Censorship Of Books
In the bill of rights we are promised freedom of speech and press. Do books fall under this category? I would have to say they do. I researched a lot. The government hasn’t banned a book that we have knowledge of in three decades. Everything I could find on censorship lead me to government conspiracy and cover ups. Well, I thought I could talk that subject to death. We have to admit we have all heard and are aware that our government does things that we are unaware of. This assignment was taking the concepts that we all know about our subjects, and be original and think about the future. So I think we have a little knowledge on the past and present. What I got from the assignment sheet was, take this concept further. Think creatively, what does the future of censorship look like, or what could it look like? I started to brainstorm, I looked across the room and my adorable cat Azule was cocking his head at me in his curious way. He jumped down from my book shelf and his tags jingled like they always do. But his Home Again tag caught my eye. When he was just a kitten I had a tiny micro-chip put in him so that if he ever got out, they could pull his file and see exactly where he was. Yes, I “GPS’ed” my cat. I remembered an article I read while I was sitting in the doctor’s office recently. I read that there are hundreds of hospitals and doctor’s offices that are getting the equipment to locate or scan a patient that has chosen to have the chip implanted in them.
Why would anyone do this? I Googled Home Again, I got a ton of results. These chips are actually starting to be offered to parents of newborn babies. They are also being implanted in the devopmentally disabled. They have started to offer these chips to the families of Alzheimer’s patients. Basically, anyone who is a risk to wander off and not know how to communicate where they belong or even who they are. These chips have the capacity to hold all of our personal information. If we allow them to, they could replace the need for ID’s, health alert bracelets, even credit cards. So why do I think that this has anything to do with censorship? What if the government decided to code books in stores and newspapers and any form media by what they think is appropriate for individuals. So if my eleven year old went to the library and tried to check out or even read a book that has been coded as adult content or violent, someone would quickly remove the book from her hands and say “Alexis, you are only eleven, you can’t read this.” This is a real possibility, on a YouTube video I watched while brainstorming the idea, that within ten years these chips could have the ability to control high blood pressure, and even give a deaf person their hearing back. So why couldn’t they control what books we can read or buy. So, someone who was doing a paper on corruption in our government; let’s say this person was a perceived risk. They may have aspirations to try and change things. This person has potential to be a real leader. If the government that is in place now doesn’t have the same ideals and feels that this person shouldn’t be able to access anything to educate themselves on corruption; or any other media that could possibly be used to get information. They could just stonewall all access to any book, webpage, magazine or even the daily paper. I know that it sounds far- fetched but what if this was what censorship is going to look like in twenty years. How would you like it if you tried to sit down and watch CNN and parts of the news just blue screened in front of you? What if you never knew any other way, like the infants that they are praying on their parent’s worst fears, like our child being a victim of kidnapping or getting lost, or falling in water when they can’t swim? They are promising safety, in almost every aspect of our lives. They are telling us that they will always be watching, we will all be living a safer life; but what are they not telling us, constant monitoring, would we still be free? Could we even really stop the companies from sending out information that influence’s how we think? If they could get these chips into everyone, who would be watching the watchers? Who would protect our civil liberties then?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. — The first article of the Bill of Rights
Isn’t the idea of this a contradiction?
Even in the era of controversies, “The Patriot Act”, etc. We could be here all day naming them all. But, talking about it gets us no where! As a democracy are we really allowing this to happen right in front of our own eyes?
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
The future of newspapers: e-Newspaper
For our group presentations in class me and my group’s media industry was newspapers. This industry had done very well in the past but in the past couple of years it has been going through some struggles, and by the looks of things they are not going to end. In our presentation we discussed how and why newspapers are having such problems and what is going to become of them. Newspapers as we know it are fatal. There are so many new technologies taking over the old paper, newspaper.
The new big way to get the news now days is to go on the internet. People love this idea because it has easy access for them they can get internet at home, at work, and even at places like caribou. People this is great since they can read and look at what they want they do not have to flip through papers to find the articles they want to read it is just a click of a button. Also you can comment on different articles you read and see what other people comment on them also. Viewers can also create their own blogs which is becoming a new way some people are starting to get there news. This allows you to create something and write about it and have others comment on what you write about. The best thing about getting the news from the internet for most people is that it’s free. Some other different ways of getting the news that is popular now days is by mobile phone and iPods.
One of the things that is possible to replace newspapers in the future that I am going to talk about is called a IBM e-Newspaper. This is a newly designed newspaper concepts that would bring news and different information on it. The e-Newspaper is very thin looking but sites do say it does weigh more than a Kindle does, a Kindle is a new invention out right now for people to get there news. Even though they are trying to make the e-Newspaper may look like a regular paper newspaper it will never have the same feel as a regular newspaper. This new device is known to mold itself around the consumer by taking into account the consumers’ expectations of the new device. This new design of a newspaper can tell how a person reads, folds, and carries a normal newspaper this is so the consumer feels like it is.
Basically newspapers are slowly but surely dying. With all of the new technology we are coming up with to replace the newspapers, in the future sometime there will no longer be just the regular plain old newspaper. We all love new things and e-Newspaper is not the only new thing that is expected or trying to takeover and replace newspapers. People are looking for easier and more convenient ways to get there news, and they sure are getting exactly that.
The new big way to get the news now days is to go on the internet. People love this idea because it has easy access for them they can get internet at home, at work, and even at places like caribou. People this is great since they can read and look at what they want they do not have to flip through papers to find the articles they want to read it is just a click of a button. Also you can comment on different articles you read and see what other people comment on them also. Viewers can also create their own blogs which is becoming a new way some people are starting to get there news. This allows you to create something and write about it and have others comment on what you write about. The best thing about getting the news from the internet for most people is that it’s free. Some other different ways of getting the news that is popular now days is by mobile phone and iPods.
