Recently I discovered an incredible documentary called: Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey With Evelyn Glennie, and one of the things that I’ve found so appealing about this film was the fact that Evelyn Glennie is deaf since her childhood, but she’s also a remarkable percussionist. Through this documentary you can come to understand her silent life and her perspective on how she, literally, touches the vibrations of sound and how, despite her incompleteness, she has become a renowned musician nowadays. The director Thomas Riedelsheimer made a fantastic filmmaking work showing us her vision of this world in a unique and suggestive way.

She also has made contributions with some other artists in which Evelyn appears to be listening to every note on their performances because she made perfect synergy with them. From the crowded streets of New York City to a relaxing garden in Japan, She travels through, not only an amazing journey around the world, but also a deep journey into herself by which music lovers, like myself, are happily delighted.

Featuring:
Evelyn Glennie & Fred Frith. (this video)
Evelyn Glennie & This.
Evelyn Glennie & Za Ondekoza.
Evelyn Glennie & Roxanne Butterfly.
Evelyn Glennie & Jason “The Fogmaster”.
Evelyn Glennie & Horazio “El Negro” Hernández.
Among others.

Since such a long time I was planning to write a post about one of the most enigmatic voices of Latin America: Ymac Sumac. She was born on the 13th of September, 1922, in Peru. Apparently she was a direct descendant of Atahualpa, the the last emperor of the Incas. In her prolific singing career she had extensive achievements, including her performance at Carnegie Hall and other prominent efforts. I would suggest you to read her complete story or you can also watch this French documentary film and find out how her simple life was quickly turned into a worldwide phenomenon.

But this time we are going to focus on her uncommon voice, although she had no formal training, neither could she read musical notes, she was able to stagger her voice through 5 octaves, starting from a real low tone, almost like the tones on Barry White’s voice, up to high frecuency tones, just like a bird, in fact, in one interview she claimed that she learned to sing by trying to imitate the sounds made by birds, and certainly her voice, on some of her recordings, sounds like made by something other than a human, she was able of producing such tones, so clean and so deep, that today she continues being a mystical legend.

After listening to all the available Sumac recordings, I got very intrigued about those singers that exceed the standard of 80 Hz to 1100 Hz for men and women altogether that translated on a musical scale means from E2 to C6, this graphic will help you to identify the values between Hertz and a common piano scale, remember, one Hertz is equal to one vibration (one cycle) per second, therefhore for a regular singer it is really challenging to make so many vibrations per second.

According to the Guinness Book of Records these are the current records:

For Females:
Eight octaves, G2 to G10 (25,087 Hz), Georgia Brown, from Brazil. Picture this: how can she made a note so high producing an ultrasound, that she can’t even listen to? maybe she was trying to comunicate with dolphins or trying to see through complete darkness like a bat, anyway, you must watch this video of a TV presentation, some notes are so high and long that we could presume that there is a synthesizer sounding along.

For Males:
Greatest range: Six octaves, Tim Storms, from the USA, watch this video and discover why he is also an internet phenomenon.
and finally the highest male vocal note, a C#8 by Adam Lopez, from Australia.

Nowadays there are so many talented singers that they prefer singing for pleasure and to integrate their vocal spectrum on a fine made recording than competing for a silly world record, nevertheless we think that both options are just fantastic.

I want to show you this amazing video on which the legend, Oscar Peterson (1925-2007) plays the piano in a magnificent way, it is just a excerpt of Peterson’s work, he was one of greatest and most prolific jazz musicians ever, in fact I’m convinced that he traced a whole new path for modern jazz.

With six decades of work and over 200 albums he left us a huge musical heritage, his best moments were as a supporting musician for singer Ella Fitzgerald, singer/trumpeter Louis Armstrong and trumpeter Roy Eldridge.

There is a vast list of facts from Peterson’s life, you might, as well, read his wikipedia entry.
Happy 2008 from LaSuite303.

Zune has visualized an interesting way to promote their music players, if you visit their web page zune-arts.net you can find the engagement between some of the most talented video artists and renown musicians like Ratatat, Gotan Project, Bitter: Sweet, Regina Spektor, Lily Allen, Goldfrapp, MIS, among others.

MIS (Mexican Institute of Sound a.k.a. Instituto Mexicano del Sonido or IMS) contributing with their song Cybermambo was one of my favorites and therefore I want to share this extraordinary material, this song appears in their debut album Méjico Máxico, we also recommend their new album “Piñata“.

Coming from Gothenburg Sweden, Little Dragon is an outstanding new band which blends many music styles and creates a unique and brilliant fusion, the main delight is the voice of Yukimi Nagano, she was singing a long time with the jazz band named Koop, in fact last year we’ve reviewed their last work together “Koop - Islands” an album that appears to be set in the 30’s, However, opposite to Koop, Little Dragon is not jazz at all, I suggest you to check this video of their song Test, and, by the way, their debut album would be on sale on September 18th.

Good Luck Little Dragon!

The first time that I listened to Rei Harakami was back in 2002 with the track “300 ml”, I loved that work and in that moment I just knew that he had enough potencial to make a diference in the music scene. I recently made a reasearch on him and I found out that he teamed up with Akiko Yano, which is a born musician and an extraordinary songwriter that focuses mainly in jazz and pop, she has contributed with other renowned artists like Thomas Dolby, Pat Metheny and Peter Gabriel, among others, she was also married to Ryuichi Sakamoto, whom, I think, was a huge influence in the expansion of her musical knowledge into other directions. In addition to all these, she has been a major star in Japan since she was 21 and she has 24 original albums to date.

The project that they’ve created is called Yanokami and it could be one of the finest electronic music statements of our days. So, I want to share with you the live video of Sayonara, this version is also in English in their MySpace page… but I prefer this one.

I want to share with you this amazing video because it is another proof that you don’t need the ultimate software or to own a Reactable to make something outstanding. Lasse Gjertsen, 22, is a very creative guy from Norway whose talent and imagination have been recognized around the world, by creating home made videos like Hiperactive and Amateur (both examples are quite simple to create, just add some good editing skills), where he just modified the video timeline and created nice rhythmic samples like a drum machine, with these and other works he succeeded in the web by getting more than 10 million views on Youtube, this amazing video phenomenon grew so fast that international companies like Chevrolet and MTV are now looking for his talent, in fact he appears in an article in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. Only time will tell us if Michel Gondry will have a successor in Gjertsen.

Check out this video of this fantastic DJ, watch carefully his smooth and smart movements.

Source:Get LoFi

Just watch it, it speaks for itself.
Source:Create Digital Music

As you can see in this japanese video the DJ’s are controling multiple audio and video effects just with a Wii video game control, which is designed to recognize movement in all directions, apparently they are using Max/MSP/Jitter external software for Mac, maybe it could be freakish, but at the same time it improves the experience using new tools for live acts, performers or DJ’s, through time, new technology grows along with music, so new technology is always going to mean new music, in fact on the near future you will see music applications designed for multi-touch screens… imagine this revolutionary technology with this kind of software.

Source: CreateDigitalMusic