Posted on 06 Mar 2010 | Tagged as: Lego | 88 views
Mr Yoshi Akai built a pretty awesome Lego sequencer which to get working in itself is an amazing feat but it goes even deeper. The different coloured Lego pieces each have their own sound and the higher the Legos stack, the more complex the sound. There are many more music related instuments on his website. Now Mr. Akai just needs to provide us with some step-by-step instructions on how we can create our own Lego sequencer at home.
Posted on 20 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Web | 415 views
Code Organ let’s you type in a website URL of your choice and it will play music based on the code of that website. It will actually analyze the code of any website based on what’s inside the <body> tags and will based on an algorithm, define chords, synth style and drum patterns. The music results are surprisingly and randomly catchy.
Posted on 08 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Technology | 120 views
Althought I’ve never had any experience using a Moog Synthesizer I can imagine how complicated yet fun they are after looking at this computer software that replicates the Moog experience.
Posted on 20 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: Deals | 205 views
I have been posting a lot of deals and Black Friday ads but ’tis the season and everyone wants to save money things or better yet get things for free. Amazon.com feels your pain by offering a free Holiday MP3 Sampler available for download. Click on this link and make sure you download the full album to get all five songs free. You will need to get the Amazon MP3 Downloader before you can download. The songs are as follows:
I Wish You A Merry Christmas (1999 Digital Remaster) Bing Crosby
Deck The Halls Peggy Lee
The Nutcracker Suite Les Brown & His Band Of Renown
Posted on 02 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: Video Games | 129 views
Apple Corps and MTV have announced a Beatles music game to be developed by Harmonix and released sometime late in 2009. Harmonix, known for its Rock Band title, said it will not be an expansion pack but its own full innovative game which takes advantage of the Rock Band platform. The game will feature 42 tracks performed between the years of 1962 to 1969. Apparently visual imagery will play a big part in this game, maybe referring to the iconic artwork on Beatles album covers. With Beatles fans entering their retirement age in the next few years, maybe Harmonix thinks they will have more free time on their hands to play video games.
Posted on 28 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Web | 172 views
Following the trend of TV media going online recently, MTV dropped a bomb today by flipping the switch on mtvmusic.com. The site has tons and tons of music videos to watch from the MTV vintage vault to present day material (broadband or FIOS internet connection highly recommended). The site is currently in Beta but the music videos they have are up and running well. Just type in the artist or song you’re looking for and see if it’s available yet on the service. Yup, this internet thing may not be a fad afterall…
Posted on 26 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Web | 170 views
The music group AC/DC came out with an interesting idea for a music video. An official song video that is meant to be downloaded and viewed in MS Excel. Apparently Excel isn’t just used for adding up numbers with formulas but also as a way to show off artistic videos. Although I couldn’t get it to work on my computer (must be a Mac thing) I was able to watch the YouTube video and it is seems different and unique, much like AC/DC’s style of music.
Posted on 19 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: Technology, Web | 220 views
The largest vinyl record collection is for sale for $3 million dollars. The owner must sell it due to health issues and a struggling record industry. This is a really good documentary of the story of the man and his records. You can view the official website of the collection for more information.
Posted on 17 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Video Games | 109 views
Everyone loves Mii’s. They’re adorble little characters you create and then play as in Wii games. So the news of a Wii music game is exciting! Players will be able to control one of up to six different band members and over 50 different instruments to play. A variety of songs will be included in the purchase of Wii Music but who needs variety as long as Nintendo adds classic Nintendo game theme songs.
Posted on 05 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: Technology | 242 views
After looking on Slickdeals one day a couple weeks ago, I found a great deal on a Creative player. The price for the 8GB version was around $84 plus a small tax fee for a refurbished 8GB Creative Zen MP3 Player. I decided to pull the trigger and buy the unit which I finally received a couple days ago. The unit shipped from California.
The first thing I noticed when I opened the box was the build quality of the unit compared to my iPod and Sony unit which I purchased recently. The creative player didn’t feel as solid although it’s just as light. The buttons feel a little cheap compared to my other players metal feel. Also when you push the buttons they make a clicking noise which is slightly annoying. The power switch is on the side and is more difficult to use because it’s not a button but a switch that needs to be held for a second. This can be seen as a good thing as it would be much more difficult to accidentally turn on the player.
Once the unit is powered on you will see the units flashy graphics and easy to operate menu. The menu is totally customizable in the ’system’ menu which is nice.
There are seven main features of the Zen:
Microphone (lets you record things with built in microphone)
FM Radio (old-fashioned radio!)
Memory Card (view items on the built in SD card reader)
System (adjust system properties)
Pictures (view pictures)
Video (watch videos)
Music (listen to music)
The microphone is something I’ll never be using but is a decent feature to have.
The FM radio is something that frankly I didn’t think I’d use but actually love. I get 30 stations (some better than others) in my area and it’s nice to hear random music once in a while rather then listening to the same 400 songs over and over.
The memory card is a very nice feature. I haven’t taken advantage of this yet but I can essentially double the memory of the unit for about half the price of what the unit cost and fill it up with movies for long trips.
The system has many features which can be changed by the user including info, video, audio, display, clock and more.
The pictures feature I don’t really use. Pictures aren’t very exciting when there’s video and the screen is too small to see much detail in the images.
The video looks average on this unit. The unit is 320 x 240 pixels and honestly the video looks a little blurry to me. However, videos are still very watchable on this unit. This player doesn’t play the popular MP4 video format that iPods do however the CD comes with a converter that works quite well and is quite fast for converting software.
The music is what I spend most of my time listening to. You can sort by artist, album, playlist and genres. The music quality is average. The supplied headphones are horrible though and add echo to the sound. I ditched them and used some 3rd party iPod headphones I had as a spare. The music sounds much better with them.
Overall I’m happy with this unit due to the large amount of features available. The key features that this has that many other players don’t are the FM radio, built-in SD card slot and microphone. However this unit does fall short in a few areas. It’s a bit thicker of a unit compared to iPod (probably due to the extra features) it’s not too thick but the difference is noticeable.
The button placement feels a bit akward and there are too many of them. The shortcut button is nice but the dedicated play/pause, back and info buttons are not necessary and could easily be incorporated into 5-button directional pad. Creative claims up to 30 hours of continuous audio playback. I got a refurbished unit so maybe my battery isn’t as strong but I notice about half of that amount of juice. I feel that the extra features outweigh the negatives of the unit.
