Now That’s What I Call MIDI is a project by Internet Archaeology. They want to make a full length EP containing 16 of your favorite Jamz from yesteryear (Nirvana, Ace of Base, Eminem, Jay-Z …) converted from MIDI format onto the plush sound of vinyl. It will be limited to 500 copies only.
You can help this project through Kickstarter. If you pledge $25 or more you’ll receive a copy! They need $2.500 by Sunday January 9th 2011, otherwise no ones pays or receives any money (no risk for you or them). They’re almost half way there, so pitch in. It’s MIDI on vinyl!
“Back In” from Laser is probably the first laser cut plexi phono record. A few weeks ago, Niklas Roy and Jari Suominen had the chance to use a laser cutter at timelab’s fablab. So they decided to make a record with 8 track loops.
They used a vector program to draw the actual record. With different line colours they could modulate the laser’s intensity. They also experimented with different depths of the groove within one loop like in track 6. Track 2 is something like a random noise experiment where the needle jumps in a different way over the grooves, each time the track is played. So every track has a different idea.
In the video, Jari explains the whole project and at the end you can listen to all 8 tracks.
Jeff Mills latest release, The Occurrence, is pressed on a hybrid CD. One side is just a normal CD, the other is a 5″ vinyl pressing which you can play on a turntable. How cool is that?
The recording translates the length of its vinyl groove into audio allowing listeners to experience the 1/4 mile length of the spiral as the record is played. Every inch of the needle’s path is audible in the form of a click, each foot as a beat and distances of 10 feet are heard as a blip. These sounds gradually slow as the stylus approaches the center, (the stylus travels less distance in the groove with each revolution of the record). Along the way, the voice of the narrator mentions the horizontal dimensions of particular objects.
This tangle is the unbroken, vinyl residue resulting from the initial master cutting of Quarter Mile Groove. Unraveled, this thread of vinyl would be 1⁄4 mile in length.
Katie Paterson recorded the sound of 3 glaciers (Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull and Solheimajökull) on Iceland. She then pressed those recordings on ice record made of melt water from those glaciers. The records were played on 3 turntables and it took almost 2 hours till they were completely melted. You can listen to one here.
Neo Gramophone is concept by Lars Amhoff, it is an reincarnation of a classic gramophone. It can play music streamed from your iTunes, a subsurface touchscreen menu let you control the music player. I’m currious if it will get past this concept phase, but it’s a nice object anyway.
Timbap is a platform-independent application for augmented DJing. It was developed by students and assistants of the University of Ulm (Germany). It provides a rugged tangible interface for browsing your music collection and manipulating playback by scratching, pitching, skipping etc. Like many others it is based on an acoustic timecode signal recorded to vinyl records. In contrast to existing digital solutions however, it completely releases the DJ from mouse, keyboard and monitor. Instead it relies on physical interaction with the standard club turntable only.
It still sounds quite strange, right? So basically it is a projected video interface for selecting mp3′s. Maybe this video will make it all clear to you.
Guessing from the amount of student DJ projects, there are a lot of bedroom DJ’s among the students out there.
Yuri Suzuki is a Japanese product designer and electronic music artist living in London. Here are 3 projects by him.
Sound Chaser
A train-style record player. Users connect the chipped pieces of records together to make new tracks. The records pieces are from cheap records bought at jumble sales or used record shops. This record player revives forgotten, old records.
Prepared Turntable
A turntable that focuses on actively composing and playing music.
This record player has 5 tone arms, each of which can have its volume controlled by its own fader.
This is an analogue answer for the digitalized DJ.
Finger Player
I guess that the video and the pictures explain everything.
