50 Years of Publications, 500 Books, FREE from the Met

If there’s one thing I love more than finding a good book, it might be finding a good book for free. The Metropolitain Museum of Art has made over 500 titles available for free download.

A few that caught my eye (and might catch yours):

Roland TR-909 – A personal introduction

By the time I’d left for college I was familiar with the sounds of the Roland TR-909 drum machine. Daft Punk’s Homework (which had been only recently introduced to me) and it’s overt ode to the machine, Revolution 909, were on regular rotation. I could play reasonable emulations of the classic drums through my ROMpler. From the awe-inspiring (and GAS-inducing) liner photos of Fatboy Slim’s You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby I knew what the machine itself looked like.  I’d never *seen one, though.  Never experienced one…

Continue reading Roland TR-909 – A personal introduction

Primitive Technology: Forge Blower

I invented the Bow Blower, a combination of the bow drill and forge blower to make a device that can force air into a fire while being easy to construct from commonly occurring natural materials using only primitive technology. I began by fanning a fire with a piece of bark to increase its temperature. It is this basic principle I improved on throughout the project.

EarlyE: 476 Tracks Covering the History of Electronic Music

http://ubu.com/sound/electronic.html

via http://ubu.com/sound/electronic.html

…Caio Barros was an undergrad studying composition when he began digitizing his professor’s sizable collection of electronic music CDs in 2009. To increase its chances of mass distribution, he converted the collection into a torrent file. But somehow, that torrent disappeared from cyberspace. Now, for the first time, ubuweb is hosting this massive collection of early electronic works in its entirety.