music

Martin is a young accordion prodigy from Panama. Producer and DJ, Stephen Levitin (aka Apple Juice Kid), and myself, a UNC Professor and emcee, met him while building a Beat Making Lab at a community center in the city of Portobelo. » Read more

This February marked the 50th year anniversary of the "Please Please Me" single in the US and the start of a year-long program of events to celebrate the Fab Four (The Beatles) in their hometown of Liverpool. 

Throughout the year of 1963, the popularity of The Beatles had been growing steadily with fan frenzy increasing. Beatlemania was officially declared on October 13, 1963 when The Beatles performed at the London Palladium to a British television audience of 15 million. Though The Beatles have been the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed act in the history of pop music, their role in fostering the open source movement is often forgotten or slighted.

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In the next step of their mission to spread the magic of making music, Beat Making Lab has partnered with PBS Digital Studios to produce web episodes of the work they are doing with youth in Africa.

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TruthLogik, a New York based hip hop artist, says that in a million years he could not have imagined he would be recording an album using entirely free software. When he first stumbled on open source music-making tools, he thought about the computer classes he took in school. He had never been exposed to the idea that free software could be so well-made and uniquely useful.

Making music using open source tools and software has been gaining some traction, so we sat down with TruthLogik and asked how he created a hip hop album solely using open source software. » Read more

Our Beat Making Lab is applying for an Open Art grant, which would allow us to start development on our dream: open source beat making software we are calling PAMOJA, which means oneness or solidarity.

The grant is sponsored by Mozilla and Eyebeam Art & Technology Center and would invest $15,000 towards development of the software. This would help us foster music creation in communities internationally. » Read more

In July this year, two UNC-Chapel Hill professors trained 16 motivated Congolese students in the art of beat making. They called their group The Congo Beat Making Lab and collaborated with Yole!Africa to strengthen a larger goal they all share: to connect people (including musicians) around the world.

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Last week, #RioPlusSocial was one of the top trending global topics on Twitter. Part of the United Nations conference on sustainable development (called Rio+20), Rio+Social welcomed throngs of activists, politicians, moguls, and artists to Brazil, to discuss solutions for a growing list of global problems. Sponsored by the United Nations Foundation and several partners, the conference featured lectures and roundtable discussions with icons such as Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, the first woman President of Ireland Mary Robinson, billionaires Ted Turner and Richard Branson, and innovators such as Alnoor Ladha, a founding partner of Purpose, and Mashable founder Pete Cashmore. » Read more

The Kickstarter funded collaboration between Kimiko Ishizaka and MuseScore has released their new recording and score of Bach's Goldberg Variations into the public domain using the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licensing tool. This is just one of the ways in which Kickstarter, which has pumped over $36,000,000 USD into the music industry since its inception, is revolutionizing the business of music. OpenSource.com first reported on the project in April, 2011, during the fundraising phase. » Read more

Earlier this month, the world lost a music pioneer when Adam Yauch, a.k.a “MCA” of the Beastie Boys, succumbed to cancer at the age of 47. A founding member of the Beastie Boys, Yauch expanded upon his success in the music industry to exert his considerable influence and contributions outside music. He had a strong interest in film, which resulted in him directing several of the Boys’ music videos and in 2008 led to him founding Oscilloscope Studios, which produces and promotes independent films. In the 1990s, Yauch adopted Buddhism and began getting involved socially and politically in a variety of charities and activism. » Read more