One of the things that is possible to replace newspapers in the future that I am going to talk about is called a IBM e-Newspaper. This is a newly designed newspaper concepts that would bring news and different information on it. The e-Newspaper is very thin looking but sites do say it does weigh more than a Kindle does, a Kindle is a new invention out right now for people to get there news. Even though they are trying to make the e-Newspaper may look like a regular paper newspaper it will never have the same feel as a regular newspaper. This new device is known to mold itself around the consumer by taking into account the consumers’ expectations of the new device. This new design of a newspaper can tell how a person reads, folds, and carries a normal newspaper this is so the consumer feels like it is.
Basically newspapers are slowly but surely dying. With all of the new technology we are coming up with to replace the newspapers, in the future sometime there will no longer be just the regular plain old newspaper. We all love new things and e-Newspaper is not the only new thing that is expected or trying to takeover and replace newspapers. People are looking for easier and more convenient ways to get there news, and they sure are getting exactly that.
The future of Music
As my part of my group’s project, I discussed music and where technology is taking the recording of music in the future. I said that with the cost of recording software, computer to instrument interfaces, and all of the other gear that you would need to do your own recording, and that this gear is getting cheaper than even ten years ago. I see that in the future as this technology gets even cheaper than right now, many more of the masses of musicians will do their own recording.
I also see the future of musical instruments being able to do many more things than just a guitar making a normal guitar sound. There is a new guitar made by Moog, which is the same brand that makes synthesizers. This guitar is an amazing innovation for the instrument as it has completely new type pickups and other new things as well. Here is a guitar player magazine article from a few months ago for you read and see some of the future of music and recording.
Paul Vo Collector’s Edition Moog Guitar Prototype
By Barry Cleveland
HEAR THE WORDS “MOOG GUITAR” AND THE FIRST image to spring to mind will likely be a guitar capable of producing the same great synthesizer sounds as the company’s legendary keyboards. While that would be a beautiful thing, the Moog Guitar is not a guitar synthesizer, or even a synth controller, and it has nothing to do with MIDI, modeling, sampling, or other familiar technologies. Instead, it is an instrument that embodies a new approach to expanding the capabilities of the electric guitar itself—particularly its ability to sustain notes.
Electric guitarists have attempted to get more sustain out of their instruments almost from the very beginning. First, they simply cranked up their amps and used tube distortion and feedback to produce notes that sang more like a violin than an acoustic guitar. Then came distortion and compression pedals, followed by an array of mechanical and magnetic devices. By 1975, there were the Gizmotron, which physically “bowed” the strings with motorized wheels, and the Ebow, which sustained notes on a single string electromagnetically. A few years later came the Roland GR-500—a pre- MIDI guitar synthesizer that also employed a magnetic device to increase sustain—followed in the mid ‘80s by the Maniac Music Sustainiac and the Fernandes Sustainer, both of which provided unlimited sustain on all strings.
Given all of these historical precedents, the concept of a guitar with infinite sustain is hardly new—but Moog’s Paul Vo has developed a radically different technology that elevates that concept to a previously unheard of level, and combines it with other significant features that put the Moog Guitar in a category all its own. Remove the rear panel, and you’ll find about 3,000 individual components on a state-of-theart, six-layer printed circuit board—all of it glorious analog technology. “While sustain is the most obvious thing that the Moog Guitar does, it is not an outgrowth of any previous ‘sustainer’ technology, but rather a vibration control system,” explains Vo. “If the Sustainer is a flashlight, the Moog Guitar is a laser.” Naturally, a project of this magnitude required lengthy R&D, and I was fortunate enough to have seen and played several prototypes as the process moved forward. Here, we look at one of eight pre-production prototypes, which, while a little rough around the edges, provides a candid glimpse into a product that is nearly ready for prime time. (Look for a follow-up review of a production model once one becomes available.)
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The Moog Guitar operates in three modes: Full Sustain mode energizes all the strings equally, Mute mode sucks the energy out of the strings (resulting in a banjo- or koto-like attack and quick decay), and Controlled Sustain mode energizes only the notes being played while muting everything else. You switch modes using a 3-position Mode Selector, and dial in the intensity of the sustaining and muting functions with the Vo Power control. There’s also a Harmonic Balance control, which shifts the Vo Power between neck and bridge pickups, for differing harmonic emphasis.
In addition to the two Moog pickups, there’s a piezo pickup mounted in the bridge that may be combined with them using the Piezo Blend control, or used independently. A 5-position pickup selector lets you choose neck pickup, bridge pickup, neck and bridge pickups out of phase, neck and bridge pickups in phase, or piezo pickup only. Audio from the Moog
HEAR THE WORDS “MOOG GUITAR” AND THE FIRST image to spring to mind will likely be a guitar capable of producing the same great synthesizer sounds as the company’s legendary keyboards. While that would be a beautiful thing, the Moog Guitar is not a guitar synthesizer, or even a synth controller, and it has nothing to do with MIDI, modeling, sampling, or other familiar technologies. Instead, it is an instrument that embodies a new approach to expanding the capabilities of the electric guitar itself—particularly its ability to sustain notes.
Electric guitarists have attempted to get more sustain out of their instruments almost from the very beginning. First, they simply cranked up their amps and used tube distortion and feedback to produce notes that sang more like a violin than an acoustic guitar. Then came distortion and compression pedals, followed by an array of mechanical and magnetic devices. By 1975, there were the Gizmotron, which physically “bowed” the strings with motorized wheels, and the Ebow, which sustained notes on a single string electromagnetically. A few years later came the Roland GR-500—a pre- MIDI guitar synthesizer that also employed a magnetic device to increase sustain—followed in the mid ‘80s by the Maniac Music Sustainiac and the Fernandes Sustainer, both of which provided unlimited sustain on all strings.
