We’re in the middle of a snowstorm of holidays (most definitely plural), and, for many of you, possibly also a snowstorm of snow. So, gather by the fire with your robotic DIY carillon and bask in the warm glow of gorgeous, chimey Prokofiev.

What? Haven’t got a DIY bell-playing construction of your own? It’s not snowing? Gather by the YouTube and bask in its warm glow instead. Robotic Prokofiev will be all you need. Creator Sarah Angliss of Spacedog sends us the video above.

Video details and technical specs:

Fireside music, performed for your enjoyment in one take after a couple of glasses at the Spacedog HQ, Christmas Eve 2008. Featuring Dolly, the Lakeland Terrier who has hurt her paw.

Bell rig created and programmed by Sarah Angliss (Spacedog UK), camera Colin Uttley.

Microphone-festooned coat hanger expertly held for the full three and a half minutes by Jenny Angliss. www.spacedog.biz

The music is an adaptation of Troika, from Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije.

The bells are being played by wooden balls, spring-mounted on servo-controlled beaters, running off a LynxMotion SSC-32 board, receiving serial signals from a Max/MSP patch (which is interpreting a midi file). NB These bells have been recycled from Swinging London, my 2006 installation for the Overture Weekend at the South Bank, London. Here they’ve been mounted on a stainless steel shop fitting, reclaimed from the back yard of Moore’s of Dunstable.

Dolly, feel better!

Previously from Spacedog:

Theremin as AV Controller: Technical Details from Spacedog

Video: Robotic Theremins, Ready To Replace a Human Near You

After 35 years immersed in the world of computer music, the composer Paul Lansky talks with wonder about the enormous capacities of primitive objects carved from trees or stamped from metal sheets: violins, cellos, trumpets, pianos.

"To create the sound of a violin – wow!" he said in a recent interview. "I can’t do that on a computer."

Paul Lansky: An electronic-music pioneer pulls the plug

The Times seems to want to spin this as the end of an era. But while it correctly argues that electronic music is out of the lab and onto the laptop, to me this is more about Lansky’s own personal reinvention. I like this quote:

“Here I am, 64, and I find myself at what feels like the beginning of a career.”

Whether you’re 64, 84, or 24, the ability to feel like you’re making music as if for the first time is truly invaluable. Whatever you have to do to achieve that, it’s worth it.

Lansky does reveal that some elements of electronic music and computer music no longer appeal to him. But we should be clear about how specific he’s being when referring generally to computer music. Of course, the world of computer music as embraced by many CDM readers is not only technologically different from traditional, academic acoustic music. It also represents a different approach to process. The Times’ Daniel Watkin says, “what drives many creators of computer music is the desire to have total mastery over how a piece of music sounds.” And that indeed seems to be true for an earlier generation of computer composers.

By contrast, the last decade or two, even in the academy, has been dominated by musicians interested in building interactive instruments and interfaces, “playing” electronic music live, introducing uncertainty into composition and sound, and – in conjunction with a much wider, non-academic underground of hackers – doing strange things with DIY electronics and hacked digital gadgets.  These to me are the electrically-powered equivalent of some of Lansky’s primitive devices. And many of these people also like playing things made from trees. Some of this exploration has much earlier roots in those same laboratories, but those experiments were often a minority, or limited by available technology.

That’s not to say any one working style is better than another. I love going back to the tightly-controlled worlds created by people like Lansky. I likewise enjoy talking about electronic music with one of my teachers, David Olan, who was one of the punchcard-using composers – he has a perspective that I don’t have. In fact, I never cease to be struck by the way in which early electronic pieces seem to change over time – not because the piece itself has evolved, but because our ears have. And I find that lots of people inside and outside academia are likewise falling in love with tracks that, previously, they would have thought un-listenable.

I think it would be a real tragedy if the conventional wisdom that “everything’s been done” were allowed to apply to electronic music, when it remains very young. There are plenty of new sounds to discover in electronic realms, and they’re in no way mutually exclusive to working with acoustic sound. Acoustic instruments have a millenia-long head start. I hope we can approach electronic sound with the same freshness Lansky did – and now will bring to things made of wood.

