Tag: Music
Tech Trumpet: The Cosmovox Mixes 1 & 2
Hello, and welcome to another Tech Trumpet.
Today, I’d like to share with you two compositions made with the help of the marvellous solo instrument that is “iPhone running Cosmovox”.
The Cosmovox (iPhone users can get it at the iTunes App Store for £1.19) is a rather bizarre, motion-controlled instrument featuring 45 different musical scales, real-time multi-touch parameter sliders including modulation, feedback, instability, vibrato, and beating, and stereo output…
NOISE GATE: Record Labels vs. Guitar Hero – who owes who?
Over the last month or so, there’s been an almighty argument between music labels and makers of rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band over who owes who. Major labels claim that the games wouldn’t exist without the music, but the games developers point out that the music in the games gets a massive promotional benefit. Who’s right? Click over the jump for my opinion…
OFFICIAL: Nokia's first touchscreen phone, the 5800 XpressMusic
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, formerly known as the Tube. It’s not quite as red as we first thought, which is a shame, but our rumour was correct about the announcement date…
Tech Trumpet: Old '80s Computers Rickrolled
Firstly, an apology to anyone eagerly awaiting a track composed from the “interesting looking audio boxes sitting next to me”. Unfortunately, I’ve not yet got all the wires and other gear required to do them justice.
This week, I’ve dug out what may well be the earliest example of Rickrolling. Take a few defunct ’80s computers (the BBC Model B, to be precise), a discarded dot matrix printer or two, a few industrial monsters, and a handful of sound effects that never quite made it into any successful game, and you have a late-Eighties Rickroll extraordinaire…
NOISE GATE: Why music subscription services will eventually work
This is the second installment of Noisegate, my weekly column on digital music. If you’re interested, then you can find last week’s, as well as future weeks’ columns right here.
This week I’m going to talk about subscription services and mobile phones. With the launch of Nokia’s “Comes with Music” expected this Thursday, and Sony Ericsson’s “PlayNow” service expected soon, too, I thought now would be a good time to muse on whether subscription services will ever really work in the long term.
RUMOUR: Microsoft to merge Zune and Xbox Live
As a Zune owner, I got an email late last week telling me that the Zune store was going to be down for 48 hours, starting today. Not a problem for me, given that I don’t use it, but a bit of a pain for American Zuners, I would have thought. It would be like the iTunes Store going down for two days.
Muxtape postmortem: what really happened
There were a lot of questions around the shutdown of Muxtape back in August. The cryptic message left on the site seemed to suggest that it would be back in a matter of days, but as the days passed, it seemed increasingly likely that it was gone forever. As users shifted to other sites, it was clear that the RIAA’s big clunking fist had shut down the popular music sharing service for good…
Tech Trumpet: Mad Skype Mix
Welcome to a new weekly feature: Tech Trumpet. Each week, I’ll be attempting to create something vaguely resembling “music” using various gadgets and computers.
This week, to ease things in gently, here’s a track made up entirely of sounds from my favourite piece of communications software, Skype. I’ll leave you to judge whether it’s electronica, synth, ambient, all or none of the above.
Hit the jump to play the music and find out what’s coming next week…
UPDATED: MySpace Music launches… just not in the UK
Licensing sucks. That’s the conclusion that I’ve come to. It means that we in the UK can’t watch any of the music and video-on-demand services from the States, like Pandora and Hulu. Given that most of the players involved operate globally, I’m amazed that global licensing isn’t more commonplace, but this post isn’t about licensing. It’s just that licensing is preventing me from giving you a proper review of MySpace Music – which launched at 8am this morning…
"Astrobiology Rap" commissioned by NASA
So this is where American taxpayer’s cash is going, and why NASA can’t afford to develop a space shuttle replacement. They’re commissioning Welsh students to rap for them. Full credit to the bloke though, he’s actually really good…
