Awesome Electronic Music

Microsoft Windows has a long history of throwing annoying and cryptic error messages at us. Video artist 4096 decided to memorialize some of the operating system’s various foibles over the years with a fun-filled electronic music remix inspired by this Japanese video. MacOS even gets into the game at 1:24.

Eight Minutes Upside Down has created a fantastic series of videos which explore the many tracks that sampled sounds from other musicians. In this episode, you’ll hear how electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk influenced artists from Beck to Sir Mix-a-Lot to The Chemical Brothers to Miley Cyrus.

Roland’s latest electronic rhythm maker, the TR-6S packs a six-track sequencer into a portable, battery-powered box. What really makes it special is its ability to play sounds from famous drum machines like the 808, 909, 707, 606, along with preset and custom samples, as well as FM-generated tones.

BRONSON is a collaboration between the members of ODESZA and Golden Features, and the music video for Keep Moving perfectly suits the track’s industrial beats, thanks to StyleWar’s deft juggling of stock corporate videos and insane visual effects.

This unique MIDI controller makes it easier to play by teaching music theory. Simply select one of its 840 pre-loaded scales, and it maps only the applicable notes to its right pads, and chords on its left pads, so you can’t play a bad note. It has 96 velocity sensitive pads with polyphonic aftertouch and RGB backlighting, plus 24 hotkeys.

Pouff creates moving images using fractal math, and makes their own music to go with. Their YouTube channel is loaded with colorful and hypnotic visuals, like this clip of intricate, organic looking structures, accented by brilliant backlighting.

Toto’s 1982 hit Africa has seemingly been covered a million times. But we can say with certainty that this is the first time we’ve heard it played by a pair of high-voltage Tesla coils. We could almost feel the hairs on the back of our neck standing up from the electricity. Performance by Franzoli Electronics.

Japanese electro-punk group Electronicos Fantasticos is known for making music with unusual instruments. In this clip, musician Ei Wada shows off an electronic guitar known as the “CRTelecaster” that uses feedback created from the screen of an old CRT television set to produce sounds. More CRT goodness here.

We’re not sure why, but hard rock and heavy metal music sounds surprisingly good when played on the Stylophone. Musician maromaro1337 once again demonstrates his skill on the basic analog keyboard with a great rendition of Black Sabbath’s rock classic Paranoid.

This pocketable, palm-size gadget is a real-time performance controller for MIDI- or OSC-compatible music software. It has two backlit, velocity sensitive pad grids, an accelerometer, gyroscope, and a joystick for adding expression to your digital music. Pairs with iOS, Android, MacOS, and Windows via Bluetooth LE or USB Type-C.

We all know that bees make a buzzing sound when they fly about. But electronic musician Bioni Samp knows there’s way more subtlety to the sounds they produce. To create his music, he records and processes these bee sounds, along with others made from the resistive properties of their honey. From Great Big Story.

If you think that electronic music was born in the 1970s or 1980s, you’d be wrong. Bandsplaining introduces us to Silver Apples, a group who was way ahead of their time, creating innovative glitch-pop sounds back in 1967. They even worked with Jimi Hendrix, but faded into obscurity after a controversial album cover did them in.

Electronicos Fantasticos! shows us how an electric fan can be used as musical instrument – first as a sort of electric guitar, and then as a bass. The sounds are generated by a light behind the fan blades that influences a photosensor circuit held by the musician. Their wild performance of Blue Monday is a must listen.

One of the most satisfying sounds on earth is that noise a cold can of beer makes when you pop it open. Musician Koji Kobura agrees, and decided to sample a bunch of sounds he could make with a beer can, ultimately turning them into a short EDM track.

Digital musician Paweł Zadrożniak continues to step up his stepper motor game, this time turning his Floppotron orchestra loose on Michael Jackson’s 1982 mega-hit Beat It. We love how he used the hard drive heads to do those clicky rhythms at the beginning.

Korg’s recently launched Nu:Tekt line will create DIY instruments, effects, and utilities for electronic musicians. First up is the NTS-1 a tiny, build-it-yourself polyphonic synthesizer with a digital oscillator inspired by the prologue and minilogue xd. Sound demo here.