"In Ge Wang's orchestra everyone plays the keyboards and the closest you'll come to a woodwind is the Ikea salad bowls that have been modified into omni-directional speaker pods.
This after all is the Stanford Laptop Orchestra and - as befits a university in the heart of Silicon Valley that spawned the founders of Google, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard and the like - the instruments and the music have a unique electronic edge to them.
Musicians sit on yoga cushions in front of black Apple MacBook laptops which are hooked up to the inverted salad bowls, studded with six car hi-fi speakers.
They may also be sporting fingerless gloves, modified with yet more speakers which are in turn wired to Apple iPhones.
The sound at a performance in San Francisco last month was an ethereal mix of tinkles and droning, a hodge podge of electronically-generated good vibrations.
Imagine a rave at a Trappist monastery.
The orchestra's founder and director is Ge Wang, 31, an assistant professor at Stanford University in the Centre for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.
He is also the co-founder of Smule, a company that has created a mesmerising application for the iPhone, which turns the mobile phone into an ocarina - a palm-sized, flute-like wind instrument that sounds like pan pipes.
Wang, whose first instrument was an accordion, which he started playing when he was seven, says he chose the ocarina because he wanted to avoid having to shrink a larger instrument down to iPhone size.
Since its launch in the latter half of last year, the Ocarina app has been downloaded more than 600,000 times, Wang says. It is currently the 28th most downloaded application on Apple's Australian App Store.
The Ocarina app is one of 15,000 such apps ranging from free to several dollars which has helped to push the popularity of the iPhone.
Apple has sold a total of 17 million phones in some 70 countries since the iPhone was launched in July last year.""In Ge Wang's orchestra everyone plays the keyboards and the closest you'll come to a... more
When it comes to talent, American Idol has the best, America's Got Talent has the rest. The Internet has what's left over after that. Brett Erlich presents the best of the bottom of the barrel in this week's Viral Video Film School: Talent Show.
Viral Video Film School is a recurring segment on the weekly television show infoMania. In each episode of VVFS, Professor Brett Erlich teaches you valuable skills in the discipline of Viral Video making. So sit down, take notes, and try not to piss him off.
infoMania is a half-hour satirical news show that airs on Current TV. The show puts a comedic spin on the 24-hour chaos and information overload brought about by the constant bombardment of the media. Hosted by Conor Knighton and co-starring Brett Erlich, Sarah Haskins, Ben Hoffman, and Sergio Cilli, the show airs on Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific Times and can be found online at current.com/infomania. And make sure to check out our facebook profile for special features at infomaniafacebook.com.When it comes to talent, American Idol has the best, America's Got Talent has the... more
The iPhone Ocarina is the first instrumental application that turns the iPhone into a unique musical instrument.
Once you've installed the application, hold the iPhone in such a way that you can conveniently press the four buttons while blowing into the microphone. That's right; it's a wind instrument.
The traditional ocarina is a member of a very old family of musical instruments, dating back at least 12,000 years, in China and Mesoamerica. The Smule iPhone Ocarina brings this millenia-old musical tradition into the 21st century.The iPhone Ocarina is the first instrumental application that turns the iPhone into a... more
