Marching Band Version of "Bulls on Parade"

I think the title says it all.
In my opinion, this really works well because it faithfully recaptures the emotion and the sledgehammer like wall of sound that the original Rage Against The Machine recording had. This could have easily been cheesy and watered down, but they kept the rough edges. Very cool.

Shimon, The Robot That Can Improvise Music

In one my previous posts, I talked about "seperating performance from recording". In it, I discussed the digitization of an actual performance, such that you can simulate a recording - say a piano piece by Thelonious Monk - and replicate it on a real piano (If this doesn't make sense, you're not alone. It's something that's hard to explain with the current lingo in music. So go check the other blog post). Today's post is a similar endeavor, but with an even more challenging task - a robot that can not only simulate a player, but improvise over live music.

This can be done of course, by the fact that music - even improvisation - follows a set of general rules. Yet the fascinating thing here, is that the type of improvisation can be programmed to be characterized as different real life artists. As the video explains, Shimon (the name of the robot) can programmed to be "30% artist A, and 40% artist B, and the rest something else". At the same time, it is able to react to real time input by the musicians Shimon is playing with! That's an amazing technical accomplishment!

Of course, this makes me ponder the same question as the other post: Would you truly enjoy this music? Would it somehow "cheapen" it? Does it even matter?



And here's a full performance:

TrackDropper - Geocaching with Music!

Ahh... Music Hack Day. What a wonderful concept. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can check out my blog post on it here. Here's a really cool idea that came out of Music Hack Day London 2010: TrackDropper.

As I'm sure many of you net savvy readers are aware, geocaching is one of the neatest things to catch on in the last decade. With the advent of cheap GPS devices and the internet, the nerdy scavenger hunt has become an accessible and fun way to discover things about the places you go to - whether that is your local neighborhood, or somewhere in a foreign country. It lets you be just a little more connected to your surroundings, to your fellow human beings in a way that is strangely personal.

And then comes Trackdropper, created by Andrew Bruce, Chris Lowis and Yves Raimond. The concept is very simple: instead of just sharing music online to anyone who has an internet connection, this app associates a specific location with the music file. In other words, you have to actually go to the location to download the music. Geocaching....with music!

Yes, it's illegal, and it's piracy with a twist... but the potential to make this something extraordinary makes this really exciting.

By associating a specific location with your music, a musician could write a song that is specific to that place. You could dictate the surroundings, the atmosphere, the noise and smells that a musical piece is associated with! And because you have to go there personally to get it, that strange sense of being "personal" could be experienced by the listener. Imagine singing a song about a specific scene, a part of a river, a famous building.. and you can have the listener actually see the real thing as they listen. On a more practical usage, You could also easily release a song at a specific location to be timed with a public performance/signing, or other publicity events.

The app is currently limited to the Android phone, but isfree for download here. Go re-discover your own neighborhood!

TrackDropper from Yves Raimond on Vimeo.