Audiotool: Create and Mix Music in Your Browser

Do you like electronic music? Yes? Good. Ever thought of creating or mixing this music yourself and feel like the next Tiësto or Armin van Buuren? Check. But do you have the equipment to get started? No? Then read on!

Audiotool is a music creation and mixing tool that works right in your browser. It is a Flash-based web application. Just visit  Audiotool’s website, start with a blank workspace or choose a template and get started.

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Fizy: Simplistic Online Music Search Engine and Player

Fizy is probably the most simplistic and powerful online, browser-based music search engine with integrated music player I have seen yet. Just visit Fizy’s website, enter your favorite artist and start playing the tracks it finds. If there is a video available for the track it will play that as well.

Signing up is not necessary, but if you do you will have some extra features at your disposal like creating playlists, scrobbling tracks to Last.fm and enabling an RSS feed that keeps track of the music you have played.

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The Flower Kings to Release New DVD This Spring

Update April 26th, 2011: The release date of the new DVD has been mentioned to be May 23rd.

Update May 9th, 2011: The DVD and a double-CD can now be ordered from Reingold Records. Click here for more info.

A new DVD by The Flower Kings is currently in the works. The DVD has been dubbed an official bootleg and will feature the show that was recorded at De Boerderij in Zoetermeer (The Netherlands) on November 17th, 2007.

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Whatever Happened to the Audiophile?

Today I found a great article about the audiophile of yesterday and today. I recognize myself when the author describes Laurie Monblatt’s listening room. One of the best ways for me to spend time on a free afternoon is to listen to music, preferably from CD or high-resolution formats as SuperAudio-CD (SACD) and DVD-A.

Can’t wait until the next weekend and drown myself into my favorite music!

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Review: Yes Union Live Deluxe Edition 2DVD/2CD Box Set

As a huge Yes fan I was overjoyed when I read the announcement on YesWorld.com about the release of the Yes Union Live show on DVD. I was even more thrilled when I read that a special limited edition deluxe box set would be released containing not one, but two DVDs and a double CD containing lots of extra footage and bonus audio material. When this box set was finally available for ordering, it took an other three weeks for the package to arrive at my place. Those were a long three weeks, I can tell you that. 🙂

With so much material to watch and listen to it took me a while to come up with a review. Enough with the introduction. Let’s dive in!

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Meditation Really Can Change the Brain, Study Finds

The following article encourages me even more to attend meditation classes in the near future. If an eight-week meditation program already generates measurable effects, I am curious what the results would be like if you followed a regime of meditation for one year, a few years or even more.

I haven’t decided yet which kind of meditation I would like to go for. Suggestions anyone?

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Nu er een kredietcrisis is…

Onderstaand verhaaltje kreeg ik via de mail.
Een leuke verzameling toepasselijke uitdrukkingen. 🙂

De bananenhandelaar is de pisang en
de tabakshandelaar is de sigaar.
De bakker verdient geen droog brood meer en
de herenmode is de das omgedaan.
De lampenwinkeliers zien de toekomst duister in
en de scheepvaart is de wind uit de zeilen genomen.

Menig timmerman heeft er het bijltje bij neergelegd
terwijl de kousenfabrieken er geen gat meer in zien.
De horlogemakers zouden de tijd willen terugzetten en
de confectie-industrie moet er een mouw aan passen.
De tuinders heeft men knollen voor citroenen verkocht
en de binnenschippers zijn aan lager wal geraakt.

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CD Review: KC levert kwaliteitsalbum met naamloos debuut

Promo-CD van KC's komende debuutplaat

Het overkomt mij slechts een aantal keren per jaar dat ik een plaat opzet waarbij ik na een paar seconden eigenlijk al weet dat ik de hele plaat goed ga vinden. Een plaat die onmiddellijk bij de eerste luisterbeurt al op zijn plek valt en je daarna niet meer loslaat. Een plaat die vervolgens na meerdere luistersessies stukje bij beetje zijn geheimen aan je prijsgeeft en een plaatsje krijgt in het lijstje van je favoriete albums van dat betreffende jaar.

Dit overkwam mij nota bene op de allereerste dag van dit nieuwe jaar toen ik de promo-CD van KC’s komende debuutplaat in mijn brievenbus aantrof en deze plaat op de eerste middag van het jaar aanzette. Een betere muzikale start van 2011 had ik mij niet kunnen voorstellen.

