Super Mario A Cappella
It isn’t only big organisations such as the Red Cross that are helping out victims of the devastating earthquake in Japan. A singer by the name of Jimmy Wong serves up a rendition of the Super Mario Bros theme song, fully orchestrated using only his voice. He will be donating all proceeds to sales of his music to those affected in Japan.
Chat Roulette Music Improv
Chat Roulette isn’t all about flashers and perverts. A chap going by the name Merton improvises lyrics and piano pieces, provoking smiles and laughter in his bemused audience.
The Carpenters: Space Edition
A tasty helping of 1978 space-age camp featuring The Carpenters.
Via Metafilter
Free Mobile Ringtones
The Ringtone Society, provides free mobile ringtones composed by musicians of all stripes.
From their site:
“The Ringtone Society is an
international platform that aims to liberate the world of musically
banal ringtones that have infiltrated our neighbourhoods. HOW? By
asking composers and musicians from all over the world to join us in
creating original ringtones and inviting you to acquire and use as many
as you like, and thus protecting society from the digitally-dull
ringtone! Let the revolution be mobilised!”
While all their ringtones are indeed free, some of them are only available in select countries.
Via Textually.org
Musicovery: Music For Your Mood
Musicovery is a streaming music service with a twist- instead of picking songs by artist, you tell it what mood you’re in and it picks the tracks for you. It allows you to refine your selections by music genre or era and clicking on the song in play allows you to buy the music from various sources such as Amazon.com, iTunes or eBay. There are two versions of the site. One is a free, ad-supported version with playback quality that’s a little too lo-fi for my tastes (although it may not bother many people, especially if only played through small computer speakers). The other version requires registration and a 4 USD fee per month. That will give you high quality sound and remove the ads.
What I love about this site is that it allows you to discover new artists while still allowing the music to remain within the realm of your present mood. In essence, it does one thing and does it well. However, the layout is a mess and an absurdly large ad space dominates the right side of the page, actually covering up some of the non-ad content (unless you have your browser window stretched as wide as the Grand Canyon). The visual representation of music tracks would have been a great idea, if it weren’t for the confusing cacophony of colors, patterns and inter-connecting links that had me reaching for an Aspirin within a whole 10 seconds.
