music

Tantacrul's 76-minute deep dive into the history of western music notation and the many proposed replacements, such as piano rolls, colored notes and the jubilate. He explains why none have displaced the current system.

The first part of a four-part Channel 4 (UK) documentary series presented by Howard Goodall, this episode covers melody and why tunes affect us so deeply. It explains how melody works in Western music with historical background and music theory.

Tantacrul walks through how the MuseScore 4 team was built and how design decisions were made for the overhaul of a huge legacy notation app. It covers playback and engraving quality improvements.

Reason TV profiles Elvis Summers, a Los Angeles musician who crowdfunded dozens of tiny homes for homeless people. City officials moved to remove them while pushing a multibillion-dollar housing plan.

Nate Harrison's 2004 video history of the Amen Break, a six-second drum sample from a 1969 b-side that became the basis of hip-hop sampling, jungle and drum and bass. It is also a meditation on cultural ownership and creativity.

A Pitchfork TV documentary following Dan Deacon in Montana as he finishes his album Bromst. It shows the experimentation behind it, including pieces written for MIDI-driven player pianos.

Ahoy's documentary traces tracker music from early Amiga software like SoundMonitor and Soundtracker through the demoscene, Protracker, and PC trackers such as Screamtracker and FastTracker. It covers the sound, culture and history of 16-bit module music.

Part one of Look Mum No Computer's series on buying a whole church pipe organ, covering how it was removed from its home. The series goes on to restoring it and rewiring it for MIDI.

Rob Scallon explores a five-story pipe organ, the largest in the Midwest, with organist John Sherer. The half-hour tour covers most of the instrument and how it works.

Kirby Ferguson's film argues that creativity is built from copying, transforming and combining existing works, examining music, film and technology. It makes the case that everything is a remix.

The first episode of CuriousMarc's series restoring a real Apollo Guidance Computer, led by AGC expert Mike Stewart. They set up a makeshift lab in a Houston hotel room to open up a rare machine owned by a private collector.

Moleman 2 is a feature-length documentary about the demoscene, tracing its rise from 1980s Commodore 64 culture to modern real-time art. It explains the algorithms and creative process behind demos and intros.

A documentary by Stuart Brown (XboxAhoy) on the history of first-person shooters on the Amiga and how Doom's arrival affected the platform.

In an Ars Technica War Stories episode, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner describes how he made the game on the Apple II, fighting hardware memory limits and the platform's decline. It covers the rotoscoped animation and the engineering tricks involved.

NCommander investigates why Space Cadet Pinball disappeared from Windows Vista, building on Raymond Chen's explanation about 64-bit incompatibility. He tests it on 64-bit Windows including Itanium and walks through the debugging.

Cathode Ray Dude's hour-long retrospective on the ABIT BP6, the dual-Celeron motherboard. He covers early multiprocessing, its legend, a build, running NT 4, benchmarks and the pros and cons of early SMP.

CuriousMarc's Apollo Guidance Computer restoration series looks at core rope memory, the ROM that held the Moon landing programs. Mike Stewart builds a custom reader to recover lost AGC programs.

An hour-long video essay on Elite, the 1984 BBC Micro game by David Braben and Ian Bell. It covers how they fit a 3D engine, economy and universe into 22KB on a 2MHz 6502.

Modern Vintage Gamer explains how Eric Chahi built Another World on the Amiga 500, using 2D polygons, rotoscoping and clever techniques to run well on a stock 7MHz machine.

Home video from 1993 showing Future Crew members at Mika Tuomi's home finishing the PC demo Second Reality shortly before release.

The Computer History Museum's 25th anniversary celebration of the Commodore 64, recorded in December 2007, with a panel including Jack Tramiel and Steve Wozniak. It recounts the machine's launch and history.

A 2008 documentary by Brett Whitcomb about the Rock-afire Explosion, the animatronic band built for ShowBiz Pizza Place restaurants. It follows the band's history and the fans who keep the machines and their technology running.

Cathode Ray Dude covers two bizarre HP 'Quick Start' features: QuickLook, an offline email client built on EFI firmware, and Daystarter, which hijacks the Windows boot process. It includes an explanation of EFI applications and why HP built these things.

Part 1 of a documentary on the Commodore Amiga, from the Lorraine prototype and the Atari and Commodore buyouts through the Amiga 1000 launch in the 1980s.

minimme traces the timeline of 3D graphics engines on the Game Boy Advance, from early experiments to commercial 3D games, covering techniques such as voxel rendering. It is a history and showcase of what developers coaxed out of the limited hardware.

The first episode of the BBC's 1982 television series The Computer Programme, introducing home computing to a general audience. It surveys mainframes, early personal computers such as the BBC Micro and Commodore PET, and the changing computer market of the time.

The first episode of Stewart Brand's 1997 BBC series based on his book How Buildings Learn, covering how buildings change after they are built. Brand presents and the series has music by Brian Eno.

Kirby Ferguson's video essay series arguing that creativity is built on copying, transforming and combining existing work. It covers music, film and technology, then turns to copyright and patents.

Kirby Ferguson's updated four-part video essay arguing that creativity is built on copying, transforming and combining existing work. It covers examples from film, music and technology and touches on generative AI.

A short film of Alex Honnold free soloing El Sendero Luminoso, a 2,500-foot route in El Potrero Chico, Mexico, in a little over three hours with no rope. It was made by The North Face with climbing footage and music.

A documentary on Clive Wearing, a renowned musician whose brain was damaged by a virus in 1985, leaving him with a memory spanning only about seven seconds. It follows his life and condition.

A 1969 BBC Tomorrow's World segment about Nellie, a school computer used by pupils at Forest Grammar School to solve equations and play music. Students learn programming and maintenance, and act out binary arithmetic.

A Vox report on El Paquete Semanal, the weekly offline bundle of shows, music and news that is smuggled and sold in Cuba. It shows how people get media without internet access.