Master 5 OS X Utilities in 5 Minutes

We’re sure many Mac users have seen the Utilities folder inside of the Applications folder and wondered what the applications contained inside can do. Maybe they can control the weather? Or maybe they give you super powers? The reality is bit less exciting, but still incredibly useful to even the newest Mac user.

Check out the article

WebUrbanist: Ten Magnificently Modern Musical Instruments

WebUrbanist has a nice little roundup of modern musical instruments.

My random commentary:

Electric violin is mentioned by not electric cello.

No Haken Continuum

I keep thinking about downloading Ocarina into my iPhone and forgetting about it.

The Hapi Drum's inspiration, the Hang Drum, was worth a mention. But the Hang Drum is harder to obtain and it costs a lot more, but much of the extra cost is due to the more complex design. This is a nice video showcasing both instruments plus a couple of others:

Foods that slow aging

Foods that slow aging

Links of interest from Washington DC Green Festival

This was the first time I attended the DC Green Festival, now into its sixth year. There were plenty of lectures and panel discussions to choose from, as well as a large exhibit area, with booths divided into sections for home remodeling, food products, clothing, activist groups, etc. Here is a selection of interesting links about stuff I found at the festival:

Community Forklift is a home improvement store that carries used building materials. The site has links to other green businesses in the DC metro area.

Green Building Institute offers courses for green living, with topics ranging from vegetable gardening to green building materials.

DC Green Connection is a meetup for DC area green living enthusiasts.

Planting Empowerment is an organization that offers investments in trees in Panama, ranging from a $50 investment for 2.25 trees to a $1000 investment for 70 trees, up to a $10,000 investment for over 700 trees. From what I understand, these investment should be thought of as 25 year bonds, except the rates are pretty high (just over 7% for the $50 investment, 9.3% for the $1000). Because of the time required to cultivate healthy trees, it takes a pretty long time from the time a tree is planted to realize a sustainable profit from it, and this is reflected in the investment schedules - you'll have to wait the full 25 years to get maximum return. Distributions are typically scheduled for payout beginning in year 8 of the investment.

The nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help and its financing affiliates Self-Help Credit Union, Self-Help Federal Credit Union, and Self-Help Ventures Fund provide financing, technical support and advocacy for those left out of the economic mainstream.

The OmGym Suspension Yoga Set is a useful tool for enjoying the benefits of inversion without the advanced yoga skills required to do an unassisted inversion pose such as a headstand. One could probably use it for many of the same strength training exercises done on Power Rings and the Lifeline Jungle Gym. The inventor demonstrates some other fun applications (besides yoga inversion and strength training) in various videos on the site. What makes the OmGym green is the use of recycled materials.

ReDirect Guide is a sustainable business/lifestyle guide for 3 metro regions that also offers a credit card that funds carbon offsets with every purchase, obtains discounts from green businesses, and funds community banking.

Demilec manufactures green spray foam insulation products, including Sealection 500 insulation which has a 50 STC rating for sound proofing - looks like a great combination with two layers of sheetrock on each side (see the book Home Recording Studio Build it Like the Pros by Rod Gervais).

YouRenew.com takes unwanted electronic products such as old cell phones and will pay for some of them, unlike municipal electronic recycling programs which offer no chance at all for monetary reimbursement.

Crude is a documentary about the exploitation of the Amazon jungle region of Ecuador by Texaco-Chevron. I suppose I have a lurid fascination for this sort of film. It opens in DC at the E Street Cinema next week, for a one-week run. No, Michael Moore is not involved.

Tapped is a documentary about the bottled water industry. It explained why my previous employer abandoned the distribution of bottled water in favor of reusable canteens and filtered water dispensers. No, Michael Moore is not involved.

STEVE COLEMAN ON CHARLIE PARKER

Steve Coleman is a saxophonist/composer who is one of the more innovative composers in jazz. Here is an incredibly detailed analysis of Charlie Parker's work by Coleman.

STEVE COLEMAN ON CHARLIE PARKER

Socially Responsible Investing for regular folks

My first encounter with socially responsible investing was with the Calvert, Domini, and Neuberger Berman socially responsive funds that I found in my employer's 401k plan. Contributing to a better world appealed to me, so I added them to my 401k portfolio.

