iNudge - Make a Tune

Thanks to -FUPPETS- friend STEVOK from the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum for this link.

iNudge

There have been several webpages where you could make a tune or create a song, but the iNudge page is simply the best yet. Not only can you change instrumentation, but you can extend the measures as long as you need, giving you the opportunity to write longer, more complex beats and pieces of music.
Check it out, explore the possibilities, and if you like, post a link to your finished piece in the comments section!

Here are just a few examples, made by the SY fantatics. Click on their screen names to hear the tunes.

STEVEOK - ANTAGON - BRELIGION - BEAUTIFUL PLATEAU - ANN ASHTRAY

35 Thousand Year Old Musical Instrument Unearthed

One of the oldest questions of both philosophy and anthropology is, "When did humans begin to make music?" This can be answered in many ways for music can be made without instruments of any kind. This type of vocal/physical music cannot be traced, but musical instruments can be.
Previously, the oldest archaeological evidence for musical instruments dated to around 30 thousand years in the past, with

"...the earliest secure archaeological evidence for music [coming] from sites in France and Austria and post-date 30,000 years ago." - ( Science Daily )

In the summer of 2008, excavations took place in Germany which have pushed back our understanding of humanity's music-making abilities. These took place at

the sites of Hohle Fels and Vogelherd. . . The most significant of these finds, a nearly complete bone flute, was recovered in the basal Aurignacian deposits at Hohle Fels Cave in the Ach Valley, 20 km west of Ulm. The flute was found in 12 pieces. The fragments were distributed over a vertical distance of 3 cm over a horizontal area of about 10 x 20 cm. This flute is by far the most complete of all of the musical instruments thus far recovered from the caves of Swabia.

This is an image of the amazing find.

The beauty of this find and it's dating is that it shows that humans were already music-makers and instrument-makers at the time they colonized what is now modern-day Europe. Along with the preserved bone flute, several pieces of ivory flutes were discovered.

The preserved portion of the bone flute from Hohle Fels has a length of 21.8 cm and a diameter of about 8 mm. The flute preserves five finger holes. The surfaces of the flute and the structure of the bone are in excellent condition and reveal many details about the manufacture of the flute. The maker carved two deep, V-shaped notches into one end of the instrument, presumably to form the proximal end of the flute into which the musician blew. The find density in this stratum is moderately high with much flint knapping debris, worked bone and ivory, bones of horse, reindeer, mammoth, cave bear, ibex, as well as burnt bone. No diagnostic human bones have been found in deposits of the Swabian Aurignacian, but we assume that modern humans produced the artifacts from the basal Aurignacian deposits shortly after their arrival in the region following a migration up the Danube Corridor.
The 10 radiocarbon dates from the basal Aurignacian fall between 31,000 and 40,000 years before present. Available calibrations and independent controls using other methods indicate that the flutes from Hohle Fels predate 35,000 calendar years ago. Apart from the caves of the Swabian Jura there is no convincing evidence for musical instruments predating 30,000 years before present.
These finds demonstrate that music played an important role in Aurignacian life in the Ach and Lone valleys of southwestern Germany. Most of these flutes are from archaeological contexts containing an abundance of organic and lithic artifacts, hunted fauna, and burnt bone. This evidence suggests that the inhabitants of the sites played musical instruments in diverse social and cultural contexts and that flutes were discarded with many other forms of occupational debris. - ( Science Daily )

The human condition includes the need to make and appreciate what we call music. It is evident in every single culture studied, from the present day to the prehistoric past. -FUPPETS- is comforted by this knowledge.

Music from your keyboard, and more, from the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum

Chairman Of The Bored, one of the eminent musicologists at the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum, has shared a link to a webpage that makes your keyboard into a drum machine. Get yr drum on here. Hitting "V" and "N" back to back repeatedly can hypnotize you, for it sounds like a party in George Michael's bathroom.
Not to be outdone, SpectralJulianIsNotDead has posted a link to a website of Harry Partch's instruments. Harry Partch created many instruments to fit the compositions he had written, including the Chromelodeon, which had 43 tones in a single octave. Play the instruments here. You can also hear Mr. Partch describe his instruments and hear pieces of his compositions.
In a slightly different vein, Sonic Youth 37 has posted a link to a pretty kick-ass flash animation of Japanese head-banging drummers called DRUM MACHINE by TokyoPlastic. Click here to enjoy. Some bad-ass shit.