Given all of these historical precedents, the concept of a guitar with infinite sustain is hardly new—but Moog’s Paul Vo has developed a radically different technology that elevates that concept to a previously unheard of level, and combines it with other significant features that put the Moog Guitar in a category all its own. Remove the rear panel, and you’ll find about 3,000 individual components on a state-of-theart, six-layer printed circuit board—all of it glorious analog technology. “While sustain is the most obvious thing that the Moog Guitar does, it is not an outgrowth of any previous ‘sustainer’ technology, but rather a vibration control system,” explains Vo. “If the Sustainer is a flashlight, the Moog Guitar is a laser.” Naturally, a project of this magnitude required lengthy R&D, and I was fortunate enough to have seen and played several prototypes as the process moved forward. Here, we look at one of eight pre-production prototypes, which, while a little rough around the edges, provides a candid glimpse into a product that is nearly ready for prime time. (Look for a follow-up review of a production model once one becomes available.)
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The Moog Guitar operates in three modes: Full Sustain mode energizes all the strings equally, Mute mode sucks the energy out of the strings (resulting in a banjo- or koto-like attack and quick decay), and Controlled Sustain mode energizes only the notes being played while muting everything else. You switch modes using a 3-position Mode Selector, and dial in the intensity of the sustaining and muting functions with the Vo Power control. There’s also a Harmonic Balance control, which shifts the Vo Power between neck and bridge pickups, for differing harmonic emphasis.
In addition to the two Moog pickups, there’s a piezo pickup mounted in the bridge that may be combined with them using the Piezo Blend control, or used independently. A 5-position pickup selector lets you choose neck pickup, bridge pickup, neck and bridge pickups out of phase, neck and bridge pickups in phase, or piezo pickup only. Audio from the Moog Guitar is routed to the Moog Foot-Pedal Controller—which also serves as the power supply and audio interface—using a multipin connector. For convenience, however, there’s a standard 1/4" guitar output for the piezo, in case you want to, say, tune-up or play backstage independently of the power supply (plugging a guitar cable into the jack activates an onboard 9-volt battery).
The Moog Guitar also sports a classic Moog filter, which behaves differently depending on which of its three operating modes is selected and the setting of the Tone/Filter control. In Standard mode, the Tone/Filter control functions much like a regular guitar tone control. In Normal Moog Filter mode, the Foot-Pedal Controller sweeps the filter frequency like a sort of superwah, whereas in Articulated Moog Filter mode, playing dynamics trigger the filter auto-wah-style. In both cases the Tone/Filter control adjusts the filter resonance.
While technologies such as the Sustainiac and the Sustainer can affect all six strings simultaneously, in practice it is difficult to sound more than two or three at once, as the strings with the strongest fundamental tones will tend to dominate. With the Moog Guitar, you can have up to six strings sounding simultaneously at more or less equal volume, in much the same way you can with a polyphonic guitar synth. Another significant difference is being able to vary the amount of intensity with the Vo Power control. Rather than having the effect be either on or off at a fixed level of intensity, as with the other devices, you can dial in differing amounts of sustain (or muting) that range from very subtle to relatively intense. And finally, Controlled Sustain mode solves the problem of having to physically mute all of the strings you aren’t playing to keep them from sounding, which can be a significant limitation with other devices.
To further enhance the Vo Power effects, Moog has devised special strings. “People like the sound of nickel strings on their existing guitars, but on the Moog Guitar nickel doesn’t sound as good or work as well for vibration control,” says Vo. “That’s why we have our own string formulation, though only the wound strings are different. Any brand of unwound string should work just fine.”
GUITAR TOO?
One of the prime directives when developing the Moog Guitar was to make it capable of doing the Moog thing, while also sounding good in straight guitar mode, and that meant creating pickups that could do double duty—a Herculean task that had never even been attempted previously. Why should that be so challenging? Because as every electric guitarist knows, having your pickups set too close to the strings can cause unwanted distortion and tonal anomalies if the signal is too hot, and the increased magnetic pull can even affect tuning. It follows that when designing pickups that generate intense positive (sustain) and negative (mute) magnetic fields around the strings, it will be difficult to coax conventional guitar sounds out of them.
“Creating a pickup that both listens to the strings and controls their vibration was a huge challenge,” explains Vo. “You are going to end up with a unique sound that is similar to—but not exactly the same as—a conventional pickup sound, because the shape of the pickup is different and the underlying physics are different. It’s still electromagnetism, but our pickup receives the signal from the string in a slightly different way.”
The Moog Guitar’s pickups do have their own personalities, and while they sound quite good, the tones differ somewhat from those you’d get from, for example, a Les Paul or Stratocaster. The Moog pickups tend to sound a little more like single-coils than humbuckers, but with less mid-frequency focus and high-frequency transparency than provided by the best single-coils.
GUITAR PART
Zion Guitar Technology in Raleigh, North Carolina, is responsible for the guitar part of the Paul Vo Collector’s Edition Moog Guitar, and the prototype instrument was expertly crafted with meticulous attention to detail all around. The set neck was pleasingly chunky with a comfortable and smooth feel, and the frets were beautifully placed and dressed. Because the guitar had originally been set up with lighter strings, stringing it with the beefy .011-.052-gauged custom set resulted in some buzzing, but that won’t be an issue on the production model. I also had difficulty removing the custom strings due to the rubber bushings around their bases, but the rubber has since been replaced with silk windings—part of the trial-and-error R&D process.
The piezo pickup sounded quite good— with less harshness and brittleness than most—and when blended with the other pickups it added a more finely articulated attack and a high-end sheen to the tones. Because the piezo is mounted in a tremolo bridge, it amplifies the bridge’s mechanical noises when you’re really rocking the bar, but Moog took great pains to reduce the noise dramatically using electronic cancellation, and it obviously isn’t an issue when using just the magnetic pickups.
PLAY DATE
I spent three weeks working with the Moog Guitar prototype, including using it on several recordings. I played it through a Rivera Venus 6 amplifier, a Fractal Audio Axe-Fx modeling and effects processor, and directly into a MOTU 828mkII audio interface.
