Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
-Margaret Mead

Not only does music have the power to captivate us, it has the ability to shape our beliefs and enact social change. Musicians are no strangers to playing concerts and galas on behalf of charities around the world in an effort to raise social awareness. In July of 1985, Live Aid concerts were held in London and other cities around the globe to help raise funding and awareness for famine relief in Ethiopia. In the wake of 9/11, musicians ranging from Paul McCartney to Jay-Z held an emotional concert in NYC to benefit and honor those who had perished. And in the summer of 2007, Al Gore produced a series of global concerts called Live Earth, which helped raise funding and awareness for global warming, and resulted in calls for a more proactive global response to climate change.

As you all know, Indaba Music is a platform for musicians from around the globe to connect with one another and to make music together online. Over the past few months, we’ve noticed a growing movement of members coming together to make music in support of various social causes, and quite frankly, it’s a marvelous (and unintended) application of the site.  In the future, if there is a cause you feel strongly about and you are looking for some like-minded musicians to join you, simply stop by the newly created Musicians For Social Causes group page. And if you can’t find a group dedicated to your cause, make one!

In a world connected by technology like never before, music can have an even greater impact on social awareness. While major musicians have always had the ability to reach millions to help raise public awareness for their causes, the rise of the Internet enables anybody to voice their concerns on issues they support. The Indaba community has already sprung to life in support of social causes around the world. Music For Freedom, is a session created by Fernando Fonseca in response to the continued civil unrest in Iran from accusations of election tampering. Meanwhile Peace Partners, a group created by Patrick Lajeunesse that is dedicated to fostering peace and freedom through music, already has over 100 group members and over a dozen active sessions! The number of social cause groups and sessions is small but growing. 

You have the ability to enact powerful and meaningful change through your music creations. While Indaba can help empower you by giving you the tools to make and master you tracks, it is still up to you to stand up for what you believe, and to champion your causes. We call on you, the members of the Indaba community, to share your passions for social causes, be it through joining a group or collaborating with artists around the world to express your beliefs. So stand up, join or create a group, make music, and change the world!

by Vijith

The biggest waves for the internet music world today are definitely being made by the news that the unlucky dudes behind Sweden's most scrumptiously flippant piracy portal have decided to sell off the site after years of shockingly flagrant abuse of copyright law.

In April, judge Tomas Norström ruled against the site and its primary interests in a suit brought by the IFPI, a sort of global RIAA, bringing to an end their long tradition of shrugging off legal threats from primarily US-based intellectual property owners with replies like "It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons." Oh, and then there was their highly publicized plan to purchase the incomparably stupid micronation of Sealand in order to give their servers a home that was quite literally on the high seas.

But then Norström's history of highly sympathetic pro-copyright political affiliations came to light, and for a moment it seemed like there might be some merit to the buccaneers' gleeful proclamations that appealing would buy them at least another few years. Not so now, since Norström has just been found perfectly sound in an investigation conducted by the Swedish courts. The verdict is going to stick.

Now, faced with the fine, the owners have quickly raised a few million dollars by selling to Global Gaming Factory, a company which operates a series of internet cafes aimed at gamer geeks -- this is all that's left of the once-glorious video arcade, it seems. In a totally wacky twist, GGF is apparently planning to revamp the client application so they can sell idle bandwidth from connected users to media and telecom companies, hopefully providing a much-needed resource through the looming online on-demand video gold rush.

But if the various preceding attempts to shut down figurehead file sharing outlets have shown us anything, it's that almost killing the platform just causes it to mutate and come back ever than ever. In other words, BitTorrent isn't going anywhere, even if it's highest-profile tracker is -- remember, the legendary invite-only private club OiNK was shut down in 2007 to much hand-wringing and even the official client has sold out at this point. Waiting in the wings for an immediate call to arms are the multi-site torrent meta-searchers like Mininova and Torrentini which aggregate all the content on the smaller trackers without ever actually touching any of it.

GGF's plan is a stretch, but if it works, we may also see legitimate uses for BitTorrent. increase in number, depth, and profile. There was some talk about integrated BitTorrent capabilities in OS X which could be used for distributing software updates, for example, and then of course there's also the multimedia angle. Integrating BitTorrent as a sort of backbone for ruthlessly efficient delivery of large multimedia files could make the next generation of audio software very cool indeed.

I have to admit I'm borrowing heavily from my friend, Kevin, who put together this wonderful video playlist over at my day job of some of his favorite Internet videos of the late, great Michael Jackson.  That said, I wanted to share his hard work with you anyway.  Though I was never a major MJ fan - I wasn't camping out outside of his hotel rooms or anything - I always dug his music and one of my earliest memories is watching a Michael Jackson concert at Indaba co-founder Dan's house in 1990.  If I remember correctly, Dan's folks were the only ones who would buy the concert on pay-per-view so we wound up there and, again, it was a long time ago, but I think that same evening the Berlin Wall came down.  Anyways, here is how the Internet at large pays tribute to one the best pop songs of all time by one of the finest musicians of all time. RIP MJ. 

