simonsound

Yamaha release the much anticipated Tenori On, a musical interface based around a grid of touch sensitive buttons/LED’s which can be seen from the front and back, in the UK next week and I for one will be keen to try it out. I’ve followed Toshio Iwai’s work since his Elektroplankton sound ‘game’ for the Nintendo DS which offered every DS owner the opportunity to create some underwater inspired electronica. Whilst Elektroplankton was a lot of fun it was always hampered by the fact you couldn’t save your work. The Tenori On solves this problem and adds a lot more functionality.

Update: Official Tenori On website is now live. Some cool videos of the different modes, interviews with musicians and all the specs confirmed (no infra red). I also heard from a friend who is performing at the Manchester launch today. He’s had a Tenori On since last week and confirms that it is easy to use, immediate, spontaneous and great visually.

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I just found out I’ll be performing Percy Grainger’s ‘Free Music’ as part of a Theremin quartet on September 27th.

Percy Grainger was a Australian composer born in 1882. His work was inspired by folk music and featured traditional tonality, gliding intervals, polyrhythms and electronic instruments. Free Music was his attempt to break free of the traditional way of scoring using graphical notation. The central idea of Free Music is the gliding tone.

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What the Future Sounded Like is a brilliant documentary that tells the story of British synthesizer manufactures EMS. EMS was setup in the 60’s by pioneering electronic composers Peter Zinovieff and Tristram Cary (famed for his work on the Dr Who series) and engineer David Cockerell. The 60’s was a time of sweeping change, experimentation and optimism with many musicians and composers using electronic oscillators, tape manipulation and music concrete to imagine what the future might sound like. (more…)

simonsound are crazy about Trunk Records. Run by Jonny Trunk, a recording artist in his own right, the labels past releases have included the soundtrack to U.F.O, strange abstract recordings from Basil Kirchin, the theme music from Kes and a host of cool library recordings.

Jonny has recently been very busy taking his Dirty Fan Male project on the road. Dirty Fan Male is a series of readings made up of letters sent to UK Porn models and is very funny. It was the word of mouth hit at Edinburgh Festival.

Trunk Records have a host of great recordings including Music of the Future, Abstractions of the Industrial North by Basil Kirchin, The Tommorow People theme and incidentals, and a very exciting Bod project that will include words, music and pictures.

If you like your music collection to contain something a little different, then Trunk is the label for you. simonsound reccomend it.