At first, I tended to play the Moog Guitar much the same way that I play my other guitars, only with the added ability to sustain notes and chords. Before long, however, I found myself significantly modifying my playing, and even devising new techniques, in response to the instrument’s capabilities. For example, the slightest changes to finger and pick attack and finger vibrato produced dramatic differences on some settings, transforming, say, a flute-like timbre to that of an English horn. Subtle alterations to hammerons, pull-offs, and tapping were equally effective, and the ability to sustain or mute notes within arpeggios lead to all sorts of unique sonic spaces. I was even able to evoke semimelodic feedback by bringing magnets into close proximity of the pickups.
I also found that even slight changes to the primary controls led to new and often unexpected possibilities. For example, varying the amount of Vo Power while in Full Sustain mode actually changed the feel of the instrument, not just the intensity of the sustain, which, in turn, inspired new approaches to playing. Likewise, Mute mode physically stops the strings from vibrating when the Vo Power is on maximum, but alters the notes’ attack and decay responses more subtly when used in moderation. And adjusting the filter settings, particularly while in Articulated Moog Filter mode, sweeps a seemingly unlimited variety of attack envelopes and timbres.
There were a few irregularities, however. The pitch of the low strings tended to fluctuate slightly even with the Vo Power entirely off, on two occasions the pickups became radiophonic when I stood in particular spots in the studio (picking up the broadcast of a local baseball game), the third string was appreciably louder on some settings, and the output of the pickups was a tad hot, overdriving my amp input. Moog is still ironing out the first two wrinkles, but they’ve already tamed the third string and devised an elegant solution to the output level issue.
“The production guitars will have a trimpot on the foot pedal,” says Vo. “We spent quite a while trying to figure out what the ‘right’ setting was, and originally adjusted it so that when you struck a string it would be pretty much the same as striking a string hard on a regular guitar. The problem is that on a regular guitar the string output fades away very rapidly, but the Moog Guitar’s sustain creates so much more RMS energy that this setting was too high. I kept turning it down and it was still too hot for some people, so we’re going to let the user choose.”
CODA
Even after my brief encounter with the Moog Guitar, I had already begun thinking of it as a new type of instrument rather than merely as an enhanced electric guitar, much as acoustic guitarists in the ’50s may have felt when first encountering the electric guitar, or late-18th Century harpsichordists when encountering the piano. And because its potential is inextricably linked to the player’s fingers and musical sensibilities—rather than the technology itself—it is limited only by one’s dexterity and imagination.
How many guitarists will embrace an instrument that sounds different than they are accustomed to, requires special strings with an unfamiliar feel, and attempts to seduce them into venturing outside their comfort zones in search of as-yet undiscovered new sounds—especially when that instrument costs $6,500? I’m guessing there are more than a few of them out there, but we’ll know the answer soon enough.
I also see the future of musical instruments being able to do many more things than just a guitar making a normal guitar sound. There is a new guitar made by Moog, which is the same brand that makes synthesizers. This guitar is an amazing innovation for the instrument as it has completely new type pickups and other new things as well. Here is a guitar player magazine article from a few months ago for you read and see some of the future of music and recording.
Paul Vo Collector’s Edition Moog Guitar Prototype
By Barry Cleveland
HEAR THE WORDS “MOOG GUITAR” AND THE FIRST image to spring to mind will likely be a guitar capable of producing the same great synthesizer sounds as the company’s legendary keyboards. While that would be a beautiful thing, the Moog Guitar is not a guitar synthesizer, or even a synth controller, and it has nothing to do with MIDI, modeling, sampling, or other familiar technologies. Instead, it is an instrument that embodies a new approach to expanding the capabilities of the electric guitar itself—particularly its ability to sustain notes.
Electric guitarists have attempted to get more sustain out of their instruments almost from the very beginning. First, they simply cranked up their amps and used tube distortion and feedback to produce notes that sang more like a violin than an acoustic guitar. Then came distortion and compression pedals, followed by an array of mechanical and magnetic devices. By 1975, there were the Gizmotron, which physically “bowed” the strings with motorized wheels, and the Ebow, which sustained notes on a single string electromagnetically. A few years later came the Roland GR-500—a pre- MIDI guitar synthesizer that also employed a magnetic device to increase sustain—followed in the mid ‘80s by the Maniac Music Sustainiac and the Fernandes Sustainer, both of which provided unlimited sustain on all strings.
Given all of these historical precedents, the concept of a guitar with infinite sustain is hardly new—but Moog’s Paul Vo has developed a radically different technology that elevates that concept to a previously unheard of level, and combines it with other significant features that put the Moog Guitar in a category all its own. Remove the rear panel, and you’ll find about 3,000 individual components on a state-of-theart, six-layer printed circuit board—all of it glorious analog technology. “While sustain is the most obvious thing that the Moog Guitar does, it is not an outgrowth of any previous ‘sustainer’ technology, but rather a vibration control system,” explains Vo. “If the Sustainer is a flashlight, the Moog Guitar is a laser.” Naturally, a project of this magnitude required lengthy R&D, and I was fortunate enough to have seen and played several prototypes as the process moved forward. Here, we look at one of eight pre-production prototypes, which, while a little rough around the edges, provides a candid glimpse into a product that is nearly ready for prime time. (Look for a follow-up review of a production model once one becomes available.)
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The Moog Guitar operates in three modes: Full Sustain mode energizes all the strings equally, Mute mode sucks the energy out of the strings (resulting in a banjo- or koto-like attack and quick decay), and Controlled Sustain mode energizes only the notes being played while muting everything else. You switch modes using a 3-position Mode Selector, and dial in the intensity of the sustaining and muting functions with the Vo Power control. There’s also a Harmonic Balance control, which shifts the Vo Power between neck and bridge pickups, for differing harmonic emphasis.
