It’s science: ambient, chillout music is good for you...

nobody@vox.com(Max Waves) — Wed, 14 May 2008 22:00:55 -0700

It’s science: chill out music music is good for you.

According to research presented at the American Society of Hypertension’s Twenty Third Annual Scientific Meeting and Exposition (ASH 2008), listening to just 30 minutes of rhythmically homogeneous music every day can significantly reduce high blood pressure.

By rhythmically homogeneous, they mean music with little or no variation in rhythm; they tested with classical music and Indian raga music, but the research offers some medical validation to Stephen Halpern’s pioneering new age music, Brian Eno’s ambient music (which he conceived while bed-ridden) and more recent chill out music.

Researchers found that patients with mild hypertension who listened to just half an hour rhythmically homogeneous music a day for four weeks experienced significant reductions in 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (ABP)

“Listening to music is soothing and has often been associated with controlling patient-reported pain or anxiety and acutely reducing blood pressure,” said study investigator, Prof. Pietro A. Modesti, MD, PhD. “But for the first time, today’s results clearly illustrate the impact daily music listening has on ABP. We …. can now confidently explore music listening as a safe, effective, non-pharmacological treatment option or a complement to therapy.”

Unfortunately, the research was limited to testing the positive benefits of “soothing” music, so we can’t tell if listening to techno is just as beneficial, or if it’s likely to send your heart into a hypertensive spasm.

Research Details

Hypertension is a common disorder in which blood pressure remains abnormally high (a reading of 140/90 mm Hg or greater) and is responsible for causing at least five million premature deaths each year worldwide

A total of 48 patients aged between 45 and 70, all with mild hypertension and using pharmacological treatment, took part in the study. Of these, 28 patients aged between 45 and 69, listened to 30 minutes of classical, Celtic and Indian (raga) music per day while conducting slow, controlled abdominal breathing exercises. Twenty patients of comparable age, blood pressure values and antihypertensive treatment served as the control group. All patients underwent ABP monitoring before randomization (baseline) and one and four weeks after treatment allocation.

The study results revealed a significant systolic ABP reduction in those patients who had been listening to music daily (-3.2±5.6 and -4.4±5.3 mm Hg, p<0.01 vs baseline for both) at one and four weeks respectively. Only small, non significant BP reductions were revealed via 24-hour monitoring of the control group. The effect on systolic blood pressure was independent from changes in heart rate because no differences between groups were observed in 24-hour mean heart rate.

“Sadly, despite the global focus on prevention, it predicted that 56 billion people worldwide will be hypertensive by 2025,” said Modesti. “In light of these devastating statistics, it is reassuring to consider that something as simple, easy and enjoyable as daily music listening combined with slow abdominal breathing, may help people naturally lower their blood pressure.”

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Miniorgan Features Vintage Musical Toys

nobody@vox.com(Max Waves) — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:41:11 -0700

Electronic-bongos

Miniorgan is a fun site that features cool vintage music toys, mostly of the 70’s and 80’s.

from the author's website:

"Why do I collect?

As a child I always wanted a Stylophone, but my parents gave me a different Christmas present: a Lite 'n Learn electronic organ by Concept 2000. A very cheap sounding machine with LED's. In relation to the very popular Stylophone, this Concept 2000 organ is incredibly hard to find these days. On my search for it, some other great little musical machines appeared in my life - so I wasn't able to resist these wonderful toys. They have interesting sounds. They are often well-designed and show great box-art. Unfortunately, most of these musical toys haven't fulfilled the dreams they promised. So they often ended up in the trash. That's why most of them are very rare today."

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Radionomy Lets You Create Free Web Radio Station

nobody@vox.com(Max Waves) — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:16:30 -0700

Radionomy

Radionomy, a Belgian startup, is a site that lets you create a free, ad-supported Web radio station

The site, now in beta testing, is designed to make creating a Web radio station trivial, letting you browse through vast music, jingle and content libraries made available by Radionomy. You can also integrate your own musical creations or recordings.

Radionomy also supports a variety of social networking features, including tagging, embed code and station sharing. Here’s an example embed:

Radionomy broadcasts your station free of charge and bears all the costs, including copyrights. Radionomy is supported through audio ads broadcast with the stations. Radionomy offers a revenue share based on your station’s audience.

The name Radionomy come from the merger of two concepts: Radio + Autonomy. The founders of Radionomy thought that Internauts should be able to create radio with full autonomy.

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AudioTools gets virtual TR808

nobody@vox.com(Max Waves) — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:01:00 -0700

David at Hobnox sends word that they’ve updated their browser-based virtual studio, AudioTools.

Just a quick note that we just rolled out an update of the Hobnox Audiotool. As promised the TR808 is now online, along with two new stompboxes (Compressor and Bitcrusher) and some enhanced functions. Saving is still not possible yet, we’re working hard to make it happen for the next update.

It’s great to see AudioTools develop. Saving and offline use are probably critical, though, to AudioTools gaining acceptance.

