A Cisco Home Stereo?
Have you ever seen an advertisement on TV where you weren’t really sure who they were marketing to, or maybe even what they were marketing? That’s the Cisco ads to me. There’s one thing to be said for brand image and familiarity, but I’m not sure any head honcho at a Fortune 1000 company is going to make the call on what network he uses based on a TV commercial he saw last week. Isn’t there a more efficient way to reach your target audience than with a mass TV ad? Meanwhile, nobody in the blue collar world has any idea what Cisco would even do for their company if they had one to begin with. At least when I see a commercial for a movie that looks cool, I know I’m supposed to go watch that movie; or when I see a Geico commercial, I know I’m supposed to switch to Geico car insurance to save 15% or more. But after watching a Cisco commercial, I’m not sure what they want from me. A pat on the back maybe, or a thank you card for making the world work? So I enjoyed your commercial, what’s my action step? If I’m not a company, what am I supposed to do with this?
Well now everything is starting to make sense…
Brian Eno on AutoTune
Here’s Brian Eno’s quick commentary on the use of Auto-Tune as a creative tool. Keep in mind that this Eno recording was posted back in 2006, before the hip-hop hijack of autotune. I’ve been actually growing a bit tired of the effect myself. We used to call it the “Cher” effect, then it became T-Pain, [...]
Homemade MultiTouch Musical Interface
Multitouch Prototype 2 from Randy Jones on Vimeo. This is a really nice passive multitouch input by Randall Jones. It was designed to be an inexpensive, and extremely expressive, musical interface. I really like the simplicity, and it only cost about $50 to build. Very well thought out.
Human Evolution and Music | Why Music?
I found this article in the Economist on the coffee table at my parents’ house over the holidays. It’s a great quick read on how and why music has become such an intergral part of the human experience. Human Evolution and Music | Why Music?
MixTapes Mean “I Love You”
;)
Remember back in the day before email and ichat, before MySpace and Facebook, even before texting and twitter were all acceptable ways of communicating? Even before “143″ on your pager made your day?
When puppy love was in full force, you had two ways of conveying your emotions: you either stuffed a letter into her locker, or you made her a mix tape. The mix tape was a big step in the relationship. It was where you put your personality and character on the line, where you hoped to find some common ground with the future mother of your children, where you left Bryan Adams to do the dirty work of words, and then swept in to hijack the romance he had created.
Well the mix tape has become an endangered pastime…
Social Networking Sites Abandon Ship On Music Apps
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Just a few days after MySpace disabled the Project Playlist app, Facebook decided to do the same.
For those that aren’t as familiar with Project Playlist, it’s a web application that lets you create, share and manage music you enjoy. After creating a playlist of your favorite songs, you can then embed your playlist onto any site; most notably MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, hi5 etc. Project Playlist boasts “the largest music search engine on the net” and the “most popular music widget in the world”, according to their site…
Well now Project Playlist has found itself in a decent amount of trouble with the RIAA.
Busker Du – Phone Recorded Street Musicians
;)
Call it anything but over-produced.
Busker Du is a website where users can phone in recordings of street musicians.
Songbird Challenges iTunes for Music Player Dominance
So I’ve been playing with the new firefox-based music player Songbird for a bit of time now, and must say it’s even more awesome than I expected.
In reading the features and reviews, most of the additions seemed “nice”, but not anything that was going to blow me away or sway me from iTunes. After installing and actually using it though, it’s functionally far superior. The scarier part is, since it’s open source, it’s guaranteed to gain even more features and functionality; and all with a high level of user customization.
Forget the Korg NanoKey, Turn Your iPhone into a MIDI Controller!
Silicon Studios has developed a series of Midi controller apps to let you use your iPhone with your computer as a wireless midi controller.
Melodyne Direct Note Access
I just posted about the Beatles’ chord getting decoded, and here’s the software behind the process. A lot of this news is a bit old, but I’m taking these first few days of the site launch to catch you all up on stories I’ve been sitting on for the past year or so.
There are some interesting videos up on the Celemony site about Melodyne DNA.
Using Math to Decode the Beatles
So it took some big brains and fast computers to figure out the opening chord in the Beatles’ song “Hard Day’s Night”, a chord that has plagued guitarists in countless coverbands for decades. Using the fourier transforms in Melodyne’s Direct Note Access (DNA), developed by Peter Neubacker, Dalhousie University professor Jason Brown was able to [...]
