Here’s something you might have missed if you only read legitimate news sources….

Rockers are reportedly dumping the guitar and switching to the ukulele.

The uke shows up on recent recordings by artists such as Jack Johnson, Andy Partridge, Nickel Creek and Jens Lekman. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder has recorded an entire album of ukulele music.

Even Bruce Springsteen — the Boss — has been playing the ukulele onstage.

In case you’re not sure what that means for the future of rock, here’s a reminder, courtesy of Tiny Tim:

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Actually - despite the story’s publication in a major newspaper, The Houston Chronicle, we’re not convinced that this is an important trend in rock, yet.

It’s hard to imagine the gods of metal transferring their sturm und drang to the uke…..

Continue reading ‘Rockers Sick Of Lugging Guitars Switching To Ukulele’

Obviously not, because we’re still sitting in front of a computer blogging about strange music sh##, and you’re sitting around reading it.

But, if you’re open minded about the possibility, you may want to check out totse.com.

Apparently, former child actor and musician Craig Huxley, who appeared in the Star Trek episode And the Children Shall Lead, right, gave a concert a few years back using an instrument called the Blaster Beam. The Beam has a deep resonant twang, and was featured in the first Star Trek motion picture as the sound of V’ger.

According to Totse, “when Huxley played the Beam, there were women in the audience falling out of their chairs with BIG smiles on their faces. Over a dozen reported having intensely sexual feelings from the Beam sound, up to and including orgasm.”

Totse even claims that that sampled versions of the Beam had the same arousing effect on women.

“A young lady who was a dear friend of mine in high school, whom I hadn’t seen in several years, came over for a visit, and was amazed at my studio (I hadn’t gotten involved in music until after we’d stopped dating). She asked me to demonstrate what my stuff could do, and so I fired up a couple of synths and played her some snatches. But when, in flipping through my Xpander presets, I came to a sound called ‘THE BEAM’ in honor of Huxley’s instrument, the expression on her face abruptly changed. When I asked her what was wrong, she blinked for a moment and said, “Please play that again. Louder.” I did so, and had the odd experience of watching her eyes glaze over as she half fell into a chair breathing hard. ‘I…*like* that sound,’ she managed to get out in a whisper.”

If it’s that hot, there’s money in it, right?

Unfortunately for Huxley, it appears that orgasmatronic instruments aren’t the road to riches. The guys at TDM Design have purchased the CraigHuxley.com domain, and have posted this personal message to him:

Dear Craig Huxley;

My company TDM Design Inc. sold one of your companies ( Enterprise Live ) some audio equipment on August 14th 2000 and October 17th 2000 in the amount of $ 1,760.10. I have been trying to get paid for this for some time now with no luck. I have been talking with Daniel in accounting and it was verified that you did indeed receive the units and still owed us for them, however I keep getting told that the management has to approve all payments. I guess Brian is his manager and will not return my calls. I have tried to email managers and one of your emails craighux@pacbell.net but have gotten nowhere. Please contact me at tim@tdm-design.com so we can clear this up.

Thank You

Sample the forbidden goodness of the Blaster Beam with this sample from the soundtrack for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (MP3).

Warning: May not be work safe for women.

via Music Thing

Rice University scientists have discovered a way to use standard optical microscopes and video cameras to film individual carbon nanotubes, tiny cylinders of carbon no wider than a strand of DNA. The movies show that nanotubes can be “plucked” by individual molecules of water and made to bend like guitar strings.”Nanotubes are fairly stiff, and when they are long enough, the bombardment by the surrounding water molecules makes them bend in harmonic shapes, just like the string of a guitar or a piano,” said lead researcher Matteo Pasquali, co-director of Rice’s Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory.

Pasquali said the analogy with stringed instruments doesn’t completely fit with the nanoscale world. Unlike the guitar string, for example, the carbon nanotube is plucked randomly in many places at the same time. Also, it cannot resonate like the guitar string because the nanotube has too little mass, and its vibrations die quickly because it’s surrounded by viscous liquid.

So it’s like a guitar string plucked being played by a typical kid at Guitar Center, except underwater.

Continue reading ‘Nanotubes Bend like Guitar Strings, But Don’t Rock’

Every Friday, Axehole brings you the strangest, most unusual, weirdest music find of the week, the item of the week that makes you ask “what the f###?”

This week’s WTF Friday item is the Tritare, a bizarre electric, guitar-like instrument which uses six ‘Y’- shaped networks instead of six simple strings. The sounds produced by the Tritare can span the range between guitar tones all the way to more percussive tones such as bell sounds.

The instrument also provides opportunities for many new playing techniques such as vibrato and the use of a bow, due to its ‘Y’- shaped geometry, which allows the player to attack the string networks from any one of its three necks.

The Tritare is currently in the initial stages of commercialisation and all the classical stringed instruments which use simple strings can theoretically be modified to use string networks resulting in a new family of stringed musical instruments.

Samuel Gaudet & Sophie Léger, of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Université de Moncton, explain the though behind the new instrument:

“The sounds produced by guitars, violins, pianos and other stringed instruments result from the mechanical vibrations of simple (or single) strings. These single strings are mounted on the instruments in such a way that the two string extremities are fixed (or pinned) and cannot move. When a string is fretted, the result is simply a shorter string still pinned at the two extremities. When the strings are plucked or attacked, sound is produced and amplified either electronically with pick-ups or mechanically with resonators.

What if different string configurations, more complicated than the simple string attached at its two extremities, are used? What kind of sounds would these new configurations produce?

The answers to these questions have contributed to the invention of a new family of stringed musical instruments which use networks of strings instead of single strings to produce musical sounds. The simplest string network configuration is the ‘Y’ shape. Mathematical and physical models of the vibrations of ‘Y’- shaped string networks have revealed that the sounds they produce can be significantly different than those produced by simple single strings. The results of these studies have led, in 2003, to the invention of the Tritare.”

More info and sample sounds are available at acoustics.org.