inicio mail me! sindicaci;ón

Archive for Music

Ice Cube Goes Silverlight

February 29, 2008 at 2:14 am ·
Filed under PR, Buzz, Music, Mix Event

We already knew that Ice Cube is one hell of a cool guy. I’ve been listening to his rhymes from way back when I was still skating around and ‘chillin wit teh homies’. Ice Cube was starting a very cool Silverlight based website back in November. And apparently that worked out super fine for him. He liked it that much that he’s actually going to give a live concert, which will be streamed in Silverlight on his very own TV Network: UVNTV.

From the announcement:

On March 15th, 6 PM PST, 9PM EST, Ice Cube will do a free live concert at South by Southwest (SxSW) and that concert will be streamed live to the UVNTV.com site (Ice Cube and DJ Pooh’s new site for TV-on-the-Web) and presented via Silverlight.

Ice Cube Free Concert

Here’s the old interview with Ice Cube where he had his team working on the creation of the website:

Video: Ice Cube's UVNTV.com goes live with Microsoft Silverlight

Comments (1)

Tangible Music Interface With Candy

February 5, 2008 at 11:17 am ·
Filed under Video, Music, Technology, WoW

If there is one thing I truly like, it’s the mix of music and candy :) In this case the combination leads to The Bubblegum Sequencer, a physical step sequencer that lets you create drumloops by arranging colored balls on a tangible surface. It generates MIDI events and can be used as an input device to control audio hardware and software. The Bubblegum Sequencer senses the position of the balls through a video camera mounted underneath the surface. The captured image is processed by a computer vision routine that computes the average color in each hole. The colors are quantized and mapped to notes. For each note, a MIDI event is generated and sent to the operating system’s MIDI bus.

Video: Bubblegum Sequencer

In addition to the original features shown in the video, we’ve implemented a few more:

  • Tempo tapping: Tap three or more times on a pressure-sensitive area on the side of the sequencer to set a new tempo for the playback loop.
  • Visual feedback: The sequencer now sports a row of running LEDs to indicate the current position. We’ve also experimented with projecting animations of popping bubbles onto the surface to provide direct feedback which beats are currently played.
  • Melody mode: Instead of just playing monophonic beats, we developed a mode in which the vertical position of the balls encodes the pitch of the sample played. To increase the range, two balls can be combined, totalling seven different possible notes on the blues scale.
  • Voiceover mode: To make the sample mappings less reliable on computer-based UIs, we wrote a Processing application that lets you record voice samples for each color at playback time. You record by holding down the spacebar and speaking into a microphone.

Finally, people can’t claim anymore that electronic music isn’t handmade.

The Bubblegum Sequencer is a project by Hannes Hesse, Andrew McDiarmid and Rosie Han.
It was conceived and created in the course “Theory and Practice of Tangible User Interfaces” at UC Berkeley’s School of Information in the Fall semester 2007.

For more information, visit the project site

Comments

Live Earth Exclusive Free Song

May 18, 2007 at 12:26 pm ·
Filed under PR, Music

This week our MSN teams (re)launched http://liveearth.msn.com, the exclusive online destination for Live Earth: The Concert for a Climate in Crisis. Live Earth will culminate on 7/07/07 with a global concert on seven continents with venues that include the US, UK, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, China, Australia, and Turkey. Live Earth is much more than a concert – it’s designed to be a catalyst event to coalesce a worldwide community of people who share a single environmental vision and mission: to convert concern to action.

Through our partnership and sponsorship of Live Earth Microsoft is playing a critical role in the top entertainment event of the year, but we’re also positioning MSN at the forefront of news media coverage by delivering a rich media experience that educates, informs and inspires change. This event is important to our business because our investment in Live Earth helps MSN reach new audiences and showcase our media experiences including break-through video, rich-media content from credible sources, and the powerful integration of Windows Live Search, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Hotmail, and Windows Live Spaces. Ultimately, this event will help us build a deeply engaged community that recognizes MSN as a leader in entertainment and a great resource for “green” information.

Madonna, Free Track To Download

More than 150 of the world’s hottest artists will perform for Live Earth, including Madonna, whose new song “Hey You” is available for free download exclusively for seven days from the MSN Live Earth site. Madonna wrote the song, inspired by the Live Earth movement, and she will perform it live during Live Earth UK.

As the exclusive online destination for Live Earth, MSN is pleased to offer this song in conjunction with Madonna and is proud to donate 25 cents for each of the first 1 million downloads to the Alliance for Climate Protection, in support of Live Earth.

Cool.

Comments (2)

Video Fun: Zune HQ

March 6, 2007 at 11:01 am ·
Filed under MicroLife, Video, Music

The video interviews I did in Zurich recenty are almost done. Meanwhile, I saw Jesse D. Lewin posted the video on the on10 blog about our little trip to Bear Creek where the Zune building is. As I wrote earlier, we kinda crashed a private performance for the Zune people. We had fun :) So, here’s the movie from that little concert. You’re about to see a snippet of the ‘Young Love’ show.


Video: Young Love @ Zune HQ

Thanks, Jesse! Very sophisticallytatedly edited. :)

Comments

Prince, The Super Bowl & Windows Vista

February 5, 2007 at 1:52 am ·
Filed under PR, Buzz, Music

Cool news on the side, especially for music lovers and composers: it’s the first time that windows based keyboard workstation will be played live at the Super Bowl - until 30 minutes ago I didn’t even knew we made or sponsored research for instruments, but hey… :) - The Consumer ISV team successfully supported numerous consumer ISVs announcing integration/support for Windows Vista, helping to promote the release of Vista for the following scenarios: Music, TV & Movies, Memories and productivity. Of particular interest is the Open Labs announcement regarding the use of it’s keyboard workstations during Prince’s performance on the Pepsi Super Bowl XLI halftime show on Sunday, February 4th, at Dolphin Stadium in Miami. The event marks the first time that windows based keyboard workstation will be played live at the Super Bowl. Check out the press release for more information.

Windows Music

Prince NPG keyboardists Morris Hayes and Renato Neto will be playing Open Labs Gen3 MiKo and NeKo during the Pepsi Super Bowl XLI halftime performance; This first Windows-based Keyboard Workstation is the first musical instrument to use Intel Core 2 Duo processors.

Documents for more info about Vista and music and consumer ISV support for GA: We supported 9 Partners/10 Press Releases featured on the Windows Vista/2007 Microsoft Office System Virtual Pressroom including:

Comments (1)