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Musical Spectrum Analysis

Musical Spectrum Analysis is a really interesting take on Spectrograms. Developed by Jon-Kyle Mohr, a designer/programmer/musician and member of the Cargo Collective team, and Lee Martin, a developer at SoundCloud, who built a generative incarnation with Canvas and the SoundCloud API, which can be located at spectrogr.am.

What you are observing above is basically this (as described by Jon-Kyle Mohr):

Sound frequencies are displayed as they are heard. Lower frequencies are mapped low (bottom) to high (top). Brightness is determined by amplitude.

Sweeping tones and rhythmic patterns create intricate structures. The circular form is in memorial of dead formats; the CD, MiniDisc and others. R.I.P.

Andrew Ohlman, who also happens to be a member of the Cargo Collective team, compiled a Quartz sketch which does similar things called Circular Spectrogram.



You can download the Circular Spectrogram application here to create your own visuals (currently only available for Mac users).

Posted by B3PO

Sufjan/Shigeto + Burial/FourTet + Blondes

Posted by Jakub


Photo by: Gus Mantel

This Shigeto remix of Sufjan Stevens just got leaked out about a week ago, a beautiful take on how to remix a different genre, Shigeto keeps the feel of the original and gives us this thread that unravels this tune into pile of silk cloth to lay on and rest.

Probably the most inviting to new listeners of the Four Tet / Burial collabs comes Nova. This could be an Enya / Ricardo Villalobos collab which really sounds appealing right now and i’m only saying that because I wish this hit a broader audience so people could understand what the world is missing out on here.

Its time for early 2000’s Tech House to come back, the melody is important again! pull out your old Traum, Kompakt, and Border Community records because they’ll blow these young kids minds, Blondes definitely know what there doing.

The Violet Crown App At SXSW

Posted by Charles

With everyone heading to or already at SXSW this week and next, I thought this would be a good time to post about the location aware music apps that Bluebrain has been doing. They’ve already done one for The National Mall and Central Park ( Listen To The Light ), the new one The Violet Crown is based around Austin and SXSW. Basically it’s, as Bluebrain describes it, “a musical composition, available exclusively as a free iPhone app, that uses the phone’s built-in GPS to alter the music as the listener traverses the area – each street and intersection is tagged with various pockets of sound, turning the festival grounds into a musical ‘choose-your-own-adventure’.”

You can download the free app here through iTunes.

It’s a really cool concept and as of yet, I haven’t been able to try out the other versions from The National Mall or Central Park ( Listen To The Light ), The Violet Crown will be the first.

For those that can’t make it out to SXSW this year, I dug a little further to get some more of the background on The Violent Crown app and some process. Ryan Holladay of Bluebrain went over the technical info and he sent me a few screen grabs and a map from the programming end of things. He also did a breakdown of how it works, which I think is really interesting.

“What you are looking at in these shots is the app simulator running running on our desktop — this is a way that we can remotely test the music without having to be in Austin and simulate the experience of, say, walking from one block to another and hearing how the music changes. As you can see, there are many in a single area, often with so many overlapping that it’s difficult to tell visually where each of them are located. The crosshairs in the middle represent the location of the listener, the various circles indicate the size of the audio track and the colors the state the audio is in: Blue, as you probably guessed, is playing, while yellow is cued and red is disengaged.

Because, by design, the app basically has to be ready for whichever direction you move, what we have is a system that prepares the audio to be dropped in at any given point and at the correct interval by preloading audio in every direction within a certain proximity. So, for instance, if you were to begin walking from Frontage Rd towards Congress Ave, halfway up 4th Street it will have prepared the tracks waiting for you when you arrive at Red River Street. But, when you reach an intersection, the audio to your left and right is also waiting for in case you chose that direction. Once it’s realized you’ve moved on, it drops those tracks to save processing power until you turn around and re-approach.”

To see what it’s all about check out the Making Of video below, which gives you a detailed explanation of what it does and how they actually built the one for Central Park ( Listen To The Light ).

Tycho x Heathered Pearls Mix: Dazed Mag

Posted by Jakub



Scott and I put together a mix for Dazed Magazine last week, we wanted to make it a free download for you all. Below is the tracklist and link to the Tycho interview, enjoy.

TRACKLIST
CaribouSinuses
Com TruiseKarova
Broker/DealerOn A Claire Day
Cloudland CanyonKrautwerk
Tame ImpalaWhy Won’t You Make Up Your Mind?
BibioSaint Christopher
Black Moth Super RainbowFrom The See
Odd NosdamUp In Flames
BonoboRecurring
J DillaOne
18 Carat AffairPhil Spector Daydream
Broadcast & The Focus GroupOne Million Years Ago
Ulrich SchnaussStars
BeckHotwax

READ THE TYCHO INTERVIEW ON DAZED MAG

DOWNLOAD THE MIX FREE

Shigeto+CFCF+Sean Byrd+Grain Mountain

Posted by Jakub



Shigeto comes back with a mini LP that touches on the more organic instruments that he feels natural working with. There’s beautiful Rhodes work along with flutters of good feelings with a pouncing beat, a must have.

CFCF floored me with this one, there is not enough music with grand piano and synth arpeggios dueling for your attention to the point they both end up molding together and completely pleasing your ears.

I’ve been a big fan of Sean Byrd for years, I still have his demo from 10 years ago somewhere stored away, his new work drew me in like never before, this is IDM at its best state when hazy emotional tones meet puttering heavy kicks, really beautiful.

Came across Grain Mountain on soundcloud randomly, felt like a nice release after digging thru over 100 tracks of nothing from all over the place. It definitely will appeal to the Balam Acab lovers.