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Lastify: Last.fm Recommendations in a Spotify Playlist

Lastify is a great way to discover new bands and new music within Spotify by using the recommendations from your Last.fm profile and turning them into playlists. As a fan of both Last.fm and Spotify I immediately liked this website.

After entering your Last.fm username on Lastify’s website, a playlist is generated for you based on the artists that Last.fm recommends to you. After the playlist has been generated, you can subscribe to it in Spotify.

The playlist will be refreshed automatically every 24 hours. When you listen to tracks from your generated playlist from time to time, Last.fm will come up with new recommendations after a while, so over time the artists in your generated playlist will change.

I hope that Spotify will implement functionality like this and put it in their software. Until that moment comes, Lastify is a great tool I will surely keep on using.

Yes Union Live DVD, 2CD and Box Set Announced

Update February 14th, 2011: I wrote an extensive review of the Deluxe Edition box set which can be found here.

Update January 12th, 2011: The Special Limited Edition with 2 DVDs and 2 CDs is now available on Gonzo Media Group’s website. Pick it up while it’s still available! 🙂

YesWorld mentions on its website that VoicePrint will release a live DVD and live album that was recorded during the Yes Union tour. Especially the DVD release is possibly the most anticipated Yes release from the past 20 years. At least for me it is.

The Yes Union tour united nearly every band member from the seventies and eighties renditions of the band on stage: Jon Anderson (vocals), Chris Squire (bass), Steve Howe and Trevor Rabin (guitars), Rick Wakeman and Tony Kaye (keyboards) and finally the two drummers: Bill Bruford and Alan White.

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abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Say what?!

The title of this post is the name of an iOS music app. It’s innovative, crazy, mind-blowing and utterly funny.

What the app does? Hard to explain. Just watch the video and see for yourself.

Amplify’d from www.wiretotheear.com

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz is another must have iOS music app. It’s universal and is currently priced at $1.99. It was created by Jörg Piringer and it’s hard to describe what it does. In fact in this case I’m not going to attempt a description. Just watch the video above. Awesome.

Read more at www.wiretotheear.com

4 Must-Have Books for Beginning iPhone and iPad Developers

Photo by Blake Patterson
In April 2010 Apple launched the iPad: the first tablet computer that was embraced by a large audience around the world. The moment I saw the keynote video where Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, I knew this device was going to be a big hit. I knew I wanted one. And I would have to wait until July before I could get my hands on one myself.

A few weeks after that keynote I also knew something else: that I would love to be able to develop apps for the iPad. After doing some research and visiting a seminar on mobile application development I realized that there was an awful lot to learn. First I would have to learn a programming language that was totally new to me: Objective-C. Then I would have to dive into the iPhone SDK and learn how to work with Xcode, Apple’s development tool.

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Hacking Away with the Kinect Hardware

Some time ago a couple of guys were able to hack the Kinect so it is possible to use the camera on a regular PC or even a Mac. It was only a matter of time before people would start to show off on YouTube what can be done with the Kinect was some added self-written code. Here are (only) two examples of those videos. The beginning of a whole new scene of Kinect wizardry?

You can watch the videos after the jump.

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HootSuite for iPad: My New Favorite Twitter App for iPad

Until recently, my favorite Twitter client for the iPad was Tweetings for iPad. It’s a great app with many features and lots of hidden options under the surface which you learn know and appreciate as you are working with the app for a longer period of time.

But! A new Twitter app for iPad saw the light of day yesterday: HootSuite for iPad. And it rocks! It looks and feels great. And best of all: it’s free!

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Review: Joe Bonamassa Rocks the Royal Carré Theatre

The first time I got to know Joe Bonamassa‘s music was when web store Amazon.com recommended me the album “Sloe Gin”. This recommendation was based on the fact that I ordered a couple of CDs and instruction DVDs from blues guitar player Robben Ford. I remember listening to the album “Sloe Gin”, thinking it was okay but not completely my cup of tea, and lost sight of Joe Bonamassa.

(Pictures by @attilladegroot)

That was until a friend of mine mentioned Mr. Bonamassa to me and asked if I was interested to go and see him at the Royal Carré theatre in Amsterdam. That was in 2009. I can’t remember if I said “No thanks, maybe next time” or if the concert was already sold out at that time and I couldn’t go anyway. What I do know is that this particular friend managed to get a ticket for that show in 2009 a couple of days before the show via the Internet, went to see him and was completely blown away. So when I read a couple of months ago that Joe Bonamassa would return to Carré on November 7th of this year, I didn’t hesitate and made sure I was going to be there this time, together with this friend I mentioned earlier.

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