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Places to Watch Music Documentaries

By oneoverphi

If you’ve got some spare time, and want to learn more about some of your favourite artists? Go over to doc​u​men​tary​heaven​.com and check out the music cat­e­gory. Also check out snag​films​.com for an abun­dance of music doc­u­men­taries. And as always there is CBC. Just go to Inside the Music Audio Archives. Don’t for­get music​filmweb​.com,... »

What Came Before the Phonograph?

By oneoverphi

While it’s tempt­ing to think of audio record­ing as start­ing with Edi­son and his phono­graph in 1877, the truth is that record­ing had been hap­pen­ing for 20 years longer than that. If we dis­count devices to play­back pre-recorded music (musicboxes, orchestri­ons) or sim­u­lated speech (Wolf­gang von Kempelen’s speak­ing machine) the first record­ing, as we... »

Fantastic Free Folk Music

By oneoverphi

Tra­di­tional Music Library is this huge repos­i­tory of folk and tra­di­tional sheet music. I found it whilst look­ing for the music to “Rolling Down to Old Maui” (by-and-by, they also have an excel­lent primer on sea shanties). Songs are catagorised in sec­tions such as: OLD-TIME (OLDTIMEY) MUSIC BLUEGRASS ETHIOPIAN MINSTRELSY, MUSIC-HALL & VAUDAVILLE MUSIC TRADITIONAL DANCE BAWDY & DRINKING SONGS They even have... »

Look to the Past For New Sounds

By oneoverphi

Ever wanted to go old-school with your instru­ments? I mean really, really old-school? Well you’re in luck my dear read­ers, I know a place where you can go back to the stone-age for your heavy rock sound ( I couldn’t resist, I’m weak ). Pale­o­planet, a site devoted to pre­his­toric tech­nol­ogy, hap­pens to have a forum sec­tion on music. Not... »

Instrument Causes Insanity?

By oneoverphi

Ah, the glass armon­ica. Is there ever a more pleas­antly haunt­ing sound? For those that are unfa­mil­iar with this weird and won­der­ful instru­ment it is a super-duper, glass-rub-o-matic, Ben Franklin spe­cial. You see, old Benny had the bril­liant idea of automat­ing the whole rub­bing the rim of a wine glass trick by skew­er­ing a bunch of glass bowls... »

5 Big Steps in Music Technology

By oneoverphi

Here is a neat lit­tle list of 5 impor­tant devel­op­ments in mod­ern music tech­nol­ogy brought to you by New Sci­en­tist. I never new there existed such a machine as the pho­nau­to­graph. Cool stuff indeed. The last two hun­dred years have seen huge advances in music tech­nol­ogy, such as elec­tronic music and even home record­ing soft­ware. Here are five of the... »

Ancient Computer Tunes

By oneoverphi

BBC has a writeup on the old­est known music pro­duced by a com­puter. My how far we’ve come. Dur­ing the ses­sion, the tem­pera­men­tal machine man­aged to work its way through Baa Baa Black Sheep, God Save the King and part of In the Mood. Fol­low­ing one aborted attempt, a laugh­ing pre­sen­ter says: “The machine’s obvi­ously not in the mood.” Read more … »

Lost Music

By oneoverphi

I hap­pened on a radio pro­gram called “Lost music of the 80’s” not too long ago. It was dis­ap­point­ing when after lis­ten­ing for a time I realised that I had heard before every song they were play­ing being as they were oft played sin­gles in my youth. And I’ll hear them all again when oldies radio starts becom­ing... »

Wire me up! A Short History of Guitar Effects

By oneoverphi

I went to Seat­tle recently and while there I took in the Expe­ri­ence Music Project. One of the most inter­est­ing exhibits was the his­tory of the gui­tar. But of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to me was the dis­play of early elec­tric guitars. Mod­ern music has much to owe the elec­tric gui­tar. Elec­tric gui­tars brought with them the oppor­tu­nity to... »

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