Today I decided to give the beatmaker application on the iPhone a try. Beatmaker is a sequencer which allows you to load a sample kit and create songs on the go. Next to that it also features a 2 channel fx processor and sample editor, all on a freakin phone. It costs 16 euro which by App store standards is not the cheapest app. But nothing said this application is well spend. If you are a musician like I am and have boring public transport rides every day, you can really check your musical ideas. It comes preloaded with tons of samples and you can also download a mac/win app to sync sample content to and from your computer. This I’d by far one off the coolest mobile apps I have seen.

By the way if you are interested in serious ear training, Karajan is a superb tool fir that. No I don’t regret buying an iPhone.

Gadgets, Software | No comments »

Here it is. After much thinking I have decided to buy a Nord C 1. I still love my vintage L 100 but this thing travels much easier especialy in airplanes. Beside that it sounds amazing. But why must it be so ugly red?
I love it!

Music | No comments »

Today I came back late from a visit from Edinburgh from my work. I noticed a few days earlier the VPRO would air the documentary about the Yes Men. Luckily I made it home in time to watch a big piece of it. I never heard of them and I think these guys are briljant!

In 1996, Andy Bichlbaum made a splash by programming kissing, swimsuit-clad men into 80,000 copies of an action video game. When the two met, a collaboration was born. In 1999, they created a Web site parodying that of the World Trade Organization (WTO).Though the WTO denounced the spoof site, and though its creators felt the satire was self-evident, legitimate speaking invitations began arriving by e-mail. Undaunted, the Yes Men donned thrift-store suits and went where they’d been asked, posing as WTO spokemen and making outrageously callous statements. Their audiences were unfazed, prompting the Yes Men to raise the stakes again and again.

The documentary is about this journey of them. But more importantly the Yes Men are spreading the important message about why our existence should be based on humanity in stead of an amoral system focusing on making the powerful corporations more powerful, the richer more rich and the poor, even porer.

You can read all about them on http://theyesmen.org

Politics | No comments »

The Waldseem üller map, Universalis Cosmographia, is a wall map of the world drawn by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller and originally published in April 1507. It was one of the first maps to chart latitude and longitude precisely, and was the first map to use the name “America”.

read more | digg story

History | No comments »