~ MM

Best of luck,

~MM

Candidates range from a Texan man who quit his job as a civilian contractor in Iraq to instead focus his efforts on providing free wheelchairs to disabled Iraqi children, to an Indonesian pilot who “moonlights” as a foster father of 47 at his orphanage in Singapore.

All 10 are clearly worthy candidates, but for what it’s worth, the staff here at Making Music are putting our collective support behind Derrick Tabb, a music teacher from New Orleans who runs The Roots of Music, a band program dedicated to keeping at-risk youth off of the streets and instead giving them a hobby and teaching them responsibility through music. As his CNN profile puts it, Tabb “strives to keep young people on the straight and narrow in the city with the nation’s highest murder rate.”

Derrick Tabb

The good news is that you can vote as many times as you would like, for as many candidates as you like, until the voting ends on November 19. Think about the positive impact that music making has had on our lives personally, and consider what it can do for kids in New Orleans. Give Tabb at least one of your votes, and remember to tune in on Thanksgiving night at 9pm to see who wins.

~ MM

Making Music Magazine and Toca have teamed up to give away a pair of Congas to one lucky winner! These beautiful drums are Making Music tested, Making Music approved. Go to makingmusicmag.com to enter for your chance to win. Entries are due by December 31 and a winner will be announced on January 15. Good luck!

~ MM

Share Your Musical Story!

How does music making impact you? Whether you perform in a community band, jam with your friends, take lessons or have always wanted to learn to play, we want to hear the role music making fills in your life!

Your tale could be worth musical rewards!

Together with Making Music magazine and Blue Man Group, NAMM will choose the top five stories to feature in an upcoming article in Making Music. The five lucky winners will also receive a $200 gift card to spend at their local NAMM music retail store and two tickets to a Blue Man Group show.

Submit your story (500 words or less, please) in an email to shareyourstory@namm.org. All entries must be received by November 15, 2009, selected entrants will be notified by December 1, 2009.

Good luck, and let the inspiration flow!

~ MM

Don’t get it? No worries, neither did we until we checked out the videos below:

The Eigenharp will run you $6,302 when it’s released on November 9. Some experimental musician out there will find a way to push it to its limits, though they seem infinite at this point.

~ MM

The new app that stuck out the most to us here at MM was ZOOZbeat. A so-called “music re-creation studio,” it features dozens of sounds, beats, and instruments, with room for expansions and add-ons.

ZOOZbeat screenshot on the right

The concept sounds like Intua BeatMaker, but the user interacts with the samples in real time by tapping and shaking the iPhone, a la DigiDrummer. Pretty cool. The guy in the CNN.com article even creates his tunes in bed while his wife is asleep next to him. Can’t do that with a drum set or guitar.

Check out the ZOOZbeat site for sample songs.

~ MM

To participate, grab your video camera and put together your best Halloween-themed theremin video, but first go to www.moogmusic.com/theremin for a link to the complete contest information. Prizes will be awarded based on a poll of Moog Forum members and on the highest number of YouTube views.

Prizes include some fancy Moog instruments and accessories, including a MF-104Z Analog Delay and a MF-102 Ring Modulator. Happy creeping!

~ MM

See our previous theremin coverage here.

Bloom, developed by experimental/ambient music guru and pioneer Brian Eno, is a “generative mini-sequencer” as gadget blog Gizmodo puts it. Put your finger on the screen to create a note, then move it around or tap other spots to create different notes, and from that, loops. Bloom’s developers claim that there’s nothing else like it for the iPhone (or iPod Touch, don’t forget!), though it’s really just a sequencer with a vaguely artistic graphic interface, rather than a vaguely utilitarian graphic interface.

Brian Eno

That said, Brian Eno is behind it, and he’s had a pretty decent career to put it mildly. If you don’t recognize the name, you’d probably know him best as the guy who produced Coldplay’s latest album and a bunch of U2’s albums. He’s also a living legend within the electronic music community, so this app probably doesn’t stink. Check out Bloom for yourself at the iTunes App Store for $3.99.

~ MM

Heavy Metal in Baghdad is an award-winning documentary from Vice Films and VBS TV that tracks Acrassicauda, one of the few metal bands in all of Iraq. from a few months after the American invasion of their country in 2003 up through the end of 2007, when the situation had grown so dire that they decided to flee the country—and managed to keep the band together, more or less, through all of it.

It’s an incredibly gripping story, watching this group of kids in their early 20s struggle to live their lives as a civil war raged around them, let alone play as a band. They managed to put on a few shows throughout the war, but as the violence escalated, those chances diminished, culminating in a SCUD missle blowing up their rehearsal studio. They fled the country and reconvened in Damascus, Syria, where they discovered that life as refugees wasn’t a whole lot better than life in a war zone. But, again, they soldiered on, playing a concert and tracking a demo on Vice’s dime.

They aren’t the most incredible musicians of songwriters, but that’s not the point. They’re some of the most incredible metalheads (and people in general) I’ve ever seen on camera. I’ve seen a few other great films about headbangers in oppressive countries, but Acrassicauda are the most dedicated bunch of all.

Acrassicauda in 2005

Thanks in part to this film and Vice’s lobbying, the bandmates were granted refugee status in the US, and are currently in New York, hopefully living a better life and finally having the chance to grow their hair long and rock out hard.

If you’re in New York, be sure to catch one of two special screenings of the film at the MoMA on the 14th and 17th of October. Word on the street is that the band might be there, so say hi to them for me!

~MM