Twitter has been (rightfully, in many cases) maligned as a distraction, but at times the “microblog” can keep us connected in smaller bits of time, not larger. People read while something is rendering, when they feel a bit lonely or distracted to begin with (a bit like taking work to a virtual coffee shop), while they’re in line at the grocery looking at their phone. And for the bedroom- and studio-based music maker, Twitter reveals something of what the future might be like. Twitter itself can sometimes prove too unstructured to be useful, but that one service aside, it demonstrates that we can find ways of being connected to other music makers in new ways – ways that have probably only just begun to evolve.

Yesterday I looked at why I thought Imogen Heap was doing Twitter right – both as a model to follow, and a chance to see her as an artist in a different light. But I also hoped to hear who readers here might be following. In the informal tradition of “Follow Friday,” here’s a look at a few of those people.

Side note: I’ve actually gotten a whole lot of useful stuff from Twitter – it’s allowed me to keep connected to people I might otherwise lose touch with, and I’ve gotten great news leads and project stories out of it as a writer. I’ve gotten more technical help than musical – but that’s also helped me fix the technical stuff with servers and the like so I can get on with music and visuals. I have a mile-long list of complaints about how I think this sort of thing could work better, but – well, I’ve been online since the days when I had a 1200-baud modem. There’s always hope for change. Oh, and TweetDeck is the best client for processing information productively; I’m just waiting for multi-account support.

Film/TV composers have a particular interest here on CDM in that they tend to think creatively about style, instrumentation, and sound in their work and have to meld one technology (music) with another (film). It’s Friday night, so having resisted this long, I can no longer avoid mentioning Galactica. Composer Bear McCreary, who has scored the Battlestar Galactica TV series, has a blog going in which he talks about his music and some of the instruments featured in the show’s eclectic (and often surprisingly ethnic) sound textures:

For tonight’s episode, McCreary blogs his featured violinist, Paul Cartwright, whose electric violin is largely responsible for the signature sound of the show. CDM readers I think will especially like his bag o’ covet-worthy gear, including a tube amp and set of stompboxes any guitarist would love to have, let alone a violinist. The small tube amp is especially interesting to me, because one of the challenges of electric violin is softening out the tone, both to distinguish it from just sounding like a guitar or, at the opposite extreme, being too harsh. I love the analog approach, and there’s still plenty to be learned if you’re a computer-toting violinist (and, of course, I wouldn’t be the person I am if I didn’t point out computers can be great fun with violins, too).

Bear McCreary blog (erm, blog in a sort of mid-90s, stuck in frames sense — no RSS — but well worth reading!)

Bear McCreary is an interesting composer in general, a young, rising star in a hyper-competitive field.

Amplifying violins — and processing them with bizarre Max/MSP patches using mics and pickups and gyroscope bows — is no longer a major challenge. But it wasn’t always so. Early recordings of violins faced the challenge of the fragile sound of the instrument. Builders like John Matthias Augustus Stroh devised a primitive but effective solution: attach a horn to the instrument. The results are nothing if not wacky, and they reveal a lot about how instruments and technology evolve over time. I’d love to see more of this thinking in modern digital instruments, and violin/horn mash-ups seem even more compelling creatively now. They’re begging for a digital rendition.

Benedict Anthony Heaney has written up a short history of these now-unfamiliar instruments:

STROH/HORN-VIOLINS, 1899-1949 [Digital Violin]

For more assorted information on violins, players, and recordings on a site of somewhat archaic and mysterious design, see the rest of Mr. Heaney’s Digital Violin site — start with the data link.

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:

The original design of the violin is a classic, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to improve upon it with modern tech.

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?