Maintaining that freshness, though, does require occasionally unplugging. Personally, after months of electronic composition, I have a piece to work on for the rebec, which hasn’t been big since about the 16th Century. Now that’s retro.

If you want to check out some of Lansky’s music (plugged and unplug), plenty is available. Here’s where to start:

PAUL LANSKY – “Notjustmoreidlechatter” [paperthinwalls, with free stream by So Percussion]

Paul Lansky MP3s

Discography (many available via iTunes)

Thanks to Jacob Joaquin for the tip!

What does music look like? With new sounds and new technologies, the question is more apt than ever. Tom of Music thing points, via his Twitter feed, to this interesting post regarding Ligeti’s Artikulation:

Visualizing Artikulation [Bad Assembly]

Music notation takes on a different meaning in the age of computers. After all, the essential divide in notation – between sound representation and realization – is blurred in the digital domain, in which we move between visual and sonic information seamlessly and a sound can be reproduced exactly. But, perhaps in that fluid context and without the musical conventions that grew up with notation, the importance of notation becomes that much clearer.

In this case, the classic experimental electronic composition Artikulation by composer György Ligeti has already had a visual score associated with it. Rainer Wehinger created the visuals above after the fact as an “aural score,” intending visuals to present a visible “reading” of the sounds of the piece. That makes the score itself closer to the digital visualizations we see as motion graphics works all over the Web (and on our sister site Create Digital Motion). The point isn’t to create a set of instructions by which you can perform a piece, but a visual counterpart that allows you to (presumably) hear it differently.

To be honest, I’m not always certain what to make of these results. Does this score really help you hear the piece? I’m curious to hear different reactions. But I wonder if the real holy grail comes back to software and interface. Seeing a pre-composed score is already interesting. But make that score interactive, and, in short, you have music creation software. Perhaps we’ll get beyond simple sequencers and step sequencers and start to see a growing number of interactive software designs that play around with that concept. (See Tom’s other thoughts on that today as he looks to Audio Damage’s new Automaton plug-in.)

Side Note: Twittering

If you want to follow us music bloggers on Twitter, I’m (uncreatively) peterkirn; Tom Whitwell is tombola. FriendFeed for me is the same. I haven’t made a CDM Twitter account; if for some reason that interested you, let me know, but otherwise I’m inclined to think RSS is just fine.

And if you have Twitters/FriendFeeds you think I should follow, please do holler.

Custom electric violin builder E.F. Keebler goes a little over the top with instruments like his Inferno. Pimp my violin, indeed: this is the first acoustic instrument I’ve ever seen that I can confidently say is NOT street legal. Take a look at these specs:

1. 79 LEDs in the fingerboard in a flame pattern, reponsive to motion and playing
2. 92 LEDs on the side for a flickering-flame effect, also responsive to music
3. 12 additional flame lights
4. Custom flame shell with custom engraving and airbrushing
5. Pewter sculpted devil’s head, designed by the late fantasy artist James Lane Casey
6. Laser-powered eyes and a spark-shooting mouth

E.F. Keebler Violins

You’ll pay a few grand for all the options, but it’s not just for show: Keebler’s designs are customized for playability, too. But, for you DIY types, you just have to appreciate the guts inside:

That’s just the beginning: electric violins are a must-have for music students, rockers, and (for some reason) crossover classical women wearing latex catsuits:

Viva, Violin Electrico!

Builder Mark Wood manufactures custom electric violins for a slightly broader audience, ranging from more traditional models to 7-stringed electric rocker ‘lins. Mark has his own electric violin-fronted rock band that tours with the likes of the Trans Siberian Orchestra, though he’s also been known to play duets with Celine Dion.

Most interestingly, though, Wood is taking an evangelical method about violins in general (electric and otherwise) to students, through his Electrify Your Strings program. And as it happens, today’s kids love 80s rocker dude chic. (Why not? The guy looks like he’s having a great time, and the kids catch on.)

CBS Evening News Video: A Music Teacher’s Revolution

Of course, there’s also the phenomenon of custom electric violins being fashion accessories for crossover violinists like the members of Wild, as seen below. But I can’t argue with an instrument that looks good with your catsuit, if that’s how you roll. If nothing else, I’m sure these women will shatter the long-haired rocker with electric violin image.

