News and Updates about Music & Instruments

hey guys check out my acoustic cover of 'so sick' by neyo thank you

Wheels of Steel is a virtual browser-based turntable emulator created by Scott Schiller, a Canadian developer who works on Flickr at Yahoo. This project will appeal to those who A) dig turntablism and B) are knowledgeable in web development. I know nothing of the latter, but from what I can tell, Wheels of Steel appears to be significant because unlike its predecessors, it employs CSS3 instead of flash. Since I'm not familiar with the topic, here's Scott on the history and technical details of...

In a word... WOW. 22-year-old Taimane Gardner, a Honolulu native, stuns the audience with her electric uke rendition of Bach's Toccata.

Ok, #1: Beauty. (Duh- your standard Miss America staple). #2: Yodeling. Um, yeah, you read right. #3. Ventriloquism. Yikes. What the hell was her pageant coach thinking?

And I bet you thought a cactus was only good for stinging. Presenting the dueling musical cacti, the Sting Boogie:

14-year-old Siuta Veaila is the champ of the world's first Ukequest (New Zealand's contest for teen ukulele talent). Siuta was trained by master ukulele player, Sione Aleki, who passed down his pearly white picking talents.

Nearly all humans (admittedly childishly) admire the ability to emit uncannily musical armpit or hand farts, or even rarer- mouth fart motor engine aping. However, it is the rare occasion that a performer's gaseous-sounding melodic notes are indeed truly gaseous (meaning literally discharged from the butt-hole).

You can never start 'em too young. Chinese kids are raised on the violin or piano. Brazilian kids play soccer from birth. And then there's P-Nut. He's only 7-years-old and he's been working at becoming a household name in the Memphis hop hop scene since the young age of 4.

If you have a fear of needles, you may want to sit this one out. Billed as an "analog answer for the digitalized DJ," this five-arm turntable plays an ode to the lock groove. What's a lock groove? Glad you asked. Whereas normal grooves lead the stylus in toward the label of the record, lock or "locked" grooves form a perfect circuit, looping around on themselves forever and ever. Throw in a few extra tone arms as London-based artist Yuri Suzuki has done and you've got yourself a full-featured...

Weezer's frontman Rivers Cuomo is one devout soccer fan, so as a homage to the World Cup, the band composed this seriously passionate fight song:

Teppei Okada performs a live violin soundtrack to a real time game of Super Mario Bros. Gee whiz, that's some true fan dedication (and perhaps a waste of prodigious talent... you tell me).

Via WonderHowTo World, Luv and Music:

The World Science Festival's "Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus" asks:Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined?

MY god, this kid has got range! Watch as he imitates a crap load of different vehicle sounds. (The good stuff starts about 23 seconds in). My personal favorite would have to be his dirt bike impression, around 1:57.

That's up for debate... Maybe Li Yu Chun isn't better than the legend herself, but damn. He is amazing. I'm moved. Transported me right back to The Bodyguard.

A super cool anonymous woman rocks at playing the guitar... upside-down. I don't know about you, but I have yet to see a style quite this unique. That hand rolling move is awesome.

Performance by WonderHowTo's beloved hand manualist, Gerry Phillips, in honor of Star Wars Day. (Compare Gerry's song with the original scene, second video in the gallery below).

Another TED speaker featured today: Ukulele guru Jake Shimabukuro shares his thoughts and incredible skill in the videos below.

We've seen the talented Diego Stocco's music from a tree and experibass. YouTube's Julian Smith now brings us something equally unusual. The combined sounds of an old Jeep Cherokee (slamming doors, pushing door locks, revving the engine, setting off the door alarm, etc) make a techno song.

Here we are again. This time, however, it's not Britney Spears that's being uke-d, but the delightfully infamous Lady Gaga. The wicked (we-can't-help-but-look-watch-listen) Lady Gaga.

Perpetuum Jazzile: a Slovenian choir that performs both jazz and popular music.

Yuto Miyazawa kicks ass at electric guitar. Seriously, this kid is out of this world. What other nine-year-old is invited to perform Crazy Train, on stage, with Rock-n-Roll God Ozzy Osbourne?

Musical instruments are lots of fun but boy, they sure ain't cheap.

Diego Stocco is back (previously, the incredible Music From a Tree). This time Stocco has created the experibass:

Beatboxing flutist, Greg Pattillo, burst onto the YouTube scene circa 2007, racking up over 20 million views for his performance videos. Patillo has garnered world recognition for his skills, as well as attention from the New York Times:

According to Wikipedia, to be called "the Stradivari" of any field is to be deemed the finest there is...

There are very few legends in this world.

This creation is an intuitive engineering masterpiece. In the video titled "I Eat Beats", creator Kyle McDonald can literally consume his music. Halfway through the video, this wild demonstration really heats up. He loops together three different people's improvisations to create an addictive and dynamic song.

Take the best RPG of all time. Combine with the only instrument with invisible strings. And you have pure elf-worthy magic!

Ok, so you clicked through and there's no Britney Spears. I would have used an image of the mysterious Molly Lewis, aka, sweetafton23, but you can barely see her face in her ukulele cover of Britneys Spears' pop classic, "Toxic".

Well, the online beatbox world champion.