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Cellular Grid Machine

nobody@vox.com(Max Waves) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:15:29 -0700

Cellular Grid Machine - Screenshot

"Cellular Grid Machine is a virtual-machine mechanism that just-so-happens-to spit out music from its auto mutating 16x16 multi-directional grid. CGM can generate hours / weeks / months / years of continual, self-modifying and self-evolving forms that are created by processes which are arbitary, stupid, pointless and non-musical. It's processes. mechanisms and systems were inspired by its grid and not by musical ideas or musical theory. The music it produces is the excrement of the non-human expression of this machine.

This Cellular Grid Machine represents a totally re-written version of the previous CellularGridMachine(1999). It now includes more grid and collision processes / mechanims, which themselves are more configurable, works with CoreMidi, can export MidiFiles, has multiple Undo/Redo, has complete XG MidiEditing facilities for configuring sounds and XG Tone Generators. It is completely written in Cocoa for OSX."

(from the author website)

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The History Of The Doctor Who Theme Music

nobody@vox.com(Max Waves) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:51:42 -0700

Planet Nerd’s Dan Walmsley talks to experimental composer David Shea about the history of the Doctor Who music and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEmwYggYr2o

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Roland Olbeter’s Electro-Pneumatic Instruments

nobody@vox.com(Max Waves) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:14:11 -0700

Set designer and robot artist Roland Olbeter has created a series of electro-pneumatic sound machines capable of performing entire string quartets.

The first commissioned composition for the robotic instruments was Elena Kats-Chernin’s Fast Blue Air, which takes advantage of the range of noises created by the pneumatics.

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Jean Michel Jarre On The Internet, Record Labels

nobody@vox.com(Max Waves) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:05:18 -0700

Clash Music has an interesting interview with synth music pioneer Jean Michel Jarre.

It touches on some very timely subjects, including the role of the Internet in music:

The Internet isn’t the only answer

I think that the Internet might become the ultimate marketing machine, but I also think that in maybe five years’ time, what will be cool will be not be on the Internet. I’m pretty sure that the next generation, or the next punk attitude will be not being some kind of Internet freak, but instead finding something else. I think we’re in a very ambiguous situation. When you have fantastic tools such as web TV, digital radio, YouTube and iTunes type of systems – they are not THE answer, but they do enable you to stay in contact with your fans. In my opinion what Radiohead did with the download of their album for whatever price you chose wasn’t that positive for music. I think it’s something very dangerous, it wasn’t necessarily fair on young artists. When you’re a band the size of Radiohead you can afford to do that, but for new artists these days it’s very, very difficult.

Recognise that record companies are absolutely necessary

I think it’s a cynical attitude to think that musicians can survive as artists without them. Within the labels and record companies there are some really good guys who work 15-16 hour days to try to make things happen. It would be naïve to think you can just launch your album on the Internet in London and someone in Auckland would immediately know what your music is about if you don’t have the necessary distribution network. Although it’s very difficult to accept that the people that invented pirate radio in the ’60s are now the people who want to put today’s pirates in jail!

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Nightmares and... Ola!

nobody@vox.com(Max Waves) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:13:57 -0700

Jean Michel Jarre, who’s on tour with truckloads of rare vintage keyboards performing his classic Oxygène, says that the old gear posed some unique challenges at his most recent concert in Madrid:

The MemoryMoog went out of tune, the same for the ARP; we had very little time to set up everything. I tried quickly the Moog Liberation (the portable keyboard) and it had a constant vibrato that I couldn’t stop. We tried everything and eventually Patrick succeeded to make it usable.
I decided to go on stage with a maximum of energy and ready to cope with anything and….. everything happened!
First of all the Egg chair did not turn properly, the arpegiator of the MemoryMoog was blocked, the ARP was out of tune and I had to retune each of its oscillators live, one AKS had no sound, I had to switch the power off and on to make it work, I had to re-pitch the flute sound constantly all along Oxy 2, the DigiSequencer was blocked and I had to reload the sequence for Variation 2 and play something else in the meantime, the percussive sequence on Oxy 5 was hard to start and the Eminent went crazy on Oxy 13 during the encore..
But I felt Claude, Francis and Dominique really on the case full time and the audience totally with me from the beginning and it gave me the necessary energy to rage against the machines!
The Moog Liberation solo with its strange sound was probably one of the most inspired I’ve played since the beginning of the tour and the concert one of the most spectacular since the beginning as well.
The result was that the audience went really crazy screaming and doing the Ola at the end - we got the most animated standing ovation. ¡Viva Madrid…!

I admire his brave heart.

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Omnisphere Preview Remix Contest

nobody@vox.com(Max Waves) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:23:44 -0700

Spectrasonics announced today the beginning of their 10-week "Omnisphere Preview Remix Contest" where registered virtual instrument users can create music using special loops that Spectrasonics has created from the eagerly anticipated Omnisphere Power Synth. Three winners will be chosen in July to receive a free copy of Omnisphere when it is released on September 15, 2008. Omnisphere Preview Video #5 is also now available.

The contest soundset of 45 new loops were created using only Omnisphere and demonstrate a little 'taste' of some of the unique sounds and rhythmic capabilities of the new virtual instrument. The contest soundset is a free download and is available in Stylus RMX,REX2 and WAV file formats. All Spectrasonics registered users can download the soundset, enter the contest and submit their tracks at the contest web page

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