Izzy, seen here, has gone from being a Fiddler on the Roof to getting a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music. But damnit, Izzy, the lens flare from your violin is blinding me! (Now, all I find disappointing is that these electric violinists haven’t connected with some spacier sounds to go with their instruments.)

More Violin Tech

When it rains, it pours violin stories:

Stroh’s Strange, Early 20th Century Horn-Violins; â€Å“Digital Violinâ€Â? Resource

Expanding the Violin: Diana Young’s Sensor-packed Hyperbow (with discussion of just how you’d play a bow that’s packed with sensors, like the one pictured below)

16th Century Music Tech: 11-yo Sirena Huang on Design Marvel of Violin (The original and best, explored)

While it looks mostly like an ordinary bow, the Hyperbow is designed to electronically measure gestures and calculate force, speed, and bow-bridge distance, thanks to accelerometers, gyroscopes, and force sensors. The bow, designed by MIT Media Lab Ph.D. candidate Diana Young, began as a way to measure different bowing techniques. But combined with MIT’s Hyperviolin, the all-electronic/non-acoustic violin also developed by the MIT Media Lab, the bow can unleash new means of making music with violins. If you’ve seen this before, it’s because Young has been working on it for several years and presenting it as it develops; the Hyperviolin for its part has been played by the likes of Joshua Bell. Here, Diana Young is pictured with Hyperbow and Hyperviolin from earlier this summer. (Photo: Donna Coveney, MIT News.)

Grad student’s Hyperbow makes music to measure [MIT News]
ASA paper abstract [Acoustical Society of America]
Video and audio clips, Toy Symphony (Featuring Hyperviolin)

So, what do you think? Innovation or reinventing the … um …. bow?

We hear lots of discussion of how to make better digital instruments. But to fully understand instrument design, it’s often best to look at instruments from around the world that have evolved over centuries. (Hey, these synthesizers and such, by comparison, are mere infants.)

Here’s a fantastically virtuostic performance from 11 year-old Sirena Huang, via June Cohen on the TEDtalks blog. Following the music, she discusses in frank terms why the instrument is such a timeless design. She’s got a smart audience for such thoughts: the performance comes from the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference, a legendary gathering of “thinkers and doers”. And while Sirena feigns surprise that her violin would be included with “real” technology like an iPod, I think she recognizes the violin is the better design by far.

Embedding their videos doesn’t seem to work, so I suggest checking out the story directly:

Sirena Huang on TEDTalks [Video links and comments, TEDblog]

Thanks to our friend Matrix of Matrixsynth fame for this. The TEDblog has plenty of other music coverage, including a similarly virtuostic video of pianist Jennifer Lin, not to mention lots of other general cool tech and non-tech topics.

Notably, on the topic of violins, the blog has a mini review of the book Stradivari’s Genius by Tony Faber, exploring the history of the most famous of violins.

Will digital instruments ever match an instrument like the violin? I tend to look at it the other way: watching a great performance is as much about the player as it is the design of the instrument. Practice your favorite digital instrument for a lifetime, and see what happens. And keep in mind that “easier” isn’t always better. A violin is anything but intuitive, and sounds awful when you first play it.

Let’s talk truly retro instruments for a moment: a violin owned and played by Beethoven himself is featured in a new recording by violinist Daniel Sepec. (The pianoforte is vintage, too; an 1824 model played by Andreas Staier.)

Beethoven’s violin used for first time in recording [CBC Arts, Canada]

Beethoven, Sonaten für Klavier und Violine op. 23 und op. 30 Nr. 2 [CD page, Beethoven-Haus, Bonn]

At the turn of the 19th century, Prince Lichnowski made Beethoven a handsome gift: a set of four string quartet instruments, which the 30-year old composer marked with a seal and large carved ‘B’. One of them was a violin made in Salzburg around 1700. Rediscovered and authenticated in 1995 by the experts of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, this unexpected legacy is here presented for the first time in a wholly appropriate recording project: Sonatas nos. 4 and 7, the very embodiment of Beethovenian élan terrible, are performed by two outstanding artists.

