Mystery Guitar Man - Who Cares if He Can Really Play

Not too long ago, I forwarded a video to many of my guitar-playing and music-enthusiast friends - and those who replied to me had the same impression I did.... WAY COOL!

There's a guy on YouTube known as "Mystery Guitar Man" - and it's anyone's guess as to whether he can really play the guitar. But what he does do is create (or in this case "recreate") some unbelievable pieces of music using stop-motion video. In other words, he takes an individual shot of himself playing each individual note of a musical piece. Then, using some type of editing application, he cuts the individual video clips onto a timeline and then he builds the songs linearly - note by note - as it was originally composed. In some cases, he's got to take more than 1,000 tiny video clips to do this.

So... can he really perform the piece? I don't know - and I don't really care. He gets major points from me for creativity - and just for having the time on his hands to make something like this in the first place.

You can watch Mystery Guitar Man play Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" on YouTube and if you think it is as entertaining as I do, you might also want to watch him explain how he does this by playing "Flight of the Bumblebee". Pretty wild stuff.

An Orchestra of... iPhone Musicians?!?!?

If you have an iPhone, then you probably know about the vast array of musical applications that can transform the device into a streaming radio, a lyric finder, and guitar tuner, even a guitar simulator where users can actually strum chords.  But in the latest turn of iPhone/music exploration, imagine an orchestra of iPhone "players" - coming together in a group, each bringing their respective musical talents (and unique sounds that they've chosen to make with their iPhones) to perform in front of a live audience.  Sounds sort of crazy doesn't it?

Well that's exactly what a group of musicians, each eqippped with an iPhone and "speaker gloves," is doing at Stamford University. (Learn more about the program and watch them perform here.)

While not your typical orchestral perfromance, it does open up a world of interesting possibilities for music exploration.  Sort of fun to imagine what it might lead to next... don't you think?