As the recession deepened, I saw rates for saving accounts and CDs drop to pitiful levels. As of September 23,2009, the average CD rate was 1.751%. Of course, saving account rates are lower than that. Then I found MicroPlace. MicroPlace is an online broker-dealer that allows regular folks to make investments in the microfinance industry. I found MicroPlace while checking out the Oikocredit website, which mentions MicroPlace as a way for investors to invest in Oikocredit. I can choose an investment with only $20 minimum. For example, one investment I selected was "Advance social change in Nicaragua", which will be repaid in 2013, at a rate of 6% a year. As of September 23,2009, the average rate for a 4-year CD was 2.5%, according to bankrate.com. Granted, I invested only $30, but the difference in rate is pretty dramatic, as you can see. Today, I noticed there is now a "special liquidity" investment offered at MicroPlace by Oikocredit - unlike all the others, this one is practically a savings account - you can take your money out anytime. My monthly budget for savings/investment is pretty small, so MicroPlace is a great fit for me - the investments available through it pay better than savings accounts and CDs, and the investments benefit poor folks who need it.

More socially responsible investment options I've found for low budget investors:

FTSE KLD 400 Social Index Fund and FTSE KLD Select Social Index Fund at iShares.com. These are ETFs (Exchange Traded Fund) rather than mutual funds. The iShares site has a good little tutorial explaining the differences between their ETFs and regular mutual funds. Unlike the mutual funds I've found, these two ETFs do not have a minimum investment requirement. If I read their prospectuses correctly, I could theoretically start investing in them for just a few bucks, plus whatever the broker charges for a transaction if I'm using a broker (TradeKing for example charges $4.95 per trade.

Pax World Mutual Funds. Just about every mutual fund of theirs has a $250 minimum investment, with $50 minimum for subsequent investments. Many mutual funds have a minimum investment of $2000 or more, with a minimum of as much as $250 per additional investment. Every single Pax World mutual fund that I found has socially responsible goals. I saw on Google that Pax World filed to open up its own socially responsible ETF offerings too, but I guess that's still in the works.

Artillery 2 Effects software

Interesting approach to the use of effects as an instrument, by Sugar Bytes:

The Artillery concept is as simple as effective: Effects are assigned to keyzones and can be triggered with MIDI notes in an intuitive and extremely flexible way. This way you are able to perform hair-raising sequences, and playfully put the effects you want in the places you want, whenever you want.

Jazz Anatomy by Mimi Fox (free jazz guitar lessons)

Pretty nice set of free lessons on jazz guitar by Mimi Fox. She introduces the viewer to jazz guitar via the blues, which I think works for guitarists coming out of rock.


Jazz Anatomy

Geoffrey Keezer's Jazz Piano video clips

Just found this cool collection of jazz piano licks in short video format.

Evening Star Cafe

Just starting to catalog Washington DC area jazz lounges as I find them....

Evening Star Cafe

Two informative articles on credit scores

For most people, a good credit score can save tons of money on home and car loans - like several hundreds of dollars a month off your mortgage payment. Here are a couple of good articles that you may find useful in your quest for a good credit score:

Credit Scores: What You Need to Know Now (Wall Street Journal)

Myths of credit (Andy Jolls)

Trogotronic Noise Synths, Effects, and Controllers

Trogotronic makes synths and processors for noise in both tabletop and pedal formats, which is unusual for a builder.

They also make interesting controllers for audio and control voltage (CV), also in tabletop and footpedal formats. The audio signal routing controllers range from familiar A/B switchers to a joystick-controlled audio mixer/router. The CV controllers should be of interest to anyone who has CV compatible gear such as Moogerfooger pedals.

Harmony Central thread on Japanese Music

There's a huge thread on Harmony Central about Japanese music artists - mostly rock/pop, some noise, chock full of embedded Youtube clips. Some I'm familiar with - such as Green Milk From Planet Orange and Ruins.

Check it here.

Pedals and other tools by This1smyne

This1smyne makes signal routing pedals and other useful tools. Examples:

Mini Expression Pedal (with a big knob you turn with your foot):


Flip Flop - reverses the order of two pedals with a switch:


Pedals with extra switches for Eventide effects pedals:

Dr FREAKENSTEIN FUZZ (and Igor)

I like the design of this fuzz pedal, which has a stylized switch that you must reach down and throw, just like Dr. Frankenstein throwing the big switch to bring his monster to life. It comes with a little expression pad named "Igor". More info at Rainger FX's site.

TapCritic

As a new iPhone owner (got my 3GS recently), I'm on the lookout for iPhone app review sites and blogs. I found this one via a review of a storyboarding app that was posted elsehere.

