"Mars Needs Guitars!"
But that 1990 CD title didn't specific which kind! So many possibilities: a nano-tech lab recently built a silicon guitar only 10 millionths of a meter long. Canadian mathematicians have devised the "tritare," which vibrates a Y-shaped network of strings. Gibson is putting Ethernet into some new Les Paul models. And traditionalist George Lowden is crafting guitars for the stars.  More...

Chips Ahoy!
The new underground sound is "chip music," hacked from old Game Boy units. While the industry is pushing slicker 24-bit high-resolution studio tools, a new generation of punks is getting messy, with back-to-basics 8-bit technology.  More...

Swiss get US Organ Transplant
What's a Gloucester company fishing for in Lake Geneva? C. B. Fisk's Massachusetts hometown is known for seafood, but the company is cooking up angel-food at Lausanne's 13th-century cathedral: a new $2.4 million organ.  More...



Sheet (Music) Happens – Online
Tin Pan Alley now has its own exit along the information superhighway. The heyday of local sheet music shops is gone, but the web is humming with tunes to purchase and print.  More...

Getting in Tune
Bringing the blues to postal workers seems like asking for trouble. Don't tell that to "Blues Prof" Wale Liniger, who harps on the stress-busting power of the harmonica. Meanwhile, corporate executives are learning that there is no "I" in "team"... or "orchestra."  More...

Cell Phones Summon School Spirits
Cell phone rings are graduating from annoyances to actual fights. Fight songs, that is. Companies are now offering alumni a chance to rah-rah-rah before they blah-blah-blah.  More...

Playing the Marimba Eroica
Harry Patch left behind legacy of exotic instrument designs, along with his unique compositions. But where can one find a teacher for "cloud chamber bowls," Kithara II," or "44-string harmonic canon"? In New Jersey.  More...



GLOBE-TROT: Uh-Oh in Flying, Set-To in Pakistan, Yo-Yo in Brazil
A quick trip around the world: how travelers are handling musical baggage under tough post-9/11 rules; how music is dividing Pakistan's campuses; how cellist Ma has added Brazil to his world-music itinerary.  More...

MEDIA: Masters of D'oh! and D'eau
New works: "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening talks about writing about writing about music. Sound engineers for the ocean-epic "Master & Commander" shoot for sonic accuracy in recreating naval life on film. Musicians and photographer collaborate on "Water Music" book.  More...

NET: Getting Legal, Quiet and Visual
Recent articles tell us how to get our computers to make less racket (except for the legal downloads now available from many competing services), and our radios to spell it all out (literally!).  More...



GADGETS: Numb Skulls & Ear Buds
Some new products deliver sound through your bones. (Stick a finger in your ear to IMPROVE your hearing???) Others deliver comfort with good sound, for folks addicted to their portable MP3 players.  More...

MINDS: Audio Illusions... and Delusions
When the background music at your favorite restaurant switches from Britney to Bach, hide your wallet!Researchers are connecting musical associations and spending habits – and other ways that people "sometimes behave so strangely."  More...

LISTEN: The Sounds of Chance, Markets, Cancer Cells
"Sonification" experts are using sounds and musical tones to improve understanding of complex data, and to help the blind "see" their surroundings. Elsewhere, musicians are listening to the sounds of randomness, and harnessing chance to create new compositions.  More...

TECH: Will Elvis Return, Chopped to Bits?
The job of singer may soon be outsourced. A new "vocaloid" is being called the "world's first virtual soul vocalist," and he has lots of friends on the way. Meanwhile, other scientists are trying to teach computers to hear the different between speech and song.  More...

NATURE: Animal Ears Wax Eloquent
It's the ears of extinct pterosaurs and tiny flies that are creating a buzz with scientists. What may come out of them is a better picture of how ancient creatures lived, and a way to build a better hearing aid.  More...



100 Years of Movie Music
And the winner is... to be announced in June. The American Film Institute is continuing its centenary celebration of celluloid with "100 Years... 100 Songs." Meanwhile, Turner Classic Movies seeks budding film composers, and one director shares her list of "top rock movies."  More...

Old Paint
Many young buckaroos in the 1930's learned to strum guitars covered with painted stencil designs. A recent book captures the era when Old West themes ruled: horses, vaqueros, cacti... and water-skiing???  More...

Pipe Organs Piped over Web
An professor's online tutorial pulls out all the stops, with audio, pictures, and a rich history of an instrument that goes back to Bach.  More...

Getting that Victorian Sound
With the Industrial Age booming – literally – all around them, Victorian writers were the first to discover the potential of sound and silence in literature. A new book explores how the 19th-century's high-tech boom changed the nature of listening.  More...



Hey Hey! Opera Monkees with the Masses
Poet W.H. Auden once noted that "no good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible." Perhaps they throw chairs? "Jerry Springer: The Opera" is winning awards in Britain. Meanwhile, Micky Dolenz is singing Aida, and a London impresario is bringing legit opera to the masses.  More...

Loud Music Drowns out Traffic, Reaches Edge of Solar System
Not the same music, of course. An audiology professor in Montreal cranked up the volume on some powerful stadium speakers to help city residents get to sleep. Meanwhile, quietly, a gold record crossed the boundary of our solar neighborhood and spun into the void.  More...

Showtime – Concerts go Visual
For some musical spectacles, you won't want to forget your own spectacles. Even classical performances are taking a visual cue from rock shows, and producer Moby has updated the old planetarium laser show for the digital age.  More...

Concert Intrusions - Exposed!
Noisy new technologies have created new ways to annoy concert-goers. And in Brazil, one director is in legal trouble for annoying them in a low-tech way: mooning them after they booed his production.  More...



"Jose can you See, by the Dawn's Early Light...?"
There may be no crying in baseball, but there sure is music. As the Major Leagues' "hot stove" season heats up, we recall at two musicians who swung big bats in baseball history: Jose Feliciano and Eddie Layton.  More...

David Byrne no mere Talking Head
Vocalist Byrne is also artist Byrne, and he's adopted the corporate presentation software PowerPoint as his new canvas. [Next slide please.]  More...

Temples of Sound
If the walls of the classic studios of the 50's, 60's and 70's could talk... they might write "Temples of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios." Authors Jim Cogan and William Clark capture the inside stories behind the legendary sessions of those eras, as told by the musicians, producers and engineers who were there.  More...

Extreme Reality for Two Rock Survivors
The History Channel and VH1 are helping us answer the age-old schoolyard question: who's tougher, Superman or Batman? Okay, not really... but what about this match-up: The Who's Roger Daltrey or wild-man Ted Nugent?  More...