GEAR + TECH
Innovative Digital Instrument Lets Disabled Musicians Make Music With Their Eyes
A new digital instrument is empowering disabled musicians and students to create music with their eyes. The assistive technology is called the EyeHarp, and it pairs with eye and head trackers so that players can control melodies—including chords, arpeggios and pitch—with only the smallest of movements. This feature makes EyeHarp uniquely accessible to players with all kinds of physical and mental disabilities, in therapy, teaching and performance settings. The technology is also adaptable to each user’s skill level and can change between the tones of more than 20 instruments, including piano, flute, trumpet and bass guitar. Watch it at work below, played by 11-year-old Joel Bueno. Recommended Articles According to founder Zacharias Vamvakousis, the idea for the EyeHarp wa...
Exclusive: The Chainsmokers to Headline First-Ever NFT-Gated Art and Music Festival, Afterparty
An innovative new music festival is primed for Sin City—and NFTs are the ticket in. Afterparty, a renowned creator tools platform operating at the forefront of the Web3 epoch, have announced the first-ever NFT-gated music and art festival. Complete with unique digital art gallery activations, the inaugural Afterparty NFT Art and Music Festival will immerse attendees in NFTs in the company’s goal to democratize them for the creator economy. The festival’s pièce de résistance, however, is its entry point. Afterparty’s generative “Utopian” NFT collection, which lives on the Ethereum blockchain, will moonlight as “all-access” passes and offer their owners tangible rewards both in real-time and in the metaverse. For example, they unlock ac...
deadmau5 and Richie Hawtin’s PIXELYNX to Bring 3D Avatars to Metaverse Gaming Platform
Richie Hawtin and deadmau5‘s music metaverse venture, PIXELYNX, has forged another groundbreaking deal, joining forces with cross-game avatar platform Ready Player Me. PIXELYNX has led the charge in the digital space at the intersection of music and the metaverse. Their new partnership will allow users to customize their Ready Player Me avatars in PIXELYNX’s upcoming mobile AR and PC game, as well as buy and sell one-of-a-kind NFT fashion wearables. “Ready Player Me has always been one of the most exciting avatar platforms,” said Inder Phull, co-founder and CEO of PIXELYNX in a press release. “The team has made it so easy to integrate into our ecosystem and it’s no surprise to see their community of partners growing at such a fast pace. Avatars ...
Steve Angello Bets On Blockchain Marketplace to Revolutionize Music Rights Ownership
Steve Angello is placing a bet on the future of music rights and throwing his weight behind anotherblock, a Swedish startup dedicated to expanding public access to royalty investing by way of NFTs. Founders Sebastian Knutsson and Mattias Miksche both boast impressive pedigrees from different sectors of the technology industry. Knutsson is the founder of King, the publishing and development company behind Candy Crush, while Miksche’s company Stardoll has operated as an angel investor in AI-learning platform Sana Labs, among other successful early stage companies. According to a press release shared with EDM.com, the Swedish House Mafia star threw his hat in the ring during anotherblock’s latest pre-seed funding round, which raised $1.2 million. The platform will seek to tokenize...
Casio Brings Seamless “Singing Robot” Vocal Synthesis to the Bedroom Producer’s Fingertips
The Casiotone CT-S1000V is empowering music producers with next-generation vocoder technology. As Casio’s GM of Marketing Mike Martin says, the product “will give a new voice to your music.” And after seeing the features, we can’t say they’re overselling it. The CT-S1000V’s approach to vocal synthesis is built for the fast-paced life of a producer on the go. No microphone is needed to maximize the keyboard’s defining qualities. Simply by leveraging the Casio Lyric Creator app, creators can type in their desired lyrics into their phone and upload them to their keyboard via USB. Once in the system, musicians can play their lyrics polyphonically using 22 unique vocalist settings to give the music a choral or robot-like flare, among ot...
Build a Killer Music Marketing Strategy Using Real-Life Expert Tips In This Webinar
The music research and analytics platform Viberate is kicking off 2022 with another free educational online session. The next guest panel will host two music marketing veterans and showcase the usage of music data to create effective promotional strategies. The first expert guest is Jay Gilbert, who created unique marketing plans for Nirvana, The Police, and Guns ‘N Roses. Joining him is Terry Tompkins, assistant music professor at Hofstra University, who discovered Grammy Award-winning artist John Legend while working as an A&R at Columbia Records. Their talk will cover hands-on data analytics tips for both artists and label managers. “2021 was great for streaming and music sales, so we can start 2022 with some optimism,” Gilbert said. “Those who know how to effectively mo...
