Happy Holidaze! This amazing holiday music set is performed entirely on smartphones and tablets by the North Point Ministries and presented online for your holiday listening pleasure. They got a lot of requests from folks wanting to know which app allowed them to play which instrument, so they assembled a list that will lead you right to them. As with other entries under Singularity Music, I had to immediately start tracking down and installing a few of these, in the hopes I could learn how to make more than random noise out of them.
The first track is All Things In Passing by Bowie Bravin vs The Beautiful Freaks, and then Facelessape Mefusula and Deepskytraveler playing live at Raglan Shire earlier this year. These are just a few of the bands you can hear playing live inworld at Second Life; if you thought all the live music was a voice with a single instrument, now you know better. Finally, Portishead’s Mysterons featuring the Guerilla Burlesque Dancers from Idle Rogue… I don’t know if they played inworld, but the music and machinima were too good not to include it here.
There is, of course, the iGuitar or the Pocket Guitar, each allowing you to play any song a physical guitar will allow you to play, but fitting into your pocket much easier. But what if you took two or four smart phones and set each of them up to do a different musical task, and played them all together? Rick Wakeman used to need 400 cubic feet of stage space and a dozen hours per show to assemble a fraction of this audio power, and that only after a crew of teamsters moved, mounted, and bolted together the gear for him. Today it can be done by a single girl with four smart phones, one for voice processing and the others to do the band instrument parts. The Futures so bright, I gotta wear shades!
Music is evolving right along with everything else as we rush faster and faster towards the singularity. These days, you can use your cell phone or tablet to enjoy any kind of media they support, but with the correct apps you can so much more; you can create the music yourself, limited only by your imagination and skill set. Using the same devices and the proper social media software, you can be in touch with other like-minded friends and creators from all over the world around the clock, to brainstorm, write, and jam, until you get a grasp of exactly what you want to bring to life. Finally, again with the smarter versions of the same devices, you can actually play the music and display the video together, in real time, from anywhere on the planet, for everyone to experience. Here are a few examples, starting with the Korean Pop Star Yoari and her iPhone playing band covering a Beyonce song, and then the MoPho Ocarina Band (with instrument details) looking into the concepts behind using smartphones with social media interfaces as musical instruments. As a music addict from long ago, I find this topic one of the more exciting aspects of living in today’s modern world of the future, and will be returning to it again.
What could be more silly than a Ukulele Orchestra doing rock? Perhaps a Kazoo Band, but not much else to my mind. So here are a few silly Ukulele songs to hold us until I can gather together a few of the other tunes.
Dragoncon is one of the biggest media parties every year, based solidly in Fandom from its origins to its current incarnation, and encompassing one of the largest collections of creative folks from the US. One aspect of that creativity is expressed within the AMV or FMV competition, an event many cons have taken up. In its simplest form an Anime Music Video or Fan Music Video contest encourages you to take some video footage, either created by you or extracted from a favorite show or film and give it a song for a soundtrack. It rapidly gets more complicated than that, as you select the best scenes, try to match the lip movement to the song lyrics, and finally try to tell a unique story from these component parts. But even if you only achieve the first level, you have created something that has never before existed, which is always a good thing. I should also mention that the source laws for fair use have changed this past year, so you are allowed to rip your video segments directly from the DVDs if you want to now.
The DragonCon AMV 2010 is now over, and you can see the winners at that site (and maybe one or two at the end of this post). But the competition for 2011 just got serious this past October 1st, when the Fandom Music Video Awards went live. They are accepting contest entrants in three phases, or rounds: October 1st to December 31st, now underway, January 15th through April 15th for round two, and May 1st to July 31st for round three. Each round shall have its winners, and the finalists will be part of the con itself. The first video in the next segment includes some rules, hints, and trips. The others are a few of last years winners, starting with the Best In Show winner Building Steam, made from video from Steam Boy and the soundtrack being Steampunk band Abney Park’s Building Steam. Good Luck!