This Week's Music Tech News - The MusicTech Rewinder - Issue #79

Dear reader,

One thing that I really like about music tech is that this space never falls short on news about innovation. Scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs constantly come up with new approaches to utilize technology for musical experiences and tools that let us engage with music in different ways. This week's MusicTech Rewinder covers quite a bit of this variety.

Before you start reading the news, here are two discoveries, I stumbled upon on the web this week.

1) Unfortunately, we can't remember how life has felt in the first nine months of our being. Slowave is trying to give us a glimpse of what it must have sounded like in our mother's womb. The New York-based ambient-music project seeks to recreate the sonic landscape of our earliest days. The result is a meditative aural reverie that grounds the listener, awakening the instinctual links between mind, body, and environment. Listen to it here.

2) I was heavily involved in the Reggae & Dancehall scene between 2001 and 2006. I spent every weekend at sound clashes or went to dances across Europe. My flatmate back in those days was part of a Soundsystem and our flat was constantly filled with Reggae & Dancehall people from all over the planet. We used to run regular Dancehall events in Mainz and I even spent two months in Jamaica to dive deep into this culture. What I didn't know until I read this article was that the probably most famous dancehall riddim ever “Under Mi Sleng Teng” by Jamaican singer Wayne Smith and Noel Davey was created by using a preset on the Casiotone MT-40. The preset rhythm pattern that built the foundation of the riddim was invented by the freshly graduated Casio employee Okuda Hiroko in 1981. Without her, the golden age of the dancehall era would have sounded different.

Now, enjoy reading and have a magnificent weekend.

Cheers,

Matt

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