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Saturday, April 29, 2006
Odd Music Gallery
Ever wonder what a bamboo saxophone sounds like? Is a cigar box guitar is more up your alley? But what about the one-of-a-kind five-string acoustic bass, fitted with an additional twenty-nine sympathetic strings and four drone strings called a bazantar?The Odd Music Gallery profiles images and sounds from a gas tank orchestra to a cyberpunk tricked-out MIDI keyboard wa-wa guitaresque Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee. If Dr. Suess had a live orchestra, these would be the instruments of choice!
Some of the collection are traditional instruments from familiar places like the Balkans or India. Others are unique creations from the minds of mad geniuses such as the Trimeister pictured here. Inventor and musician Steve Hoke, developed the guitar/mandolin/fiddle over an evolving two-year process. When asked about the music it makes, Steve calls it "earth fusion".
While you are taking the grand tour, don't miss the beer organ playing the Beatles' Elenor Rigby.
[Submitted by Leah Silverman]
Pictured here is the Triple-Neck Guitar. This "virtual instrument" from the imaginations of Animusic, is a laser-firing, three-neck electric guitar that also has a mini pipe organ built in, plus robotic fingers for fretting and three armatures for picking and strumming. Not to mention a back-up rythm section with robotic drums! See video.Oddmusic.com is for anyone interested in unique, unusual, ethnic, or experimental music and instruments. So whether you play stalagmites in a cave, the kaval, bow telegraph wires across the Nullarbor Plain, twist electrons by circuit bending, call whales on a Waterphone, or just love listening, this site is for you.
Showcasing the sounds, music, and instruments of artists and artisans from around the globe. From gourd music to electronic odysseys, harp guitars to industrial insect metal, from the beautiful to the bizarre.
>> READ FULL ARTICLE
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Dance, Monkey, Dance
From Studio 360, Kurt Andersen actually looks at some of the weird little videos that people forward to their friends. And he's surprised at what he finds: a foul-mouthed riff and bad Flash animation that together approach greatness.
>> Listen to Studio 360
>> View Dance, Monkey, Dance
>> READ FULL ARTICLE
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
On Being Roddy
[from Jarrell McAlister]After sending Monkey Cards to everybody I've ever met, I received this wonderful childhood story from a friend...
My monkey toy story...
I saw an mask in a magazine when I was a kid. They said it was a Planet of the Apes mask and the picture they had was Roddy MacDowell as the chimp like this...
I saved and scraped my $10 together (the most money I had ever spent on anything in my life at the time) and placed the mail order.
I waited weeks with bated breath and when it arrived, I ripped the box open and it was something like this!
I was devasted. My lesson, never believe you can actually be Roddy MacDowell. He is/was one of a kind.
>> READ FULL ARTICLE
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Monk-E-Mail
Finally someone has invented a useful and productive tool for the modern work environment! Careerbuilder.com has taken it's current chimp-focused ad campaign and built Monk-E-Mail. This allows you to send animated chimp emails to very busy friends and co-workers. This is bound to raise productivity levels of the US economy easily by ten-fold or more![Thanks to Andrea Pokrzywinski]
Samples:
>> Happy Birthday, Banana!
>> A-Wam-Bop-A-Loo-Bop
>> READ FULL ARTICLE
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Zoom Quilt
New Yorker cartoonist and scribemonkey Drew Dernavitch sends us this "cool-as-shiznit thingy" and encourages us to watch it in Flash.Zoom Quilt is a collaboration of 15 artists strings together a thread of visuals in a 4-dimensional mural: Instead of walking along the painted landscape, you burrow into it.
>> READ FULL ARTICLE
