Eric Prydz is DJing in a giant glowing sphere

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DJ sets are a bit different to other musicians sets, you have to think outside the box to keep the stage lively. Maybe massive spheres full of light are the answer.

In just over a week Belgium will be taken over once again for the Tomorrowland festival. Known for it’s incredible pyrotechnics, giant moving structures and general overwhelming scale, they’ve got some big plans for when Eric Prydz takes to the stage to DJ his set.

Prydz is no stranger to impressive live shows, his famous DJ set being dubbed ‘Eric Prydz In Concert (EPIC)’. He promises that every EPIC concert combines music and tech to interact in innovative and interesting new ways. There have been holograms, laser beams, and even digital screens bigger than jumbo jets.

Prydz says: “Ever since we started doing EPIC our goal has always been to try and blow people away, but in a way that they haven’t been blown away before at an electronic dance music event.”

Along with his team Prydz has been working on creating the ‘Holosphere’, an eight meter wide sphere that Prydz will DJ from inside when he plays Tomorrowland. They sphere is reportedly so large that the festival had to re-design their grounds to fit it in. As he plays the Holosphere will flash and shoot light out and over the crowds.

The EPIC shows are so grand and the technology often so expensive that Prydz has actually lost money from doing them. Whilst it’s expensive and the venues that can host them are very limited, Pyrdz isn’t worried. “Huge confetti cannons and flamethrowers are very primitive. I thought, we can do better than this. We can do something different and more exciting.”

Hans Zimmer is composing BMW’s electric cars

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One of Hollywood’s most notorious producers is taking his composition talents to soundtrack the next generation of BMW vehicles.

World renowned producer Hans Zimmer has been in a different environment lately, working with BMW on their cars. But he’s not behind the engineering of refining electronic motor power, instead he’s creating the sound of BMW’s next generation electric vehicles.

Alongside Renzo Vitale, an acoustic engineer and sound designer at the BMW Group, Zimmer has been composing the sound for the new Vision M NEXT that debuted on June 25th. Together they composed the drive sounds and sound signs for the vehicle in Zimmer’s London and Los Angeles studios.

BMW’s senior vice president, Jens Thiemer said: “We want to get BMW IconicSounds Electric in position for customers who value emotional sound. With BMW IconicSounds Electric they will be able to experience the joy of driving with all their senses.

The car is BMW’s flagship vehicle for showing off the capabilities of their plans with electric cars. With professional sound design they hope to recreate a fully faithful BMW driving experience even with entirely different mechanisms working it.

Is there music so bad, it’s good? (video)

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We all know that music is subjective and each person has a different taste. But there’s a lot of music out there you might listen to and think: “This is objectively not good. In fact, it’s awful.”

But can music be so bad it’s good? With bands like harmony-defying trio The Shaggs and supposed “art music” like Metallica and Lou Reed’s Lulu receiving acclaim from musical heroes like Frank Zappa and David Bowie – maybe there’s something we’re missing?

MicTheSnare explores music that’s so bad, it might just be good:

A 50-year old synthesizer made a sound engineer trip balls just by touching it

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Grateful Dead were a band notorious for their psychedelic drugs, a reputation they could still living up to 50 years later.

Can you get high off of LSD acidentally? Sound Engineer Eliot Curtis found out it definitely is, even if it’s been lying around since the 1960s.

Curtis had been tasked with restoring a vintage Buchla Model 100 modular synthesizer. When cleaning inside a panel module on the synth he found “a crust or a crystalline residue on it”. Attempting to scratch the residue with his finger to peel it off he moved on with his job.

That was until nearly an hour later when the sound engineer noticed a tingling feeling that happened to be the start of an acid trip. Although unlikely that LSD could have remained potent for 50 years the synth had been stored in a cold, dark place which could have kept the substance psychoactive.

But that begs the question, what was LSD doing on this old synth and getting a sound engineer high by simply touching it. The synth was created by Don Buchla, a large part of the counterculture in the 60s and this particular synth apparently found it’s way onto an old school bus of LSD supporter Ken Kesey and his followers.

Buchla also happened to be good friends with Owsley Stanley who was the Grateful Dead’s sound engineer and infamously created one of the most potent, pure strains of LSD. It’s likely that the synth came into contact with the hallucinogenic substance when it was in contact with so many notorious acidheads.

Wherever it came from it was quite the shock for engineer Eliot Curtis and telling of the synth’s storied history. Curtis continued to clean the old Buchla Model 100 afterwards, but made sure to wear gloves for the rest of the process.

Tinder’s ‘Festival Mode’ is for hooking up at festies

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Have you ever felt like hooking up with someone at a festival isn’t easy enough? Well Tinder have a new Festival Mode regardless.

Tinder is the famous swiping app where you flick right or left based on whether you want to chat to someone, or just sleep with them. They’re taking their hook-up platform to the next level and bringing it to festivals because there isn’t already enough sex at a festival.

Tinder have added a feature allowing you to add badges to your profile showing which music festivals you’ll be at over the summer. From the Festival Mode card users will be able to find other users that are going to the same festival and arrange a meet up when the time comes.