Boys Noize Empowers NFT Collectors to Mint Their Own Techno With “Rave Pigs” Project
Boys Noize and the SuperFarm NFT platform are bringing cultured swines to the blockchain. Their forthcoming “Rave Pigs” project turns trunk-thumping techno and psychedelic art into digital collectibles. Best of all, those who choose to participate in minting the collection will retain full rights to a piece of Berlin underground culture. The copyrights afforded to NFT holders have been a hot topic in recent months. Though some of the world’s most prominent collections frequently fetch exorbitant prices on the open market, many of them do not afford the holder the full copyrights to the audio and visual works displayed in the NFT. Conversely, “Rave Pigs” holders will retain the rights to both the art and the music heard in the collectibles they own. So it’s easy to see how ...
Doctors Develop Music-Making App to Battle Brain Fog In Cancer Patients
Doctors from the University of Cincinnati are researching innovative ways to battle brain fog, and a new study has tested the waters of virtual music therapy. According to a report by WFMZ-TV, neuro-oncologist Dr. Soma Sengupta and her team have developed an app called ARMcan Active Receptive Music, which harnesses music therapy to allow users to create their own songs. “I wanted an app that could allow patients to express their musical ability,” Sengupta said. “In other words, to have musical turns where you could overlay genres and create your own music track.” WFMZ-TV Recommended Articles The technology, Sengupta added, is “helping the rewiring and exercising areas of the brain that normally wouldn’t do it.” The team’s ...
Remute Is Releasing the First-Ever Album As a Nintendo 64 Cartridge
Go to Mom, Dad, Grandma, or Grandpa’s house and brush off your old Nintendo 64 console because techno artist Remute is back with an album for the classic game console. Remute turned back the knob in gaming and musical history to when 8MB was considered a lot of storage for game systems. He’s now releasing an album, dubbed R64, that users will be able to play on the Nintendo 64. The music is generated in real time with the N64’s 8MB of storage. The German DJ partnered with Rasky, Nintendo 64’s developer for its sound engine and player-GUI. Rasky created a unique 3D visual experience that accompanies Remute’s music and allows the user to fly like Lawnmower Man. You can pre-order R64, which is set for a March 25th, 2022 release date, on Remute’s Bandc...
Beatport and PIXELYNX Partner to Create Unique Generative NFT Series, “Synth Heads”
Beatport and PIXELYNX’s new partnership aims to prove that no NFTs are the same. Their new collaboration embraces blockchain technology to create “Synth Heads,” a series of 3,030 unique NFTs. Rising, an international creative studio, led the design and executed the generative script for the collection. Beatport and PIXELYNX’s new NFT series pays homage to the history of the synthesizer, which goes back to 1965, when the first analog synth was developed. The collectibles use a process called generative art, a system that algorithmically creates new ideas, forms, shapes, colors, or patterns, and ensures that each piece of art is completely unique. Some generated NFTs will have more rare qualities than others. The Synth Heads have names: BØB, Lynn, Pauli...
Trap Music Pioneer UZ Is Remastering His Iconic Tracks and Selling Them As NFTs
It’s 2012. SoundCloud is the biggest thing in music since the iPod. UZ, Baauer, Flosstradamus and HU₵₵I are dropping the craziest songs you’ve ever heard. You show your friends and become an aux legend. Life is good. Before SoundCloud’s broken business model drove artists away like bad breath, it was the epicenter of electronic music discovery. And the advent of trap music on the platform led to the genre’s explosion—with UZ’s fabled “Trap Shit” series serving as ground zero. Considered a pioneering trap artist, UZ was emblematic of the golden era of SoundCloud, when bedroom producers could scrap together 808s and a simple chord progression and blow up overnight. Just ask RL Grime, who abandoned his mainstream dance music alias, Clockwork, after th...
Tickets to Lane 8’s Album Launch Parties Are Hidden In Coded Mirrors Throughout Denver
Lane 8 fans scrambled around Denver on Tuesday to secure a coveted spot at the artist’s upcoming album release parties. And the only requirement? Look in the mirror. Not just any mirror, though. The renowned melodic house producer slyly “hid” special mirrors in plain sight—on public billboard spots. Lane 8 proudly calls Denver home, and he’s hidden five numbered mirror billboards around the city, each branded with a QR code. Scanning one of the codes was the only way fans could claim their coveted spot at one of two upcoming album launch events for his forthcoming album, Reviver. Lane 8 shot the metaphorical starting gun with a tweet at around 10AM PT. A little over three hours later, reports the shows had sold out begun to roll in. Of course, time was of the essenc...
