| music news & cult free CDs | Mari Kimura SUBHARMONICS String Theory: A RevolutionarY technique for the violin In April 1994, at a solo recital given by Mari Kimura in New York City, subharmonics were introduced to the musical community as a revolutionary bowing technique to extend the violin's range by a full octave below on the open G string without changing the tuning. Subharmonics require precise control of the bow pressure and speed, in order to freely utilize this extended bowing technique. Subharmonics can be used as a musical element for composers to explore additional possibilities for the violin and other string instruments. Kimura is further developing the technique and continues to write works for the violin utilizing subharmonics.
| | music news & cult free CDs | Calexico music wakes up shuttle crew + free album 'Carried To Dust' A Tucson band went to space over the weekend - or at least its music did.... A song by local band Calexico was used to wake up the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour. The song, "Slowness," is about two people reaching across a distance, and references places in the Tucson area including Gates Pass and Signal Hill. The band is a favorite of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords', whose husband, Mark Kelly, is commanding Endeavour's final flight. The song's theme is especially meaningful as Giffords remains hospitalized in Houston, recovering from a gunshot to the head.
| | music news & cult free CDs | New Garage Explosion -- Full Length Documentary To find out what American garage rock looks like (and to know what it’s like to be in an independent band) right now, VBS and Scion A/V toted a bunch of cameras around the USA and found a scene that was vibrant, loud, eloquent, effed-up, and nearly impossible to define. The musicians, artists, writers, deejays and label owners that we talked to could only be united by a single common thread—their commitment to music that they enjoyed, on their terms, at whatever cost necessary (or, in some cases, unnecessary). We met nice, smart, funny people who love rock and roll, don’t traffic in B.S., and had the wherewithal to pick up a guitar (or complementary instrument) at some point in their young lives, put their face to a microphone, and manage to not think too hard about what was going to come out.
| | music news & cult free CDs | Full With Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music by Paul Hegarty.......... "Full with Noise,..." is about noise music, specifically the version that has come to be called Japanese Noise -- itself composed of many different strands. The first half deals with the question of noise. What is it, whose is it, and how can we think about it. Also, how does noise inflect our thinking, rather than being an object; at what point does noise lose its noiseness and become meaning, music, signification? Or -- is there even a point where noise can subsist? Mostly, the text below takes the view that noise is a function of not-noise, itself a function of not being noise. Noise is no more original than music or meaning, and yet its position is to indicate the banished, overcome primordiality, and cannot lose this 'meaning'. Noise, then, is neither the outside of language nor music, nor is it simply categorisable, at some point or other, as belonging exclusively to the world of meaning, understanding, truth and knowledge.
| | music news & cult free CDs | The Improvisational Brain Feature by Amanda Rose Martinez .......... One summer at the annual Bremen Music Festival in Germany, Robert Levin, a classical pianist, was in the midst of improvising a passionate and wild cadenza during Beethoven’s “C Major Piano Concerto.” A cadenza is a passage in a concerto during which the orchestra ceases and a soloist strikes out on his own, improvising within the style of the piece. Up until the early nineteenth century, many classical composers wrote space for these cadenzas within their works. Levin is one of a handful of musicians who has taken it upon himself to revive the practice of classical improvisation. He is world renowned for his ability to effortlessly extemporize in the styles of several composers, including Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn. In this particular concert, however, Levin had gotten himself into a bit of a pickle.
| | music news & cult free CDs | HAPI Drum The concept is similar to a wooden tongue drum. When a tongue is quickly and lightly struck with the finger or mallet, it vibrates creating sound waves. Playing a HAPI is similar to playing the Hang Drum, though the similarities end there, as it is a totally different type of musical instrument. By changing the shape and length of the tongue, optimal vibration and perfect tone is achieved. By arranging the notes in a unique way each note, when struck, excites surrounding notes that are musically compatible with it. This adds to the harmonic spectrum of the tone. Rather than just one tone it can now create a spectrum of supporting sound for each note. The tone is similar to singing bowls or musical bells which create multiple harmonic overtones.
| | music news & cult free CDs | Bad Religion - Anarchy Evolution + 'The Dissent Of Man' free CD Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God ...... Many people know Greg Graffin as the lead singer and songwriter of the punk band Bad Religion (above) but not as many know that he also received a Ph.D. from Cornell (2003, zoology) and that he teaches evolution at the University of California-Los Angeles. In "Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science and Bad Religion in a World Without God" (HarperCollins, 2010), Graffin and co-author science writer Steve Olson argue that art and science have a deep connection. As an adolescent growing up when "drugs, sex and trouble could be had on any given night," Graffin discovered that the study of evolution provided a framework through which he could make sense of the world.
| | music news & cult free CDs | Story of Pere Ubu + 10 albums In Cleveland, in the summer of 1975, all the bands were breaking up. The creative land rush of the years 1972-74 was played out. A generational window was passing over a mini sub-culture naively dedicated to the odd proposition that Rock Music was a serious art form; that no longer a donkey for Teen Angst, Fashion, Youth Rebellion or counter-Culture dogma, Rock Music was leaving its adolescence behind, at the door of Young Manhood, on the threshold of Full Maturity.
| | music news & cult free CDs | Otomata – Online Generative Music Instrument Otomata is a generative sequencer. It employs a cellular automaton type logic I’ve devised to produce sound events. Each alive cell has 4 states: Up, right, down, left. at each cycle, the cells move themselves in the direction of their internal states. If any cell encounters a wall, it triggers a pitched sound whose frequency is determined by the xy position of collision, and the cell reverses its direction. If a cell encounters another cell on its way, it turns itself clockwise.
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