Prison Thriller

Indian Thriller

64-Voice Thriller

Wedding Thriller

And check this out even though it's not a video: Michael Jackson's influence on Hip Hop.  Amazing. 

by Vijith

Broke-ass bedroom recordists of the world: your prayers either have just been answered or else are in need of some serious refactoring: the audio conversion wizards at Apogee have announced the One, their new USB desktop audio interface. Everybody and their brother is making those things nowadays, of course, but this particular product is more exciting than most of its competitors because of who designed it: Apogee rules the roost when it comes to high-end professional audio converters. (To be fair, there are converters of marginally better repute made by companies like Lavry and Crane Song, but those are outlandishly expensive mastering-grade boutique devices -- to put things in perspective, I don't think I know anybody who has ever seen one in real life.)

As you may remember, Apogee turned a lot of heads when they released the Duet in 2007 because it made all their engineering prowess more affordable than ever -- it went for half as much as its predecessor, the Mini-Me, which had a four-digit price tag -- rather uncomfortable, since it was a junior device of sorts, and the same dough could buy you a mid-grade eight-channel workhorse from a company like MOTU. By all accounts, the Duet sounded phenomenal considering its $500 price tag, which was very low for Apogee, if perhaps a bit more than comparable non-primo equivalents.

With the One, they've again cut the price in half, essentially chopping the Duet in half and adding a built-in condenser mic to create a barebones product clearly aimed at singer-songwriter types. Thus, the same caveats apply as with the Duet: it's Mac-only, CoreAudio-only so it won't work with Pro Tools, connections are made through a strange breakout cable to keep everything looking pretty, there's no S/PDIF I/O so it's not really all that future-proof, and the outputs are unbalanced. It also has some new compromises: since it's a one-input interface, you won't be able to do any stereo recordings (you can still do stereo stuff in the box, of course, since it does have two outputs) and since nitpicky details are scant so far, I can't tell whether it will accept line-level inputs (if I'm remembering correctly, there was also some ambiguity about this with the Duet prior to its release; it turned out that the instrument inputs could indeed take line-level signals, but the impedance was switchable using a software control panel -- again, a strange but aesthetically streamlined solution).

There might be more as-yet-unannounced cool stuff under the hood, though. For example, the Duet included novel features like a multifunction control knob that could be used to as an input gain control, output volume control, and MIDI continuous controller, and also a cool reamping loopback mode that negated the need for a Radial. As somebody who doesn't need one of these things, that's the part that I'll be most interested in. But those of you who have lost your job and want to record forlorn songs about your woes that will stand the test of time may want to tighten your belts one more notch, save a few more pennies, and then start getting excited.

Hey Indaba, welcome to another week!  It's Monday and that means it's time to talk shop.  This week I want to talk abut something we don't often cover on here (which is strange, given what Indaba is): song writing.  There are thousands - maybe hundreds of thousands - of song writers on Indaba and I want to pose a question to all of them.  It's a chicken-or-the-egg scenario, really, so there is bound to be some disagreement, but what comes first when composing a song: the lyrics or the music?  When you sit down to pen a tune do you come to the table - or keyboard or guitar or whatever - with a melody in your head or with some lyrics on your brain?  Do you write out lyrics blindly and then wrap a tune around them or vice versa?  Do you find one way easier than the other?  Or are any of you lucky enough to have the two always come together at once?  So let fly in the comments and have a great week Indaba!

by Seth

On Indaba, we celebrate all styles of music – from blues and rock to jazz, classical, funk, shred metal and more.  This week we launched an exciting new contest with rising popstars, Carmen and Camille, challenging you guys to remix their song “Shine 4U”.  Carmen and Camille’s use of Auto-Tune sparked a passionate debate on the contest message board regarding the place of Auto-Tune in music, and we thought it an opportune time to drop some knowledge on you about Auto-Tune.

It seems like an eternity ago that we heard Cher belting out “Believe” like only she can.  That was the first time that the common listener heard the ever-popular Auto-Tune so upfront; however Auto-Tune is immensely popular among pop recordings, although most artists wouldn’t want you to know that their voices are touched up.  Encountering Auto-Tune in the studio is inevitable, and it has made a world of difference in the area of audio arts, but how did this popular effect come to be and why is it so popular?

Surprisingly, Auto-Tune wasn’t invented by an audio engineer, but instead by Andy Hildebrand, a retired oil engineer.  As an oil engineer, Hildenbrand would monitor reflections of soundwaves as they were sent into the ground and used a mathematical formula called autocorrelation to help oil companies determine areas to drill for oil.  After retiring, Hildebrand was in search of his next adventure, when at a dinner party he found his answer after being challenged by a guest to invent a box that would allow her to sing in tune.  A few months later, in late 1996, Auto-Tune was born using the autocorrelation formula for pitch correction.