In addition to the two Moog pickups, there’s a piezo pickup mounted in the bridge that may be combined with them using the Piezo Blend control, or used independently. A 5-position pickup selector lets you choose neck pickup, bridge pickup, neck and bridge pickups out of phase, neck and bridge pickups in phase, or piezo pickup only. Audio from the Moog
HEAR THE WORDS “MOOG GUITAR” AND THE FIRST image to spring to mind will likely be a guitar capable of producing the same great synthesizer sounds as the company’s legendary keyboards. While that would be a beautiful thing, the Moog Guitar is not a guitar synthesizer, or even a synth controller, and it has nothing to do with MIDI, modeling, sampling, or other familiar technologies. Instead, it is an instrument that embodies a new approach to expanding the capabilities of the electric guitar itself—particularly its ability to sustain notes.
Electric guitarists have attempted to get more sustain out of their instruments almost from the very beginning. First, they simply cranked up their amps and used tube distortion and feedback to produce notes that sang more like a violin than an acoustic guitar. Then came distortion and compression pedals, followed by an array of mechanical and magnetic devices. By 1975, there were the Gizmotron, which physically “bowed” the strings with motorized wheels, and the Ebow, which sustained notes on a single string electromagnetically. A few years later came the Roland GR-500—a pre- MIDI guitar synthesizer that also employed a magnetic device to increase sustain—followed in the mid ‘80s by the Maniac Music Sustainiac and the Fernandes Sustainer, both of which provided unlimited sustain on all strings.
Given all of these historical precedents, the concept of a guitar with infinite sustain is hardly new—but Moog’s Paul Vo has developed a radically different technology that elevates that concept to a previously unheard of level, and combines it with other significant features that put the Moog Guitar in a category all its own. Remove the rear panel, and you’ll find about 3,000 individual components on a state-of-theart, six-layer printed circuit board—all of it glorious analog technology. “While sustain is the most obvious thing that the Moog Guitar does, it is not an outgrowth of any previous ‘sustainer’ technology, but rather a vibration control system,” explains Vo. “If the Sustainer is a flashlight, the Moog Guitar is a laser.” Naturally, a project of this magnitude required lengthy R&D, and I was fortunate enough to have seen and played several prototypes as the process moved forward. Here, we look at one of eight pre-production prototypes, which, while a little rough around the edges, provides a candid glimpse into a product that is nearly ready for prime time. (Look for a follow-up review of a production model once one becomes available.)
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The Moog Guitar operates in three modes: Full Sustain mode energizes all the strings equally, Mute mode sucks the energy out of the strings (resulting in a banjo- or koto-like attack and quick decay), and Controlled Sustain mode energizes only the notes being played while muting everything else. You switch modes using a 3-position Mode Selector, and dial in the intensity of the sustaining and muting functions with the Vo Power control. There’s also a Harmonic Balance control, which shifts the Vo Power between neck and bridge pickups, for differing harmonic emphasis.
In addition to the two Moog pickups, there’s a piezo pickup mounted in the bridge that may be combined with them using the Piezo Blend control, or used independently. A 5-position pickup selector lets you choose neck pickup, bridge pickup, neck and bridge pickups out of phase, neck and bridge pickups in phase, or piezo pickup only. Audio from the Moog Guitar is routed to the Moog Foot-Pedal Controller—which also serves as the power supply and audio interface—using a multipin connector. For convenience, however, there’s a standard 1/4" guitar output for the piezo, in case you want to, say, tune-up or play backstage independently of the power supply (plugging a guitar cable into the jack activates an onboard 9-volt battery).
The Moog Guitar also sports a classic Moog filter, which behaves differently depending on which of its three operating modes is selected and the setting of the Tone/Filter control. In Standard mode, the Tone/Filter control functions much like a regular guitar tone control. In Normal Moog Filter mode, the Foot-Pedal Controller sweeps the filter frequency like a sort of superwah, whereas in Articulated Moog Filter mode, playing dynamics trigger the filter auto-wah-style. In both cases the Tone/Filter control adjusts the filter resonance.
While technologies such as the Sustainiac and the Sustainer can affect all six strings simultaneously, in practice it is difficult to sound more than two or three at once, as the strings with the strongest fundamental tones will tend to dominate. With the Moog Guitar, you can have up to six strings sounding simultaneously at more or less equal volume, in much the same way you can with a polyphonic guitar synth. Another significant difference is being able to vary the amount of intensity with the Vo Power control. Rather than having the effect be either on or off at a fixed level of intensity, as with the other devices, you can dial in differing amounts of sustain (or muting) that range from very subtle to relatively intense. And finally, Controlled Sustain mode solves the problem of having to physically mute all of the strings you aren’t playing to keep them from sounding, which can be a significant limitation with other devices.
To further enhance the Vo Power effects, Moog has devised special strings. “People like the sound of nickel strings on their existing guitars, but on the Moog Guitar nickel doesn’t sound as good or work as well for vibration control,” says Vo. “That’s why we have our own string formulation, though only the wound strings are different. Any brand of unwound string should work just fine.”
GUITAR TOO?
One of the prime directives when developing the Moog Guitar was to make it capable of doing the Moog thing, while also sounding good in straight guitar mode, and that meant creating pickups that could do double duty—a Herculean task that had never even been attempted previously. Why should that be so challenging? Because as every electric guitarist knows, having your pickups set too close to the strings can cause unwanted distortion and tonal anomalies if the signal is too hot, and the increased magnetic pull can even affect tuning. It follows that when designing pickups that generate intense positive (sustain) and negative (mute) magnetic fields around the strings, it will be difficult to coax conventional guitar sounds out of them.
“Creating a pickup that both listens to the strings and controls their vibration was a huge challenge,” explains Vo. “You are going to end up with a unique sound that is similar to—but not exactly the same as—a conventional pickup sound, because the shape of the pickup is different and the underlying physics are different. It’s still electromagnetism, but our pickup receives the signal from the string in a slightly different way.”
The Moog Guitar’s pickups do have their own personalities, and while they sound quite good, the tones differ somewhat from those you’d get from, for example, a Les Paul or Stratocaster. The Moog pickups tend to sound a little more like single-coils than humbuckers, but with less mid-frequency focus and high-frequency transparency than provided by the best single-coils.