TapCritic blog

Intua BeatMaker

BeatMaker is a music creation app for iPhone inspired by hardware beatboxes (such as the Akai MPC- series), loop samplers and software sequencers. Like the Akai MPC- series beatboxes, it is a sample-playing instrument designed for quick creation of beats, songs, and remixes.

Noise.io iPhone Synth

Noise.io was one of the first iPhone apps that I heard of that relied on realtime synthesis rather than sample playback for its sounds. I'm not sure how it compares with more recent iPhone softsynths such as Jasuto, SunVox, and bleep!Box, but I'll probably end up getting all of them eventually.

OHNOHO Pedals

OHNOHO makes a couple of unique effects pedals - the Chk Chk Boom and the Utter Stutter. From the website:

The CHK CHK BOOM works by feeding your effects loop input to it’s output. The amount of feedback is controlled by a pot with a real vintage chicken head knob.

The CHK CHK BOOM has a momentary switch so it’s only on when your foot is on it. This is a good thing because its perfect for short blasts of crazy noise mixed into other melodic content. It’s also great when you’re playing through a delay and you want the delay to swell and feedback with out bending down to twist a knob.

Like CHK CHK BOOM, Utter Stutter creates a timed feedback loop feeding your effects output to it’s input. What’s new here is you can set the oscillation rate of feedback like a tremolo pedal. This opens a whole world of possibilities to time your aural modulation to what ever tempo your working with.

Check out the site for more info and demo videos.

Cool Music Blog Alert - So Much Sound

So Much Sound is a new blog by NYC-based professional musician Sean Driscoll. I first became aware of this blog when Sean posted his transcription of Drew Zingg's solo over Steely Dan's classic "Peg". He's put up a lot of high quality info - mostly about jazz improvisation - in a short time already.

Expert Sleepers' Silent Way

Silent Way is a suite of plug-ins designed for use as part of a modular analogue synthesiser system. In other words, these plug-ins let your computer interact with your analog synths via any audio interface with DC-coupled outputs. Thus you can have your favorite DAW (eg. Digital Performer, Sonar, etc.) send control voltage to your analog synths. I'm sure there are other interesting applications

Silent Way sounds a lot like MOTU's Volta, except there's OSC support and a significant price difference.

Steel Guitar Black Box

The Steel Guitar Black Box is a true, audiophile quality, vacuum tube pickup driver (buffer/impedance matcher) especially designed for enhancing the tone of steel guitar pickups, yet has proven to be equally effective with acoustic instrument pickups, electric bass & guitar pickups, electronic keyboards and drum machines, and much more.

Keith Jarrett Interview at Jazz.com

In conversation with keith jarrett

I would say the 'cleverness' syndrome has taken the place of melody. It’s like everyone has come down with this terrible disease in jazz. First of all you are always expected to do your own material, which is a strange thing to do if you’re a poor composer but a great player. If you are a great player and luckily you know what great melody is about things can happen that can’t happen otherwise.

5 Sliding Content Techniques, Examples & jQuery How to’s

Excerpt:

The more intuitive layout structure is designed, the better users can understand the content. Whatever content you have to present, you can present them in a more interactive & more responsive ways.

Today we would like to focus on sliding effects and how i can change the structure of a page in a truly unique and creative way

5 Sliding Content Techniques, Examples & jQuery How to’s

Harmonic Capo

A normal guitar capo is designed to act like an extra finger, holding down the strings between frets at a spot on the fretboard that you select. A Harmonic Capo instead lightly touches the strings so that you get the harmonics when you pluck notes above it.

Here is a demo:



It's available at the Weaseltrap site.

Five Things That Will Kill Your Site

I've run into just about all the items listed. Archiving this Carsonified article for future reference.

Ampeg J-20 Guitar Amp Mods

The Ampeg J-20 Guitar Amp was recently blown out for $299 each, so I picked one up. The amp seems to be fine enough to me, based on what little playing I've done through it so far. Amp modifications (mods) are part of the tradition for amp enthusiasts, so in case anyone got a J-20 and is looking for ideas for mods, check out this thread on The Gear Page.

