Tag: Music

Fans of Weird Al Yankovic are going to love this news. This is the box set that you have always wanted. Weird Al released his first album in 1983, and since then he’s released 14 studio albums in total.

Dmitry Morozov created Electropollock, a modern-day homage to American expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, famous for his drippy, abstract paintings. Morozov’s robot uses a similar method to get paint onto the rolling canvas, but the finished work is determined by music fed into the system.

Vitaly Kryuchin is the head of the Russian Federation of Practical Shooting. Apparently, he also loves music, so naturally he combined both to create one strange musical instrument. Kryuchin built something he calls the Metallophon. It is basically made from different-sized sheets of metal, which each deliver a different tone when you strike them with a bullet.

Musicians rejoice! IK Multimedia just dropped a big update to their iRig HD interface, making it the best way yet to connect musical instruments to your iOS device, PC or Mac. The iRig HD 2 lets you connect guitars, basses, and other instruments to digital devices, and lets you record, tweak and tune sounds to your heart’s content.

Looking for the latest in fashion and technology? Check out these Electric Sexy Drum Pants. Their name is completely self explanatory, though the sexy part is questionable. This is a pair of pants with a drum controller pad in the crotch.

Have you ever heard of a band called Octant? You will. These guys are gonna be big. By “guys” I mean robots. Yes, Octant is a band that is comprised of robotic musical instruments. A man named Matt is their leader.

Patrick Stewart is a cool dude. I mean, he was Jean-Luc Picard and Professor X after all – putting him high up on the favorite list of many sci-fi geeks. He has something a bit different that has surfaced recently.

The Dato Duo combines a sequencer with a synthesizer. That’s no big deal, but what is different is that it is designed to be played by two people, making it perfect for musical collaborations. That’s a pretty cool feature, because two minds are often better than one when it comes to music.

This is music school done right. How do you do music school right? Well, the answer is simple. Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars. You have to check out these videos of children from Quebec’s Ecole de l’Harmonie (School of Harmony) and École secondaire de La Seigneurie playing a bunch of Star Wars music on their violins… with lightsaber bows no less.

This is a fun video by samuraiguitarist, who managed to perform a beautiful version of Somewhere over the Rainbow using nothing but interactive Google Doodles that produce sound. How crazy is that? I remember when Google Doodles were just static images.

Growing up, I was a big fan of ’80s TV shows like the Dukes of Hazzard, Magnum P.I. and a slew of others. In fact, I had the vinyl album of Mike Post theme songs from a bunch of those shows and jammed that record all the time.

This Mickey Mouse inspired musical sculpture is more than a bit creepy. It looks like someone cut the heads off of Deadmau5 and Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter and smashed them together. The thing is called the MikeyFon and was commissioned by Disney and built by a Polish firm called PanGenerator.

I’ve never been a skateboarder myself, but I’ve always wondered what Tony Hawk would do when he got too old to risk getting on a skateboard. I think I found my answer. He could turn his skateboard into a kick ass electric guitar and make some music.

A few days ago we talked about Mogees, a tiny digital musical instrument that triggers sound by vibration. The Motus is another unorthodox yet intuitive portable instrument. It lets you create or trigger sounds by motion.

Back in April we checked out a 3D printed violin that looked more like a Predator’s weapon than a musical instrument. But 3D printing isn’t just about making new physical forms. The technology can be tuned for very practical purposes as well, as exhibited by violin maker Hovalin.

There are different gadgets that can turn bodies, steering wheels or food into musical instruments. Now you can turn pretty much any rigid solid object into an instrument using just one device: Mogees. Mogees consists of a very sensitive contact microphone and an iOS app.