In today’s world of audio engineering it’s close to impossible to find an engineer who hasn’t added Auto-Tune to their arsenal of plug-ins. While many argue that Auto-Tune is simply a fad, like synthesizers during the 80’s (remember those?!), Auto-Tune appears to be here to stay.  Auto-Tune, however, isn’t for everyone. Jay-z, for example, has purposely banned the use of Auto-Tune on his upcoming album, Blueprint 3, saying “Some people made great music with it, now it's time to move on,"

Death Of Autotune - Jay-Z

So what are your favorite uses of Auto-Tune? 

by Vijith

 In a dark cave in southwest Germany, Tubingen University archaeologist Nicholas Conard has discovered what are now being called the oldest musical instruments in the world, a pair of flutes made from vulture bones and mammoth tusks that date back 35,000 years to the last ice age.

Conard has since expressed surprise at the revelation that the prehistoric humans who made the instruments would do so using mammoth tusks, which are harder to work with and not already hollow like the bird bones, and also that they had enough leisure time for music in the first place what with all the hunting, gathering, and Smilodon-dodging.

Indiana Jonesing aside, though, it's also interesting to consider what this means for musical history. Or, prehistory, rather, since the oldest sheet music in the world was discovered in Syria in the 50's. Any well-schooled improviser can prove that sophisticated music can exist without notation, recordings or any other fixed medium. In the absence of instruments, how far back could it go? Can chanting and tree-stump drumming alone can account for the preceding epoch?

It's Wednesday and that means it's time to watch some vids.  The last few weeks we've been taking a look at child prodigies and that was all well and good, but I'm starting to feel weird about watching videos with other people's kids in them.  So this week we're going to look at three amazing examples of something that could not have existed before the Internet began to video seriously: the self-ensemble.  What does that mean?  I'll tell you!  With an ear for arrangement and a webcam a ton of musically-minded people have stormed the Internet with videos of themselves harmonizing with, well, themselves.  And not just that, people have gone beyond a capella arrangements to make entire bands all by their lonesome.  There's nothing new about one person recording all the part of a song, but there is something novel and impressive about watching them do it. 

First up is a guy by the name of Francois who recorded a 64-track a capella version of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." What's so impressive about this one is that using only his voice he is able to get most of the instrument sounds down pretty well.  The beat he creates and the ambient chords echoing over the whole track are almost indistinguishable from the original.  Cut him some slack on the main vocal track, though, it's near impossible to nail MJ's voice. 

Next up is a young man who has taken a love of videogame music to a new level.  Skilled on the violin as well as vocally, this dude gives a pretty spot on version of the Zelda theme all by himself.  He's also great at wearing different hats, which in the weird world of the Internet will get you noticed a lot quicker.  It's no 64-track masterpeice but there is something that seems a little more refined about this performance than the previous.  It could just be me and my love of Koji Kondo's music, though.

Finally, let's take a look at my favorite one of all.  This is by a dude named Jack Conte and it rules.  I might even go so far as to say it rulez.  Conte records everything himself here and the output is an actual catchy tune.  And God truly is in the details here.  For instance, instead of just playing a tambourine all the way through (which would have been easy) he stops using it points to slow the song down and then picks it up again when he wants us to feel movement.  He has other awesome videos, too, but this one is easily my favorite.  Enjoy. 

by Seth

Being a musician I'm often drawn to the idea of vibrations.  I'm always searching for the vibrations and tones that coincide to make a beautiful sound, but vibrations go far beyond what we as humans can perceive with the naked ear.

Dr. Masaru Emoto brought to the world the concept of "hado," which has existed in the Japanese language for centuries. "Hado" translates to motion or vibration.  Dr. Emoto describes hado as the "intrinsic vibration patters at the atomic level in all matter,” which is based on the energy of human consciousness.  Hado can be found everywhere; in nature, our bodies, even innate objects.  Once it circulates through, hado then returns in to mother nature to begin its journey again.

Since hado can not be seen by the naked eye, Dr. Emoto set out to discover and develop a method that would visually demonstrate the idea of hado and show how powerful these vibrations could be.  Dr. Emoto developed the concept of taking photographs of frozen water crystals under a high magnification.  These crystallized molecules were exposed to written and spoken words as well as music and then photographed.  Each new vibration altered the crystal - for example, after being exposed to John Lennon's song Imagine, the crystal formed a beautiful dream like formation.  The word "peace" formed the crystal into an intricate beautiful design, yet after being exposed to the phrase "you fool” the crystals because distorted and melded together as if it was hurt.  This phenomenon is proof that feelings affect physical reality.

The human body is between 60% and 70% water and has the capability to feel every single emotion or change in vibration.  If on a small scale water crystals can be affected to the degree that Dr. Emoto discovered, imagine what they can do on our bodies or even the world and universe beyond.  We as humans need to take this into regard; the words that we say to each other and the actions we take on this earth because sticks and stones can hurt our bones and words can really hurt.