Korg M3 Instructional Videos on Youtube

I own a Korg M3, a synthesizer workstation. The difference between a synthesizer and a synth workstation is that the latter has features for writing an entire song, often with the capability to record samples. I confess I have yet to explore my M3's sequencer in earnest, as I'm used to simply recording audio into multi-track recorders. Still, it's great to see Korg post these instructional videos on using the sequencer. I don't know how many they intend to post, but here are the first two:

EHX HOG - Nice Freeze-Gliss demo

The Electro-Harmonix Harmonic Octave Generator (HOG) is a pitch-shifting effects pedal that can produce synthesizer-like sounds. It is one of the few pitch-shifting pedals that sound great with chords - most pedals of this type struggle when more than one note is played simultaneously. The HOG has several modes of operation. One that I admittedly do not use much is the Freeze-Gliss mode, because I found it a bit tricky to control. With the expression pedal all the way down, the HOG will "freeze" whatever is being played. After the expression pedal is raised, the HOG will "slide" from the frozen notes to the currently played notes, at a rate determined by the current position of the expression pedal.

Harmony Central forumite "Loobs" does a nice demo of the HOG's Freeze-Gliss mode here:



Loobs said the Spectral Gate toggle was on, and the expression pedal was set half-way.

Lokua Kanza

Lokua Kanza (born April 1958) is a singer, songwriter, and composer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is known for his soulful, folksy sound, which is atypical of the dancefloor friendly soukous music that is common in the Congo.

Bop Rock with Mike Stern

Bop Rock with Mike Stern

On a recent pit stop home between a date in Honduras and a tour of Japan, Stern squeezed in a private lesson exclusively for Guitar Edge, offering insight into some of his concepts for playing “out,” for playing horn lines on the guitar, for improvising with triads, and for developing monster chops.

Reader's Digest: 10 Ways To Save Money on Home Improvement

Reader's Digest: 10 Ways To Save Money on Home Improvement

Compressor for Funk Guitar

A compressor is a type of effect that has always had some controversy in the world of guitar players. Those who refuse to use a compressor fear it will rob them of their dynamics. I was one of them. Then I was pointed to this excellent demo, which does a great job of explaining how a compressor can be useful for funk guitar playing.



A tip posted to the discussion thread where I saw this video:

-First, set the Ratio to 2:1, ie: very moderate compression, and set the Knee to Soft.
-Set the Release according to the music, ie: funky rhythms - set it to a faster Release (shorter time), so it doesn't hold on to the notes very long and detract from the quick playing style.
-For long sustained soloing, set it slower (longer time) to hold on to the notes for more sustain.
-You can then adjust the Attack to taste, also according to the type of playing.
-Set the Attack to a medium level to start, ie: not too fast or slow, and adjust it as you're playing until it sounds right/good for the style.
-Then you can play with the Ratio again to hear how higer/lower settings affect what you're playing.
-After a few times doing this, it will be easy and fast to find the sweet spots for each setting.

Cherokee - performed by Makovicz, Woods, Juris, etc.

Charlie Parker's classic tune "Cherokee" is one of the benchmark tunes for jazz musicians - if you call yourself a jazz musician, you should be able to play this tune, at the typical tempo (pretty darn fast). This is the first time I heard of Polish jazz pianist Dave Makovicz, but he's obviously capable of hanging with this all-star band.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x14wqo_cherokee-dave-makovicz-phil-woods_music

New Directions Cello Festival 2009 - Friday Afternoon

New Directions Cello Festival is an annual festival for cellists who want to learn from fairly well-known non-classical cellists and each other. I have nothing against classical music, but opportunities for cellists who study jazz, Celtic music, etc. from cellists who are established in those respective genres are quite limited. The positive experiences I had at the 2006 festival made me want to attend subsequent ones, but I had to wait until 2009 for my next chance. The format of the 2009 festival was very much like the 2006 one - one has a selection between 2-3 classes during the daytime, with lunch breaks, and concerts on Friday and Saturday nights to be followed by informal jam sessions.

Here are the classes I chose for Friday Afternoon:

Free Improvisation
Instructor: Joel Cohen

I unfortunately botched up my recording of this class. My Tascam DP-004 apparently has to "backup" the song from the DP-004's MTR partition on the SD card to the FAT partition. It took forever to backup the recording of this class. I think it's because I totally maxed out the card quickly by recording two tracks at once. Silly oversight on my part to not get a 16GB SD card - I used the pathetically tiny 1GB card that came with it. What I recall of this class was being given simple parameters with which to improvise - usually a tonal center like C or G, a rhythm, and a parameter specific to one's group (class was divided into groups at some point). So the improvisation wasn't 100% "free" as Derek Bailey would call it, but there was still a lot to room to try ideas.

