There is a really interesting article in  the Arts section of this morning's (Thursday March 27) New York Times about newly uncovered research that challenges the belief that Thomas Edison was the father of recorded sound.  This new research claims that even before Edison had recorded his first sounds a French man named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded a ten second sound bite of a female vocalist singing a French folk song (Au Clair de la Lune) back in 1860.  However it was not recorded onto a record but rather on a "phonautograph" or  "phonautogram" (as seen in photo left) which was in turn recently made playable - by converting the written images on the paper into sound - by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Library.  If you click on the NYTimes story not only can you read about this amazing discovery in detail but they also have an MP3 sound file of this historic 10-second 1860 recording.
                                                                                                                                                                                                 
When you stop and think about it, it is truly amazing how far we have come in the advancement of  music recording and playback in the short time span (relatively in the history of mankind) since Thomas Edison (pictured right) first invented the phonograph in 1877 and unveiled it a year later to an amazed public.

Every since laptops as a live music source for artists, especially DJs, became ubiquitous on the club & concert scene in recent years the question continually arises: are they actually creating live music up there on stage or merely  checking their e-mails as a pre-programmed music mix plays?

In some cases the "artist" may be just checking his/her emails or updating their Facebook account but most real artists are utilizing their laptops' numerous programs in creative musical ways.

And in increasingly common cases there are more than one laptop musicians in action. The Bay Area quartet Cat Five (featured on Independent Sounds: Amoeba Music Compilation Vol III), formed by Balanceman and Darkat almost a decade ago, is an example of a laptop group. With their preference being Apple computers all four would construct freeform live compositions.

And taking it to the next level is the Worldscape Laptop Orchestra (pictured left) - a fifty person laptop musician collective who a couple of months ago put on an orchestrated, fully rehearsed all laptop  performance at Britain's University of York led by composer Dr Ambrose Field who acted as the performance's conductor (just like in a traditional full orchestra) whose goal, he said, is to help pave the way in music for "larger all-digital ensembles."

The Worldscape Laptop Orchestra's 50 performers each worked exclusively with Apple laptops (their sponsor) as their instrument with custom software that was produced to enable wireless communication with each computer sharing audio and control data. The full range of software functionality used in the performance included video detection where hand movements of performers were decoded by the MacBooks.

A couple of weeks ago in San Francisco at the big Apple computer "special event" titled "The Beat Goes On" - to unveil all the new Apple iPod models the innovative company's mainman Steve Jobs gave Cali emcee P.E.A.C.E. of Freestyle Fellowship a major plug by featuring the artist on the giant screen at the Moscone Center during his September 5th keynote speech in which, as an example of a video-podcast, he played a short G4 segment featuring the Freestyle Fellowship emcee off a new Nano model.





 Meantime a couple of days ago I visited the Apple Store  in Manhattan and even though it was near 11PM (the box-shaped Fifth Avenue store is open 24 hours) the place was packed to the rafters with salivating consumers in a long line desperate to part with their money in exchange for some shiny new iProduct.  "This is nothing compared to earlier today," noted one iEmployee whjile eyeballing the line of about 40 customers all patiently queuing up for an average of twenty minutes to buy iPhones and iPods and other stuff.  

 iMazing!                                                             

In case you have not already seen this really funny (but sadly true) Mad TV skit about the US foreign policy and the ongoing war,  in which Michael McDonald plays Apple founder Steve Jobs and introduces Apple's latest program - the iRack, take a few minutes and watch this brilliant satire that simultaneously pokes fun at Jobs and the Bush administration - but mainly the latter.