Complemento a review en:http://youtube.com/watch?v=kg8OWdcH3f4

A solo worm performing a thoughtful little number. No worms were hurt.

Following a gruelling audition process, one solo worm was hand selected to perform its own music, without proviso, upon a specially adapted and destabilised FM synthesis circuit disembowelled from a Yamaha PSS-470. For one day, this worm was treated like royalty; whisked around London’s swankiest mud spas and hermaphrodite clubs, before spending an evening at the very best hotel (whatever it’s called, I dunno). Ah, what a star…

As for the machinations behind the pizzazz; a Yamaha FM synthesis board is sensitivised by overclocking it with a painfully high quartz crystal (17 Mhz), various components have either been removed or replaced, and the entire circuit hard wired to run on the lowest possible current/voltage (to avoid the worm getting hurt). The worm was safely returned to its natural habitat.

Incidentally, this video was submitted to (and rejected by) the Annual Slug & Worm Conference. They did not like worm music one bit.

If you liked this worm music however, more can be seen at the 6th Annual ‘Noise!’ Festival in Canada this year. A treat for the senses perhaps? More info:
http://noise.industrial.org/

Edit: Just a quick disclaimer… Again, I swear that the worm was not hurt! Please don’t worry. The circuit was adapted to run on a very low current. The spasms are just involuntary reactions.

Due to some concern for the worm’s welfare, I state again that this circuit is ADAPTED to be as gentle on the worm as possible! It is an experimental way of creating aleatory music - with the worm’s health being MOST IMPORTANT. The ’safe’ worm current was basically calculated by scaling human resistance against an ampage that constitutes a painful shock, applying this to the worm’s own resistance and developing a circuit that runs BELOW the resultant current. I tested the circuit on my tongue countless times to fine tune the voltage/current ratio, which is the closest thing on the human body that approximates the worm’s resistance and nerve agglomeration.

This is an educational film from 1983 describing a little bit of the history and tools of electronic music. The best thing about it is that it is behind the times for 1983, and seems more like a 1970s film. Frequently featured is a Moog modular! Also featured is a Fairlight, but as an analog obsessive. You’ll love this film if you love analog synthesizers, electronic music (historic, not electronica), or music geeks. : ) Lots of cool oscilloscope shots, primitive sequencers, etc.

Watch as salt is transformed into awesome patterns by altering the sound waves. Be careful though, it might get very high pitched.

The “Interactive Sonic Systems” team in the Music Technology Group within the Audiovisual Institute at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona Spain have created an absolutely magnificent digital block based techno musical instrument called the “reactable“. The reactable is a “state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface”.

Read more below and check the media link for more pictures and videos.

The reactable, is a state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

The reactable hardware is based on a translucent round table. A video camera situated beneath, continuously analyzes the table surface, tracking the nature, position and orientation of the objects that are distributed on its surface, representing the components of a classic modular synthesizer. These objects are passive without any sensors or actuators, users interact by moving them, changing their position, their orientation or their faces (in the case of volumetric objects). These actions directly control the topological structure and parameters of the sound synthesizer. A projector, also from underneath the table, draws dynamic animations on its surface, providing a visual feedback of the state, the activity and the main characteristics of the sounds produced by the audio synthesizer.- reactable

reactable links:
Reactable picture and video gallery
http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/