Shetland Tune
Instructor: Abby Newton

The class was pretty much devoted to one tune from the Shetland region of Scotland. I was painfully reminded of how slow I am in picking up a new song completely by ear. I had the same problem when I took a class taught by Natalie Haas, another cellist specializing in Scottish music. Still, it was interesting to get a taste of Shetland bowing, which seems to be playing more notes with a down-bow and using the up-bow to accent a particular note. Because my DP-004's SD card was full, I couldn't record a second of this class.

Flying Pizzicato I
Instructor: Stephen Katz

This class introduced Katz's Flying Pizzicato technique for cello. A demo of this technique is here:



Katz is a virtuoso with this technique, which lends itself well to music with a strong rhythmic drive.

Cello Big Band
Director: Joel Cohen

This wasn't really a class, although I personally learned a lot by partipating. Part of NDCF tradition, apparently, is that cellists take time to prepare several pieces for the final concert on Sunday afternoon. Usually some cellists out of the group volunteer to improvise solos where the pieces call for it. I tried to participate back in NDCF 2006, but my sight reading was even worse then than it was as of June 2009. This is where my lack of true classical cello training might be a liability. Anyway, I gained quite a bit of confidence by being a part of Cello Big Band this time around.

I'll continue my NDCF 2009 reporting in a later post.

Lee Konitz on Jazz Improvisation

Check out this jazz great's short but sweet interview, in which he offers some insight and opinions on the study and practice of jazz tones.

Moog Voyager Operating System 3.4 and the Touch Surface

I'm embarrassed to admit I just found out that Moog Music released Version 3.4 of the Minimoog Voyager Operating System quite a while back. The Moog Music site highlights these features of Version 3.4:

- Individual Local ON/OFF assignments for the Keyboard, Pitch and Mod Wheels, Aftertouch, Touch Surface, Pots and Switches.

- Elimination of parameter stepping when multiple pots are adjusted at the same time

- LFO Sample & Hold capability for the Touch Surface, plus four selectable Amounts
(OFF, 25%, 50%, 100%) for the X, Y and A axis.

- Global Reset of selected parameters (Category, Pitch Bend, and Pedal Amount)

The Minimoog Voyager is a direct descendant of the Minimoog synths made famous by the Beatles, rap artists, Keith Emerson, Jan Hammer, Chick Corea etc. - typically for searing leads and bass lines. I actually don't use it that way at all with our band Phonic Riot - for us it's more of a noise machine. I use the Touch Surface a lot for at least Phonic Riot's "Woodsong" . I searched for other Voyager owners' experiences on the V3.4 software update and came across mention a zipper-noise issue with the Touch Surface. So this post is mainly for future reference, in case I encounter the zipper-noise issues with the heavily Touch Surface-dependent patch I use for "Woodsong" after installing the update.

Moog Music Forum Thread on the Voyager OS 3.4 update.

Two reports from users on the forums (excerpt):

Right now these sounds (at least here on my Voyager) default on using the new Touch Surface LFO S&H function on all sounds. So all sounds get now a somewhat zipper noise like sound effect when playing the Touch Surface. I had to reprogram my sounds to set the new Touch Surface LFO S&H to "off" on all four Touch Surface destinations. This also include the factory sounds.

I just installed the new 3.4 OS upgrade and now all my patches have the zippering sound whenever I use the touch pad. I had many patches where the touch pad was used to swell the note as I went left to right, and now it zippers instead of responding smoothly. Have I missed something?

Billshrink

I found out about Billshrink, an independent recommendation service, via an article about T-Mobile inviting current and potential customers to use Billshrink to compare cell phone plans. Billshrink currently does recommendations for cell phone plans, credit cards, and gas stations along your daily commute route (if you drive to work).

I just tried the Gas Advisor and it looks useful. However, the list of recommended gas stations were all stations along a route I actually don't use to drive to work, because of the traffic. Still, it's got potential.

Ray Charles Turnaround Lick for Guitar

I admit, I haven't worked very much on turnaround licks, but this one looks and sounds cool enough to learn. Thanks to Arlen Roth for this lesson.

Piano Lesson Excerpt: The Impact of Key Speed on Soft Playing

Vietnamese Street Guitar

Electric guitar jammin' on the street, Vietnamese style:



Quite fitting, considering the Vietnamese most likely invented the world's first whammy bar.