GUITAR PART
Zion Guitar Technology in Raleigh, North Carolina, is responsible for the guitar part of the Paul Vo Collector’s Edition Moog Guitar, and the prototype instrument was expertly crafted with meticulous attention to detail all around. The set neck was pleasingly chunky with a comfortable and smooth feel, and the frets were beautifully placed and dressed. Because the guitar had originally been set up with lighter strings, stringing it with the beefy .011-.052-gauged custom set resulted in some buzzing, but that won’t be an issue on the production model. I also had difficulty removing the custom strings due to the rubber bushings around their bases, but the rubber has since been replaced with silk windings—part of the trial-and-error R&D process.
The piezo pickup sounded quite good— with less harshness and brittleness than most—and when blended with the other pickups it added a more finely articulated attack and a high-end sheen to the tones. Because the piezo is mounted in a tremolo bridge, it amplifies the bridge’s mechanical noises when you’re really rocking the bar, but Moog took great pains to reduce the noise dramatically using electronic cancellation, and it obviously isn’t an issue when using just the magnetic pickups.
PLAY DATE
I spent three weeks working with the Moog Guitar prototype, including using it on several recordings. I played it through a Rivera Venus 6 amplifier, a Fractal Audio Axe-Fx modeling and effects processor, and directly into a MOTU 828mkII audio interface.
At first, I tended to play the Moog Guitar much the same way that I play my other guitars, only with the added ability to sustain notes and chords. Before long, however, I found myself significantly modifying my playing, and even devising new techniques, in response to the instrument’s capabilities. For example, the slightest changes to finger and pick attack and finger vibrato produced dramatic differences on some settings, transforming, say, a flute-like timbre to that of an English horn. Subtle alterations to hammerons, pull-offs, and tapping were equally effective, and the ability to sustain or mute notes within arpeggios lead to all sorts of unique sonic spaces. I was even able to evoke semimelodic feedback by bringing magnets into close proximity of the pickups.
I also found that even slight changes to the primary controls led to new and often unexpected possibilities. For example, varying the amount of Vo Power while in Full Sustain mode actually changed the feel of the instrument, not just the intensity of the sustain, which, in turn, inspired new approaches to playing. Likewise, Mute mode physically stops the strings from vibrating when the Vo Power is on maximum, but alters the notes’ attack and decay responses more subtly when used in moderation. And adjusting the filter settings, particularly while in Articulated Moog Filter mode, sweeps a seemingly unlimited variety of attack envelopes and timbres.
There were a few irregularities, however. The pitch of the low strings tended to fluctuate slightly even with the Vo Power entirely off, on two occasions the pickups became radiophonic when I stood in particular spots in the studio (picking up the broadcast of a local baseball game), the third string was appreciably louder on some settings, and the output of the pickups was a tad hot, overdriving my amp input. Moog is still ironing out the first two wrinkles, but they’ve already tamed the third string and devised an elegant solution to the output level issue.
“The production guitars will have a trimpot on the foot pedal,” says Vo. “We spent quite a while trying to figure out what the ‘right’ setting was, and originally adjusted it so that when you struck a string it would be pretty much the same as striking a string hard on a regular guitar. The problem is that on a regular guitar the string output fades away very rapidly, but the Moog Guitar’s sustain creates so much more RMS energy that this setting was too high. I kept turning it down and it was still too hot for some people, so we’re going to let the user choose.”
CODA
Even after my brief encounter with the Moog Guitar, I had already begun thinking of it as a new type of instrument rather than merely as an enhanced electric guitar, much as acoustic guitarists in the ’50s may have felt when first encountering the electric guitar, or late-18th Century harpsichordists when encountering the piano. And because its potential is inextricably linked to the player’s fingers and musical sensibilities—rather than the technology itself—it is limited only by one’s dexterity and imagination.
How many guitarists will embrace an instrument that sounds different than they are accustomed to, requires special strings with an unfamiliar feel, and attempts to seduce them into venturing outside their comfort zones in search of as-yet undiscovered new sounds—especially when that instrument costs $6,500? I’m guessing there are more than a few of them out there, but we’ll know the answer soon enough.
The Future of Newspaper: The Amazon Kindle
The media industry that my group and I looked at was newspaper. This industry has definitely faced some problems as time has gone on. As we discussed in our presentation, one of the major problems that the newspaper industry has had to wrestle with is all the innovations in technology. One thing in particular has been the internet. The industry had to learn to adapt to the internet by creating online newspapers. These newspapers are very convenient for people who are on the go and enjoy being able to read only the sections they want. It also helps that readers have access to the paper as long as they have access to the internet. This then allows people to get the paper on the computer as well as on cell phones and laptops. Users are also able to create their own blogs on the newspaper’s sites that allows them to comment on certain stories and topics that they may have opinions on.
The innovation of online newspapers has been around for a long time. A more recent invention that will help the future of newspaper is the Amazon Kindle. This device is one that allows people to read newspaper articles as well as books and magazines without the hastle of carrying around the actual paper or book. A user needs only to purchase the item they want directly on the Kindle by way of the Kindle Store. People can buy whatever they like from wherever is most convenient for them. The lightweight device can hold over 200 articles and has a long battery life. Another tidbit about the Kindle is that it does not use WiFi. It actually uses the same networks as cell phones. This means that you don’t need to be in certain areas to be able to use it. There are also no monthly fees or any kind of service plan. The user just has to pick out what they want, buy it and enjoy their purchase.
Many people may think that the Kindle is nothing special because anyone can already get the paper on their laptops or cell phones. One problem with reading the newspaper from those screens is that eventually, your eyes start to hurt and bug out. The Kindle has a special kind of screen that won’t cause a reader’s eyes to hurt after reading an article or two. The screen on the Kindle actually looks a lot like that of a page in a book or out of a newspaper. This may seem like a minor detail, but it really does make a difference. This device is just as handy as a cell phone, but it allows a person to get their daily news without being in physical pain as they do so.
