Sound and Music

I am not normally an ‘early adopter’ of technology, but I became part of a small fraternity when I started using the music notation software Sibelius in early 1997. At the time you had to buy a special Acorn computer to run it as it was not available on other platforms.

You may or may not be the most tech-savvy musician / composer, but there's definitely software out there that'll fit your needs.

Acoustic listening devices developed for the Dutch army as part of air defense systems research between World Wars 1 and 2.

via butdoesitfloat.com

Bambam is an interactive net art piece from Peter Luining, an Amsterdam based artist, curator and theorist which allows you to beat up your browser.

Have a look (and a play) at http://ctrlaltdel.org/bambam/

I’m re-arranging my CDs, and trying to think of a non-alphabetical system.

Borges wrote of a (fictional) Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which all animals are divided into the following categories:

I've just come across a video of Ergo Phizmiz and People like us playing at one of the SPNM's Sound Source concerts in 2008 on Ergo Phizmiz's blog.

http://ergophizmiz.blogspot.com/2009/12/watch-people-like-us-ergo-phizmi...

Elizabeth Winters has won the Making Music category at this year's British Composer Awards!  Elizabeth composed The Serious Side of Madness for Kensington Chamber Orchestra as part of last year's Adaopt a Composer project.   Sound and Music delivers Adopt a Composer in partnership with Making Music and PRS Foundation, who also support the project financially.

As we scrabble around for some sense of the 'real' in our digital lives, nostalgic music formats help to fill the void. As well as the well documented vinyl resurgence there also seems to be an increase in cassette releases.

The 2010 Sound and Music summer school is confirmed! It's going to be 15 - 21 August at the Purcell School. Publicity and application forms will be available from February. Do contact me if you want me to send you the info.

I watched BBC4’s For Art’s Sake: The Story of the Ballets Russes on Friday night. The company, created and sustained until his death by the impressario Sergei Diaghilev, was central to the story not only of ballet, but of music and theatrical design, in the last century.