Tinder’s CMO, Jenny Campbell said: “It’s no secret that Tinder is a must-have app for singles attending music festivals around the world. We consistently see a spike in Tinder use as tens of thousands of music fans come together, so we wanted to create a new experience that makes it easier to connect with other concert-goers before even setting foot on festival grounds. We’ve partnered with some of the biggest names in the entertainment and events industry to make that happen, and we couldn’t be more excited to help Tinder users find their crowd during these events for the rest of 2019.”

Rolled out this month, Festival Mode will be available for 12 festivals across the US and the UK.

Sir David Attenborough wants you to remix his 70 year old Indonesian recording

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Legendary naturalist and beloved documentary maker David Attenborough is calling on producers to trance-ify his old field recordings.

You’re never too old to get on the EDM scene, as Sir David Attenborough is proving at 93 with his call to arms of electronic producers. Sir David has shared a field recording of sacred gamelan music in Bali that he made 70 years ago in the hopes that it will be remixed.

The 3 minute recording of traditional instruments was recorded during a search for a Komodo Dragon for his BBC TV series Zoo Quest, broadcast in 1954. Sir David hopes that an electronic remix of the incredible sounds will introduce the traditional music to a new generation of ears.

He recollects: “The villagers play this concerted music with extraordinary music with extraordinary precision and real zest. So it is haunting music that you hear every night – or you did in those days, in the villages of Bali.”

The man, who has brought a love of nature to people around the world of all generations and raised awareness of the wild world we live amongst, would often take a portable tape recorder to capture the sounds of local communities and music he came across on his travels.

Speaking to Songlines magazine last year, Sir David said: “Back in the 1960s, there were still parts of the world where European music had not been heard. The traditions that had been developed over centuries were still continued with no knowledge of Western styles of music, which since then have enveloped the world.

“So these sounds which I captured with that clumsy tape recorder 60 years ago have a quality that you wouldn’t be able to replicate today.”

The entries will be judged with the help of a panel including Mercury Prize nominee GhostPoet and BBC Radio 6 Music presenter Cerys Matthews. They will decide on 6 final entries which will be put to the public for a final choice.

Listen to the recording below and if you want to have a crack at the Remix Competition then head to the Songlines website: www.songlines.co.uk/news/songlines-and-prs-foundation-announce-new-remix-competition

This orchestra in Thailand is made up entirely of elephants (video)

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Elephants are intelligent and emotional creatures and it seems that they don’t just love listening to music but playing it as well.

You might have seen the incredible response that elephants can have to music. It’s clear that these beautiful creatures are capable of eliciting emotional responses to art, some elephants even paint.

The latest in ‘wow elephants are complex creatures just like us!’ comes from northern Thailand. The ‘Thai Elephant Orchestra’ is a project at a conservation centre in Lampang, North Thailand that got it’s inhabitants playing music.

Started by accomplished musician and composer Dave Soldier and “Professor Elephant” Richard Lair. They created instruments far bigger and heavier than any traditional counterparts so it could withstand the strength of an elephant trunk hitting against it.

The results are incredible and show the elephants playing in unison and seeming to genuinely enjoy a cathartic release. Research has shown that elephants are able to distinguish basic melodies, giving them a unique insight into the world of music for a wild animal.

Soldier said of training the animals, which he expected to be difficult: “I thought that we’d have to give them a banana every time they hit it and an apple every time they made a note. but it was nothing like that – I would play it, hand them the stick and that was it. They were playing in a few minutes.”

According to locals it sounds like the music played in the Buddhist temples. Hear it for yourself and prepare to be amazed.

Can you make a good song by paying different musicians on Fiverr? This guy found out

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If you don’t know about Fiverr, it’s a site where people can come together from all over the world and pay a fiver (or a bit more) for someone to take requests. It could be recording a video, making an announcement, doing a dare, or as in this case playing some music.

But if you tried to create an entire song using different musicians to write the lyrics, sing them, record drums, add synths etc. could it work? Find out the sometimes hilarious results in the video below.

Make cool synth loops in your browser with Tones

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Build pretty loops, sequences and chords with this simple yet versatile synthesizer straight from your web browser.

Tones is a simple, open and collaborative music-making platform that works straight from your browser. It’s as simple as tapping a pattern of notes using dots on a board, each one representing a note in the scale. Add multiple dots to make chords and space them out to create melodies.

You can edit your piece by changing the key, scale, offset and also toggle a drum line on and off. Then to really start experimenting go into sounds and effect the filters, synth, shape and more to completely change the dynamics of your sound. It’s surprisingly deep with ADSR filters!

You also have Noise, Echo and Reverb effects to play with. Once you’ve got a pattern out you like you can add another to play afterwards, and select how many times you want each one to loop in a sequence.

The best way to find out how fun and cool Tones is to play with it yourself. You don’t need musical experience, just start playing around and making noise! It’s a great and simple way to have a bit of fun with music without leaving your web browser.

Head to: https://www.tones.fm/tones/calm