I know – a little bit too late, but still interesting.

Musican/composer Mark Mothersbaugh (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, New York I Love You, Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist) discusses the musical scores of each of this years nominated films.

Those crazy cats at OK Go are tugging at our heartstrings yet again, with the release of a brand new video for the song This Too Shall Pass. It takes the Rube Goldberg machine concept to another level completely.

via [Gizmodo]

Axis of Awesome shows us the secrets behind all pop songs ;)

via [audiotuts]

Just upgraded to the newest worpress version – 2.9.2.

Everything should be back to normal now…

Heavy metal has evolved visually as well. Gone are the fantasy illustrations of radioactive zombies and band logos composed of overlapping swords. After a generation of sprouting subgenres, the heavy metal field is littered with a diversity of styles that even the most hardy metalhead will have trouble encompassing.”

Read the full article on printmag.com.

via [swens weblog]

Acoustic Botany, by David Benqué, extracts Synthetic Biology and Genetic Engineering from the usual context of health care, food and environment and examines instead the role they could play in the sphere of culture and entertainment.

via [we make money not art]

Peter Caranicas posted a great articel on two different sound editing approaches:

On that day each was nominated for two Oscars: sound editing and sound mixing. Boyes drew the mentions for “Avatar,” Ottosson for “The Hurt Locker.” Plus, each has the same triple credit: sound designer, sound re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor.

Yet the work of these two seasoned film sound professionals on this season’s contenders couldn’t be more different.

Read the full article here…

via [variety]

Wired has some nice videos about the making of avatar: Sound Design, Score, Pre-Production, Post-Production, Motion Capture and so on…

check out the videos here: Wired

Jim Pavloff recreates two lassic tracks by prodigy in ableton live – inspiring. Keep in mind that Liam Howlett wasn’t able to use Ableton live back in the days…

Everybody talks about 3D movies – but what about the sound for this films?
Music of sound has a great review about this topic.

Along with the hyperbolic (& in my opinion somewhat dubious) promotion of 3D films as “game changing” an aspect that seems to be late to the conversation is the use of sound in such films. In some ways I guess this is partly due to the fact that with the implementation of surround sound many decades ago, bringing sound “off the screen” has been a part of the vocabulary of every film mixer since the 1970s; the concept of 3D sound is not new in that respect.

But the re-launch of 3D films in the form of huge budget blockbusters such as Avatar raises the issue again, since for such a film to cost many hundreds of millions of dollars to make means there must also be vast funds available to develop & present an appropriately “game changing” soundtrack. Accordingly there can be no doubt that a need has been created, but is it being fulfilled?

For those of you who have seen Avatar, did you think the soundtrack presented any new innovations in terms of physical depth and/or use of surround sound? But of course, accompanying that question is the philosophical issue of whether it actually should do and if so, how?