Music

Amazon has announced the U.S. launch of new cloud storage and media playback services that allow users to securely store and access files and music from any web-connected PC or Mac, or Android phone or tablet. Amazon customers start with 5GB of free Cloud Drive storage, with the added sweetener of an additional 20GB of space for music files upon the purchase of an MP3 album from the online store. Stored music can be played from a computer's web browser – whether you're at work, at home or visiting friends or family. More online storage is available via purchase plans. Read More

My first encounter with the tremolo guitar effect was on the breathtaking sixties rock anthem I Had Too Much To Dream by the Electric Prunes. Most people will be familiar with the effect from Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones, or Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams for the more youthful among us. This rapid wobble to the groove has now been given a futuristic update with the release of the Tremvelope from Pigtronix. The new effects unit mixes up classic tremolo effects with envelope sensing to produce rotary effects that evolve and change based on what's being played. Read More

Students of music history, historians and music lovers alike can't help but be moved by the sight of an original manuscript by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Now, thanks to a Library of Congress partnership with five other institutions, folks can get up close and personal with some of the world's most valued music manuscripts from the comfort of their own living rooms. A new free-to-view online portal brings together digitized copies of manuscript scores and first and early editions of works by composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven, Claude Debussy, Georges Bizet, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. Read More

One of the big criticisms leveled at rhythm-based guitar games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band was that they don’t actually teach you to play guitar. Ignoring the fact that this was never the intention of the games and not necessarily a bad thing ... it’s true. With the curtain recently brought down on the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, Ubisoft has stepped onto the stage with Rocksmith – the first videogame that lets players use any real guitar and is designed to teach them how to actually play it. Read More

It wasn’t all that long ago that rhythm-based games were sweeping all before them and plastic guitar controllers and drum kits were popping up in living rooms and bedrooms around the world at an astonishing rate. It seems many of those controllers are now gathering dust, leading Activision to announce it will “disband” its Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011. Read More

With all consumer units of the limited edition Firebird X reportedly having been sold, Gibson is already looking to the future. The company has announced the forthcoming introduction of hundreds of thousands of guitars at various price points based on the new technology showcased in the somewhat controversial new model. To help this process along, the entire Firebird X system and its Pure-Analog Engine are to be opened up for third party application development. Read More

We all know that certain pieces of music can evoke strong emotional responses in people. Now, a research team from Canada's McGill University has uncovered evidence that reveals exactly what causes such feelings of euphoria and ecstasy and why music is so important in human society. Using a combination of brain scanning technologies, the study has shown that the same neurotransmitter which is associated with feeling pleasure from sex and food is released in the brain when listening to good music. Read More

When learning a popular song on a guitar, wouldn't it be great if guitarists like James Hetfield, Jerry Garcia or Ritchie Blackmore could teach you how to play their music? The first product from Los Angeles company The Way of H offers the next-best thing. Rock Prodigy is an interactive teaching app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that offers a quick way to learn, brush up on or hone guitar skills using a real instrument and original recordings. The app uses the device's microphone to listen to your playing, and provides feedback to help quickly correct errors or improve technique. Read More

Altec Lansing has come to the rescue of music lovers who like the idea of streaming music wirelessly around the home, but can't afford to invest in systems from Olive or Sonos, or who don't want to be shackled to Apple Air or iOS devices. The inMotion Air universal wireless speaker can pump out any audio stored on a computer up to 333 feet away via an included adapter, while mobile devices can also supply the music via Bluetooth. Audio enhancement technology offers CD-quality performance, regardless of source compression encoding. Read More