Texas A&M Professor And His Love For Stradivarius Instruments

The world of music is an intensely subjective one. It seems that there is not much that most everyone can agree upon. In the world of stringed instruments, however, there are two names that stands out among the Masters, and those are the names of Antonio Stradivari, and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, with Stradivari barely edging out Guarneri.
The great Master made harps, violas, cellos, and guitars, but he is most remembered for the fine quality and superb, untouchable tone of his violins. Through the centuries since his passing, scientists and musical instrument makers have tried to crack the secrets to his perfect tone, and to his highly prized instruments.
The rarity of these instruments makes the effort very difficult. While he is estimated to have completed over 1100 instruments of the aforementioned types, only around 640 are known to exist today. That is an amazing number considering the fragility of wooden instruments.

Of all the people who have tried to analyze why Stradivarius instruments are so wonderful, Texas A&M professor emeritus of biochemistry, Joseph Nagyvary, has been at it for 30 years! His original idea, which was repeatedly ridiculed by many people, was that the wood for these fine instruments was chemically treated before-hand, and this is why they sound the way they do. It appears that his hypothesis was true!

Nagyvary, a native of Hungary who learned to play the violin by using an instrument that once belonged to Albert Einstein, has wondered for decades how Stradivari, with his rudimentary education and no scientific training, could have produced musical instruments with such an unequaled sound.
“These current research results are highly gratifying for me because they prove what I first proposed 33 years ago, that – contrary to common wisdom – the wood of the great masters was not natural (unadulterated) but chemically treated by certain minerals, some of which I had predicted at the outset. Based on my lifetime experimentations with similar chemicals, we have reason to believe that they could have played a major role in the great tonal refinement of the antique instruments,” Nagyvary says.
They found numerous chemicals in the wood, among them borax, fluorides, chromium and iron salts. ( Science Daily )

-FUPPETS- is always ready to praise scientists who stick to their guns and produce quantifiable data, whether it proves or disproves their theories, because it is that rigor which allows for honest understanding of the universe we live in. It takes away none of the majesty or grandeur or beauty experienced by enjoying such a fine instrument in the hands of a master musician to know how the quality of the instrument was achieved.
Mystery for mystery's sake is a fool's past-time. Mystery of any kind exists solely to let us know where to shine our "lights." Once a mystery is enlightened, other mysteries pop up. The universe will never run out and we should never tire of illuminating the dark areas in our collective knowledge.

Music is Your Only Friend, Until the End

STU666, one of the many bad mo-fucks over at the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum shared this link to a world of sounds and musical instruments the likes of which blow the -FUPPETS- Meta-Mind.
The website is OddMusic.com and it compiles a dizzying array of the world's strangest musical instruments. Here are some specially chosen by -FUPPETS- to blow your mind.

SEA ORGAN

Simple and elegant steps, carved in white stone, were built on the quayside. Underneath, there are 35 musically tuned tubes with whistle openings on the sidewalk. The movement of the sea pushes air through, and – depending on the size and velocity of the wave – musical chords are played. The waves create random harmonic sounds. - OddMusic.com

Listen to a sample of the SEA ORGAN here.

WATERPHONE

Waterphones are stainless steel and bronze monolithic, one-of-a-kind, acoustic, tonal-friction instruments that utilize water in the interior of their resonators to bend tones and create water echos. - OddMusic.com

Listen to a sample of the WATERPHONE here.

OPTIVIDEOTONE

A popular form of theremin is the light-sensitive variety. As the name implies, this type of instrument reacts to changes in light levels (i.e. brightness) just as the spatial proximity-based theremin reacts to changes in capacitance. As the video footage changes, the audio circuit of the Optivideotone reacts audibly with wild buzzes, howls, and weird microtonal synthesizer-like chords. - OddMusic.com

Listen to a sample of the OPTIVIDEOTONE here.