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Category: Music

Haloasis

Haloasis

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Haloasis is an interesting device that uses a rapidly spinning LED bar to produce a constantly changing display inside a clear plastic tube. It seems geared towards creatively displaying lyrics from your music. It’s not even in kickstarter yet, but it’ll be interesting to see how they do. I’m curious how loud it is, because these devices are never exactly quiet due to the high RPM spinning LED bars.

I think it could be more cool as a display for interesting information since my karaoke skills are less than amazing.

Nopia

Nopia

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The Nopia is a midi chord generator from Martin Grieco that lets you play around with different parts of tonal harmony theory to build really cool musical chords and arpeggios. It seems like a great beginner tool for building up great backing sounds.

It’s a beautiful little device that almost looks like something right out of original Star Trek. Perhaps they took some inspiration from Teenage Engineering.

Ultrasonic MEMS may be about to take over your ear buds

Ultrasonic MEMS may be about to take over your ear buds

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“Most conventional speakers generate sound by actuating and pushing a diaphragm; you’re pushing air to generate sound. We’re actually going to use ultrasonic modulation and demodulation to create pressure and generate sound…this is fundamentally the first time humans are experiencing sound generated in a different way.”  Mike Householder vice president of marketing and business development at xMEMS.

MEMS chips have already conquered the microphone market, making up the majority of microphones. But speakers have to propel a volume of air, rather than be pushed by it. xMEMS speakers going into products now are chips with multiple silicon flaps coated in piezoelectric material that vibrate at audible frequencies.

MEMS chips specialize in generating audible frequencies with very low phase distortion. Phase distortion is the variation in the timing of an acoustic signal according to its frequency; and has been with us since speakers were created.

Phase inaccuracy is so ubiquitous that we simply accept it…. Driver technology up to now has never been able to be this accurate.

Brian Lucey, a mastering engineer on 9 Grammy-winning albums

This means MEMS chips promise to deliver an audio experience without distortion in a way never before possible. If reports are to be believed, the improved quality and clarity is apparently immediately noticeable.

Articles:

Programmable Music Box

Programmable Music Box

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Most music boxes can only play one song, but why not make a music box that is fully programmable? The Muro Box can play any song by using computer-controlled wheels to pluck the metal forks. You can program it using a mobile app or a MIDI device. It has a 40-note chromatic scale, and more than 50,000 songs in a downloadable library.

It’s going for an eye watering $995 pledge on Kickstarter. I think it’s ridiculously steep for a few dozen stepper motors and an app, but they do offer a smaller $299 version.

AI Hank Williams sings new songs – Like Straight Out of Compton

AI Hank Williams sings new songs – Like Straight Out of Compton

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If you don’t think AI is changing things at a fundamental level, witness what is possible with voice models trained by ordinary people like ThereIRuinedIt:

Or Johnny Cash singing Barbie Girl

How? There’s a number of different ways you can try this yourself – but the list grows daily at this point, so do some googling and see what’s available.