The album is out on Harmonia Mundi, but it doesn’t appear to have come Stateside yet; anyone know how to import? (Or I can just wait; I expect it’ll be here soon.) European readers, you can order from the link above.

How is this digital music? It’s on a CD, silly. Now excuse me, I’m off to etch a “K” in my Novation ‘board. Just for me, you know — sounds like a good idea.

Sample designers Garritan Library, the folks behind the popular orchestral library Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO), have begun releasing portions of their free guide to orchestration (see my previous story). The full text and examples are straight out of the classic Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration text, the landmark guide to orchestration that has taught many master composers. The Rimsky-Korsakov is a must-read for composers, but it’s still one perspective and hardly perfect, so it’s even better to discover the text has been fully annotated in this version.

The result is a community-driven guide to orchestration that’s really unlike anything I’ve seen before. The whole course is designed for self-study, with plenty of examples and illustrations. The professors who edited and annotated the text are discussing the results, turning the Garritan forums into a kind of interactive classroom. When the whole set of lessons are done, they’re even holding an orchestration contest. (Now that’s something I never got in my orchestration classes — not just grades, but genuine competition.)

The examples have been fully rendered in Garritan Personal Orchestra, so the project also shows what a virtuostic GPO orchestrator can do. It’s admittedly not quite the same as healing the excerpts played on a real orchestra, which is potentially problematic for someone learning orchestration. But it’s still interesting to follow the scores interactively, and if you’re a composer trying to learn GPO orchestration so you can make better demo recordings so you can convince real orchestras to play your scores, don’t miss the power tips interspersed with the lessons. (And, hey, the GPO sounds are good enough for U2!) The people on the GPO forums really know this product inside and out, including how to make it work with notation software.

It’s exciting to see something new in music learning. The first four lessons are out now, with many more coming. I’ll keep you posted — now, go practice so you can win the orchestration contest!

Principles of Orchestration Online

Garritan update: Gary Garritan reports that there are more products in the pipeline, if you’re waiting on new Garritan libraries like the first-ever Steinway-authorized piano. He says he’s just waiting on the 2.0 release of Kontakt Player. Stay tuned here.

Talk about digital technology and music, and people are often skeptical: doesn’t technology get in the way of making music? But technology and music have always been interwined, and even for advanced composers, better understanding the technology of how acoustic instruments work is fundamental to realizing musical ideas. Unfortunately, orchestration books, despite their best intentions, can be disastrous for composers trying to understand instruments. Books by definition can’t include musical examples, and the texts themselves are often divorced from real practical information.

Now the good news: the Web could offer an antidote.

Check out this extensive site put together by the Philharmonia Orchestra:

The Sound Exchange: The Orchestra: Instruments

This is not the “young person’s guide to the orchestra” it first appears: click through, and you’ll find practical, opinionated thoughts on real-world playing from the orchestra’s players. Imagine “textbooks” where real players talk about playing, instead of the lone voice of a theorist.

That’s not to slam tried-and-true orchestration references, and in fact, we could see those develop, as well. Gary Garritan is working on realizing a completely free version of the classic Rimsky-Korsakov Principles of Orchestration, to be released on the Garritan forums. This one will make use of Garritan’s virtual orchestra so you can hear and see all the examples. It’s something of a modern technical acheivement in itself, really, that you could make a software-only orchestra sound like a real one, an exercise in artificial orchestration. The results are due this month; I’ll let you know when they appear.

Online resources promise not only to be free, but to cover instruments left behind by mainstream commercial textbooks. The next time you’re writing for the viola da gamba, for instance, you might actually get some useful advice.

Found online compositional resources you like? Let us know in comments.

It’s nice to see the Web abuzz about digital music downloads of one of the great geniuses of all time, instead of, you know, just another that mash-up. In that spirit, I point you to BBC’s Radio 3 for hours of great weekend listening:

Beethoven Symphonies 6-9, BBC Radio Orchestra

They’re quite decent recordings, though if you really love them you’ll probably want the uncompressed CD BBC will release. Gianandrea Noseda really ripped through Beethoven 5, and now some of Ludwig van’s mature masterpieces are in store. But act now, because starting Monday July 4, the downloads will start to disappear.

Roll over Beethoven, indeed.