orchestra

Recycled Orchestra turns garbage into beautiful music

Cateura, in the Santa Ana neighborhood of Paraguay's capital Asuncion, is a slum. The residents live on a massive landfill, picking through the refuse for items to recycle and sell. A place where a violin would be worth more than a house, is, perhaps, the last place you'd expect to find an orchestra.

But that changed the day that garbage collector (now luthier) Nicolas "Cola" Gomez picked up the shell of what looked to him like a violin.

He took it to Favio Chavez, who was working on a recycling program and had opened up a music school for local kids, and together, they started creating musical instruments: violins and cellos from oil drums, flutes from water pipes and spoons, guitars from packing crates. … Read more

Orchestra swaps sheet music for the Galaxy Note 10.1

Just because your music is from the really old school doesn't mean the way you read it has to be. That's the message behind the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra's decision to abandon its room full of paper sheet music in favor of the Galaxy Note 10.1.

Orchestra manager Gunther Broucke explained that the orchestra is always looking for ways to not only improve its performance, but also to be innovative. Organizing and distributing sheet music to the entire ensemble, it turns out, is quite a time-consuming process. Seeing an opportunity for a clear marketing win, Samsung donated to the cause 100 of its new Galaxy Note 10.1 tablets with special orchestra software installed. … Read more

Video Game Orchestra: Castlevania at the symphony

While most classical concert halls deliver the best of Mozart, Beethoven, or Bach, the Boston-based Video Game Orchestra plays tunes from the annals of beloved franchises such as Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania, and others.

The eclectic musical group -- which weaves a Mannheim Steamroller-esque synthesis of classical music and a rock -- played to a packed house yesterday at the Boston Symphony Hall and completed a major milestone on Kickstarter by generating $40,000 in donations to launch an album recorded from the performance. … Read more

Software engineer decorates office cube like a boss

This software engineer really, really loves Christmas...and symphonic metal, as his cube decoration contest entry shows.

Redditor and software engineer Billiam5 posted this video on Reddit late last night demonstrating his achievement in action, replete with dancing Christmas lights synced to the song "Wizards in Winter," by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO).

According to the artist himself, Billiam5 used the Arduino prototyping platform and Flash-based animation programming to bring the LEDs to life:… Read more

London Philharmonic chases video game 'high score'

Parents have a new reason to be concerned about little Johnny spending hours blasting through Super Mario and Call of Duty. It now seems that playing video games is just a gateway to becoming a classical music fan.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is unleashing "The Greatest Video Game Music" album on November 8 featuring classically reimagined tunes from Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft, Tetris, BioShock, Angry Birds, and many others.

Yes, the same orchestra that brought us hit albums such as "Mozart: The Violin Concertos" and "Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 5 and 9," is now tackling Splinter Cell and Legend of Zelda.… Read more

Robot orchestra to rock world music in L.A.

We've seen robot conductors before, even robots performing in a Wiimote ensemble, but not too many robots have been incorporated as full-fledged members of an orchestra that includes human musicians. The Karmetic Machine Orchestra does just that, and also blends electronic and world music, resulting in some unusual grooves.

The folks behind Karmetic--described as a think tank of artists and engineers exploring a digital renaissance--build robot musicians and get them to interact with human counterparts playing modified instruments like electronic sitars.

Based at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, Karmetic is led by music supervisor Ajay Kapur, … Read more

iPhone orchestra: Roll over, Beethoven

Generally, cell phone noise is pretty much the last thing you'd want to hear at a concert. But it's all the audience will be getting at a Michigan recital next week. And that's the way it's supposed to be when the Michigan Mobile Phone Ensemble hits the stage.

Orchestra members are University of Michigan students winding up a fall course on turning mobile phones into musical instruments. The course merges engineering practices, mobile phone programming, and sound synthesis with music performance, composition, and interactive media arts.

Rather than just playing a bunch of converging ringtones, the students use their devices to create new interactive sounds in live performance. Their instruments of choice are currently iPhones and iPod Touches, and they use custom-built speaker systems worn around the wrist to broadcast their original artistry.

"The mobile phone is a very nice platform for exploring new forms of musical performance," said Georg Essl, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and music at the school who is teaching the course. "We're not tethered to the physics of traditional instruments. We can do interesting, weird, unusual things."

At their end-of-semester concert in Ann Arbor Wednesday, students will be doing more than firing up apps that turn the iPhone into an organ or ocarina. They have spent the semester building apps themselves and using touch screens, microphones, GPS, compasses, wireless sensors, and accelerometers to create sounds when they run their finger across the display, blow air into the mic, or tilt or shake their phones. … Read more

A virtual path to Carnegie Hall

At New York City's world-renowned Carnegie Hall, the music of the ages was played with a modern twist this week.

In a first-of-its-kind concert, famed American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas offered a new answer to the old humorous question: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

"Upload, upload, upload" is Thomas' response.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra originated with the click of a mouse.

In December, 3,000 hopefuls began posting auditions online. YouTube surfers helped determine which 96 musicians would make the final cut.

Among those selected were Owain Williams, a tympanist studying at London'… Read more

The weekly Crave vodcast: All good things must come to an end

To all the Crave viewers:

Bonnie Cha and I would like to thank you for watching and hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did putting it together. But we're not going away!

CNET wants me to focus on some of my other projects, but we will work to try to bring something back down the road. Thanks again and please let us know what you'd like to see more of!

We appreciate everyone who wrote in and all the prizes will be sent out this week.

Click the video for a look back at our … Read more

The 404 174: Where we reject labels

Fridays at The 404 are awesome, especially before a holiday weekend and especially when Justin gets his panties in a bundle over the term "hipster." With news like Brett Ratner's dream to make a Guitar Hero movie, the world's greatest hacker releasing an autobiography, and even more heartwarming "Calls from the public," how could you not love Fridays?

So it's official: David Duchovny has officially admitted his powerlessness over his addiction to lovemaking and has checked into rehab. Sounds like his next project with Gillian Anderson could be the SeX-Files. Isn't every … Read more