Controlling Analog Synths from Software

Most analog synthesizers and some effects processors, eg. the Moogerfooger pedals, can be controlled by voltage. Such devices have "control voltage" ("CV" for short) inputs. MOTU has released a software product called Volta which can send CV signals, allowing for more convenient integration with a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Pro Tools, Logic, Sonar, Cubase, etc. It requires an audio interface with DC-coupled outputs such as MOTU's own audio interface products. I'm not sure if Volta can also receive control voltage.

If you have Cycling 74's Max, you could try implementing something similar in Max. This discussion thread has more information.

HacDC

HacDC is a hacker space located in Washington, DC...

Latcho Drom

From http://www.rambles.net/latcho_drom94.html:

They are called Gypsy, Romany, Rom, Tsigane, Bohemian, Gitano and are known by other names as well. They live primarily in Eurasia where they have wandered and engaged in specific trades for centuries, if not millennia. They constitute a large underclass in European countries like Romania and Slovakia, the poorest of the poor.

They also produce music that is among the finest in the world, that has strongly influenced the European classics and jazz, and that is an intrinsic part of their culture.

Tony Gatlif's 103-minute 1993 film Latcho Drom (Safe Journey) is a homage to the music of the Rom people from Rajastan, India, where the journey begins, to Egypt, Turkey, into Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, and finally into France and Spain.

Unfortunately, the DVD seems to have been discontinued. Fortunately, somebody uploaded the movie. Start at the linked page below and follow the links to the rest of the film:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x47tom_latcho-drom-part-1_music

Turn your iPod Touch into an iPhone (almost)

I'll probably get an iPhone when the next model is released. But some folks simply want to run the cool iPhone apps without getting stuck with a phone company contract, hence the appeal of the iPod Touch. This article introduces iPod Touch owners to Voice Over IP ("VoIP") and SMS software for the iPod Touch. With VoIP software, one can have phone conversations over the Internet without need of a phone company.

The article touches on a disadvantage of this approach, in that you need to be at a WiFi hotspot. Still, a cheap cell phone and iPod Touch might be an attractive alternative to an iPhone for some folks.

Creative Rhythmic Concepts for Jazz Improvisation

Interesting book by Irish jazz musician Ronan Guilfoyle:

This publication is the first of its kind to clearly explain the most recent developments in jazz rhythmic techniques. Intended for use by all instruments, it explains clearly how to go about developing and exploring one's rhythmic technique and how to use these sophisticated techniques in a jazz context. Areas discussed include

Metric Modulation
Subdivision
Odd Metres
Bulgarian music
South Indian Tala system
Multiple subdivision
Polyrhythms
Odd meter polyrhythms
Odd meter modulation.

Each technique is clearly explained and clearly notated and the accompanying CD acts as both a demonstration of the various concepts, and as a playalong CD. There is a comprehensive listening list included in the book as well as 6 compositions that demonstrate the different techniques outlined in the book.

Check his website for more info

ZT Amplifiers Lunchbox

I read about this compact amp in one of the many NAMM 2009 reports.


I currently use an Electro-Voice SXA 360 Powered Speaker and a Roland KC-350 for amplifying my processed guitar and synth signals. The same two amps are also used for the band's vocals. I'm thinking it would be nice to get more separation for just my guitar/synth rig from the vocal mix, without adding more bulk to what we have to stuff into my car. This looks like a viable solution.

http://www.ztamplifiers.com/lunchbox.html

Harp-like Harmonics Guitar Lesson

The beautiful harp-like arpeggios utilizing harmonics, as played by the likes of Tuck Andress and others, have always been a mystery to me. I think this video might be helpful:

Crayon Physics Deluxe

The goal of this game is to get the ball to the star, using crayons to draw items to move the ball. It's been out for the PC and was recently released for iPhone/iPod Touch.

SynthPond

synthPond is a relaxing spatial sequencer and audio toy by conceptual new media artist Zach Gage.

Unlike a normal sequencer where you place notes on a grid and a moving playhead plays them, in synthPond you place nodes in a field (pond).

There are two major types of nodes.
-Circular nodes release waves at certain intervals.
-Hard-edged nodes release waves when waves hit them

Moving these nodes about allows you to create complex and relaxing melodies.

ABC News: Five Best Work-From-Home Jobs

Five Best Work-From-Home Jobs

RjDj

RjDj is a music application for the Iphone. It uses sensory input to generate and control the music you are listening to.

Here's a demo video: