Smigly Cartoon: noise

Allen Mezquida writes, animates, and plays the music for his great cartoons, about a sensitive sad sack named Smigly. LINK: Boingboing

See more Smiglys here.

Music Made With Bees That's Sweet Like Honey

The first 90 seconds of this song are made entirely out of bee noises. Turns out there's a whole lot of beauty lurking behind the buzz. Here's how they did it.

The Bee Project comes from Tonehammer, who recorded lots of bee sounds and modified them with tools like timefreezers, delays, filters, and glitch modules. The key is that a bee's wings flap about 200-230 times per second, giving off rich, pliable tones. Throw in a few orchestra and choral effects, and you've got one enchanting honeybee melody. [Tonehammer, Via: b3ta], Via: Gizmodo, Via: Youtube

Pasta Whistle

Industrial designers Elan Leor and Eran Lederman made this noodle that can be used as a whistle:

This innovative pasta functions as a whistle, capable of generating two different tones from one piece – a tone from each respective end. The design is based on the extrusion technology such as the well-known Penne type, with the introduction of two supplementry operations of squashing and a cut for channeling the airflow.

Link, Via: The Presurfer, Via: Neatorama

EXTRAORDINARY BIRD IMPERSONATIONS

That’s what you call skills!” LINK: LiveLeak

Fart machine puppy's funny reaction

Five month old red heeler puppy's reaction to the fart machine.She thinks she is making the noise. LINK, Via: Youtube

Ritualized acoustic signals in caterpillars

Watch how the masked birch caterpillar defends its leaf shelter. New research shows that the noisy, bottom-scraping display you see here evolved from walking. The finding has implications for the evolution of animal communication in many species. Read the original research here (open access): http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/...Link, Via: Youtube

Optron: Brilliant instrument of noise

Improv musician Atsuhiro Ito wields a flickering noise contraption called the “Optron” (or “Optrum”), a miked-up fluorescent light tube he plugs into an array of effects pedals and plays sort of like an electric guitar. The Optron is featured in some Sony Walkman commercials. LINK

+ Optron - Walkman CM 1, LINK

+ Optron - Walkman CM 2 (with Yoichiro Shin on drums), LINK