Basically, what I’m trying to get at is that technology is going to continue to become more and more advanced. As this happens, all the newspaper industry can to is grow with it. They will continue to come out with more handy devices such as the Amazon Kiindle and the industry will find ways to stay involved with these innovations. As long as this can continue to happen, the newspaper should be able to live on in the future. The only thing that will continue to change will be the ways in which readers will experience it.
The media industry that my group and I looked at was newspaper. This industry has definitely faced some problems as time has gone on. As we discussed in our presentation, one of the major problems that the newspaper industry has had to wrestle with is all the innovations in technology. One thing in particular has been the internet. The industry had to learn to adapt to the internet by creating online newspapers. These newspapers are very convenient for people who are on the go and enjoy being able to read only the sections they want. It also helps that readers have access to the paper as long as they have access to the internet. This then allows people to get the paper on the computer as well as on cell phones and laptops. Users are also able to create their own blogs on the newspaper’s sites that allows them to comment on certain stories and topics that they may have opinions on.
The innovation of online newspapers has been around for a long time. A more recent invention that will help the future of newspaper is the Amazon Kindle. This device is one that allows people to read newspaper articles as well as books and magazines without the hastle of carrying around the actual paper or book. A user needs only to purchase the item they want directly on the Kindle by way of the Kindle Store. People can buy whatever they like from wherever is most convenient for them. The lightweight device can hold over 200 articles and has a long battery life. Another tidbit about the Kindle is that it does not use WiFi. It actually uses the same networks as cell phones. This means that you don’t need to be in certain areas to be able to use it. There are also no monthly fees or any kind of service plan. The user just has to pick out what they want, buy it and enjoy their purchase.
Many people may think that the Kindle is nothing special because anyone can already get the paper on their laptops or cell phones. One problem with reading the newspaper from those screens is that eventually, your eyes start to hurt and bug out. The Kindle has a special kind of screen that won’t cause a reader’s eyes to hurt after reading an article or two. The screen on the Kindle actually looks a lot like that of a page in a book or out of a newspaper. This may seem like a minor detail, but it really does make a difference. This device is just as handy as a cell phone, but it allows a person to get their daily news without being in physical pain as they do so.
Basically, what I’m trying to get at is that technology is going to continue to become more and more advanced. As this happens, all the newspaper industry can to is grow with it. They will continue to come out with more handy devices such as the Amazon Kiindle and the industry will find ways to stay involved with these innovations. As long as this can continue to happen, the newspaper should be able to live on in the future. The only thing that will continue to change will be the ways in which readers will experience it.
Media Integration: The all in One Package
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKWmLwSuIvM
It wasn't that long ago when you bought a phone and have it do exactly what a phone should do: make phone calls. Today, however technology isn't coming out with that many single advances, and instead taking the advances already made and combining them with other technology's, leading up to the frankenphones we have now that not only make calls, but also play music, videos, play video games and even browse the internet all on one tiny LCD screen.
While phones keep on becoming less and less like phones, they are just one of the many things that are subject to the integration of our media devices. Televisions are another great example of this up and coming trend, with goals of TVs and PCs to eventually become one in the same, and demonstrated in the video above (forgive me for any language barriers you may have with the video, but it's fairly obvious what it's message is. Also, the embedding was disabled in the video.)
It's been predicted that within ten years all TVs will have internet connections, and new films will be able to be downloaded directly to your TV, allowing you to watch a brand new movie without ever having to get into your car. In the meantime however, you can already browse the internet using any one of the current generation video game consoles, which have also been integrating other media devices into themselves. Your PS3 and 360 aren't just for playing video games anymore, but they also turn your TV into a stereo that can play all the MP3s you have on your PC, or go to netflix and stream a movie onto your TV. In fact, it may not be too outlandish to claim that digital distribution though your new iTVPC360 may render theaters obsolete, with new films being distributed right to the internet and ready for you to download without ever having to get up off your couch.
It's my prediction that your living room will have one device for each form of entertainment available, and instead play host to one monster media machine that can and will do anything you want it to do. From watching the game to checking your myspace. It's already happening (just look at the iphone for a recent example,) but at this point it will only continue until it get's to a point where media technology pulls a highlander and decides there can only be one. Whether or not this is for the best is still unknown to me. On one hand, I find that a one-in-all machine is gimmicky and unnecessary, but on the other, I find it to be pretty convenient. Regardless, I don't see this trend slowing down anytime in the near future.
It wasn't that long ago when you bought a phone and have it do exactly what a phone should do: make phone calls. Today, however technology isn't coming out with that many single advances, and instead taking the advances already made and combining them with other technology's, leading up to the frankenphones we have now that not only make calls, but also play music, videos, play video games and even browse the internet all on one tiny LCD screen.
While phones keep on becoming less and less like phones, they are just one of the many things that are subject to the integration of our media devices. Televisions are another great example of this up and coming trend, with goals of TVs and PCs to eventually become one in the same, and demonstrated in the video above (forgive me for any language barriers you may have with the video, but it's fairly obvious what it's message is. Also, the embedding was disabled in the video.)
It's been predicted that within ten years all TVs will have internet connections, and new films will be able to be downloaded directly to your TV, allowing you to watch a brand new movie without ever having to get into your car. In the meantime however, you can already browse the internet using any one of the current generation video game consoles, which have also been integrating other media devices into themselves. Your PS3 and 360 aren't just for playing video games anymore, but they also turn your TV into a stereo that can play all the MP3s you have on your PC, or go to netflix and stream a movie onto your TV. In fact, it may not be too outlandish to claim that digital distribution though your new iTVPC360 may render theaters obsolete, with new films being distributed right to the internet and ready for you to download without ever having to get up off your couch.
