the impulses steady rather than random. And it’s all expressed as physicality, as movement: waves hitting your eardrum, sticks hitting the drum head, your head twitching up and out, muscles contracting to make you shout.

Music seems strange to us because we are visual creatures, and it seems either invisible or unrelated to those aspects of it that we can see. But music is sound is movement is energy, and if nothing else, we understand the need to be in alignment, to have everything working steadily, predictably, harmoniously. Music makes sense just as music makes not-sense. If anything, it’s closer to a model of how the brain works than any other human endeavor. With Tourettes, it’s easy to get into a feedback loop, tics building on tics because the input and output are too closely linked, and the only way to break the loop is to force everything into a kind of order, to have the random noises somehow tell a story. A story is a song is a movement: we find comfort in the organized. Music both expresses and enforces organization. It tells us that all is right with the world, that beauty is still possible, that randomness can be ordered into pleasure. It is a reassurance that everything is going to be OK.

MuteMath - Drums Plus Bass

New album Odd Soul October 4, 2011

utnereader:

Flying insects are unwelcome visitors at outdoor nighttime events, but Canadian artist Paul Walde relies on them for his Composition for Light, Percussion and Ultrasound. Walde arranges a cluster of tom-tom drums containing high-powered lights that shoot beaming columns into the sky, then mikes and greatly amplifies the sound created by moths as they flit into and skitter across the drumheads. Read more about one of the more experimental mixed-media art projects around …

The Future of Artist Collaboration, via soundcloud:

Imogen Heap has been a longtime SoundClouder and always on the forefront when it comes to finding new ways to engage and connect with her fans. Recently she answered some of the questions her fans recorded for her: http://ask.imogenheap.com

Now for her new album, she came up with another very interesting idea you should not miss. Let’s hear it in her own words:

My fourth solo album begins here, with you on the 14th March. You are the spark of inspiration. #heapsong1 is the working title of the first song from my new album. The album will be completed in roughly 3 years, with a new song released every 3 months as soon as it’s completed.

Imogen plans to put the songs out as soon as they are ready and keep them relevant to the time they are created. Then, as Imogen still wants to have another physical album to put on her shelf next to Ellipse, she’ll release the album for those who’d like to hold it.

And you can contribute in the making of the first track of the new album, that is pretty cool. Head over here to learn about how you can participate and tune in tonight at 6pm GMT for a live chat with Imogen herself.

Here’s the link to the PDF with all details and timeline for the new creation of the new record. 

Inventor Peter Vogel demonstrates his Fairlight synthesizer on ABC in 1980

via Boing Boing

motherjones:

“Sampled Room”: How democratic is tech? So democratic, you can make amazing videos and music like this with the following basic ingredients:

Canon EOS 5D mkII
DitoGear™ CrankSlider
Microphone Shure SM 48

2 Wine Glases
Panties
Bottle Opener
Drier
Tape
Tube Pack From Whiskey
Spring
Old Russian Camera
Spanner
Water

(created by Mateusz Zdziebko; h/t @AnupKaphle)

The Bob Moog Foundation’s Photos - Eric Persing’s OMG-1

Our friend, Eric Persing, designed the OMG-1 (which looks to be a combination of Moog synthesis, Spectrasonics virtual instruments, some hardware, 2 iPads and 2 iPods) and donated it to be the grand prize in an upcoming contest that will benefit the Bob Moog Foundation.

Kudos, Eric! Just awesome. :)

Music House (via WojahnBrosMusic)

There is nothing exaggerated in this video. No, really.

This is the joy that is commercial music production.

tylercoates:

bg5000:

This is how you know that Country music has drifted too far from what makes it Country music. No one confused “Fist City” with a song by a 70s soft rock group.

Well, that certainly explains why I like “Need You Now” so much.

There’s so much music out there, and only so many chords.

from our Mixtape tumblr:

The Power Of Music

It’s nice to remember that while music is something we do for a living, and something that passes those idle split-seconds between words in some random commercial, it’s also more than that.

… so, yeah, that was pretty sweet.

No, really.

h/t: our very own theMattSmith, who says

I’ve been listening to this version of Justin Bieber’s “U Smile” slowed down 800% ALL MORNING and it may very well be the most powerful Brian Eno song I’ve ever heard.

an absolutely stellar dnb remix of Soggy Bottom Boys I Am a Man Of Constant Sorrow (via Eric Persing)

Prophetic “Big Dreamer”

digitalkitchen411 says :

Prophetic is one of Milwaukee fastest rising stars. Without having to compromise himself or his raps, his straight forward straight to the point lyrics has garnered him awards from Milwaukee radio 88.9 and also a slot opening up for N.E.R.D. in the country’s largest music festival “Summerfest.”

This is from the “Mo Prophet Mo Progress” and you can purchase it HERE.

Valentina Lisitsa plays Rachmaninoff Etude Op. 39 No. 6 “Little Red Riding Hood” (via ValentinaLisitsa)

h/t metheliving

(via inothernews)

(via yimmyayo)