It's my prediction that your living room will have one device for each form of entertainment available, and instead play host to one monster media machine that can and will do anything you want it to do. From watching the game to checking your myspace. It's already happening (just look at the iphone for a recent example,) but at this point it will only continue until it get's to a point where media technology pulls a highlander and decides there can only be one. Whether or not this is for the best is still unknown to me. On one hand, I find that a one-in-all machine is gimmicky and unnecessary, but on the other, I find it to be pretty convenient. Regardless, I don't see this trend slowing down anytime in the near future.
Future of Movies
The movie industry is something that is always chaging over time. In order for one company to comptete with another or one theater to compete with another they need to continue to come up with new ideas. So as we move foward with movies from here on out we will need to continue to develope new ideas.
The movie industry has been looking at ways to control that amount of content that is downloaded and watched for free online. This leads to where i think the future of the move industry is headed. In the futur i think that all movies will be watched online. Not only wil we be watching them online but we wil be watching them for free. The only thing that we will need to pay for would be the price of the internet. I think that this would work becasue they could set like a ticker that counts the amount of times the movie was watched online and that is how the movie industry would make its money. A good example of this that is already happening is the show south park. You currently can watch every eppisode online for free, again with only paying the price of the internet. The convenience of this is that people can watch this stuff at their own convenience.
The old business model of selling cinema tickets, television rights and DVD versions of a title seems so unsuited today. At least for me and my friends who love seeing movies on their own computers. I think that this is the future becasue lets look at how fast this internet is moving these days.As film moved to the Internet, movie rental downloads soared and the traditional rental scheme changed. While Blockbuster and other retailers tried to make the changes, some of them just could not compete with the online world. Netflix truly changed the way video rentals worked, and they continue to lead the market in the future of movie rentals. I see all movie rental retail stores closing in the future.
As you can see i focused more on the future of where we will be able to get movies and how the renting of movies will work in the future. This part of the movie industry is something that is changind based more on the needs and convenience of people. People like convenience and now having to leave thier own home, that is why I think this is where the direction of movies is heading.
The movie industry has been looking at ways to control that amount of content that is downloaded and watched for free online. This leads to where i think the future of the move industry is headed. In the futur i think that all movies will be watched online. Not only wil we be watching them online but we wil be watching them for free. The only thing that we will need to pay for would be the price of the internet. I think that this would work becasue they could set like a ticker that counts the amount of times the movie was watched online and that is how the movie industry would make its money. A good example of this that is already happening is the show south park. You currently can watch every eppisode online for free, again with only paying the price of the internet. The convenience of this is that people can watch this stuff at their own convenience.
The old business model of selling cinema tickets, television rights and DVD versions of a title seems so unsuited today. At least for me and my friends who love seeing movies on their own computers. I think that this is the future becasue lets look at how fast this internet is moving these days.As film moved to the Internet, movie rental downloads soared and the traditional rental scheme changed. While Blockbuster and other retailers tried to make the changes, some of them just could not compete with the online world. Netflix truly changed the way video rentals worked, and they continue to lead the market in the future of movie rentals. I see all movie rental retail stores closing in the future.
As you can see i focused more on the future of where we will be able to get movies and how the renting of movies will work in the future. This part of the movie industry is something that is changind based more on the needs and convenience of people. People like convenience and now having to leave thier own home, that is why I think this is where the direction of movies is heading.
Change is coming for the print industry
With technology always advancing and taking over many aspects of our life with replacing simpler and classic objects one could see that the possible replacement of a nice old fashioned book made of dead trees was not far from sight.
Recently in the St. Paul Pioneer press there was an article about the new Kindle, Apple Handheld and Sony Reader that have come out to serve as an electronic book. Pros and cons have been made about each but with my research I have found that many are more interested I the Sony Reader. With its light adjusting background, which makes it easier to read in different settings, virtual page flipping, for the old style book appeal, and its light weight and size makes it portable and easy on the body where carrying many books may cause strain, the Sony Reader has been impressing even the most avid book lovers. This will be important for the future because if it catches on then the sales of the actual object of a book will decrease and leave authors quite upset. With authors liking their materials to be published and printed, this e- book is not necessarily loved by all writers. Instead of seeing people on planes with their favorite novel in hand we will start seeing electronic books, most likely the handy Sony Reader in place of the book. With the economy as it is right now the E-books are not taking off as much as their makers would like them too, but with the innovators out there jumping on every new gadget I am sure that word will get out on how handy these things are and the e-book industry will take off. I do not think that it will replace the book completely, nothing can replace the good old paperbacks, the industry will just have to make some changes as far as publishing goes and costs of selling the books electronically. They will have to collaborate with the makers of the electronic books to find a way to please not only the authors but the consumers and the print industry as well. The print industry will never die off, but some changes will need to be made in order to keep up with the times. http://www.twincities.com/ci_10917924?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com
Recently in the St. Paul Pioneer press there was an article about the new Kindle, Apple Handheld and Sony Reader that have come out to serve as an electronic book. Pros and cons have been made about each but with my research I have found that many are more interested I the Sony Reader. With its light adjusting background, which makes it easier to read in different settings, virtual page flipping, for the old style book appeal, and its light weight and size makes it portable and easy on the body where carrying many books may cause strain, the Sony Reader has been impressing even the most avid book lovers. This will be important for the future because if it catches on then the sales of the actual object of a book will decrease and leave authors quite upset. With authors liking their materials to be published and printed, this e- book is not necessarily loved by all writers. Instead of seeing people on planes with their favorite novel in hand we will start seeing electronic books, most likely the handy Sony Reader in place of the book. With the economy as it is right now the E-books are not taking off as much as their makers would like them too, but with the innovators out there jumping on every new gadget I am sure that word will get out on how handy these things are and the e-book industry will take off. I do not think that it will replace the book completely, nothing can replace the good old paperbacks, the industry will just have to make some changes as far as publishing goes and costs of selling the books electronically. They will have to collaborate with the makers of the electronic books to find a way to please not only the authors but the consumers and the print industry as well. The print industry will never die off, but some changes will need to be made in order to keep up with the times. http://www.twincities.com/ci_10917924?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com
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