Year: 2007

SmartMusic 10.1

Posted on By ericdano 14 Comments on SmartMusic 10.1

One of my favorite whipping boys is SmartMusic. This program could be so great, and yet, MakeMusic seems not to want to put that little extra polish on it. Case in point, the latest “update” to SmartMusic is a large download, some 95 Megabytes. Took some time to download. Here is what is listed as being “new”

  • Compatibility with SmartMusic accompaniments created in Finale® 2008.
  • Support for Windows Vista.
  • Improved Clarinet assessment.

I emailed MakeMusic’s tech support about the first thing a while ago, when Finale 2008 came out. Never heard back. Figures. Well, at least they didn’t wait nearly a year to update SmartMusic to read the SmartMusic files generated from the latest version of Finale (last time, it was August 2006 when Finale 2007 came out, and not until April 2007 when SmartMusic could read the SmartMusic files generated by Finale 2007).

Ok, new stuff.

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Reviews

Vade-Mecum of The Oboist

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There are a number of books out there that are for Oboe that have been adapted for Saxophone. Ferling’s, and Rossari’s books would be two examples. Another great book to check out is “Vade-Mecum of The Oboist” by Albert J. Andraud. The 200 page, over sized book contains 230 selected studies (some from Ferling) and Orchestral excerpts to hone your skills. Though it is for the Oboe, it works great on saxophone. This book does not pull any punches. It starts hard and keeps it there.

For those looking for some technique etudes, this book will not disappoint. 9/10 (1 point deducted for the oversize of the book which I don’t particularly care for).

Reviews

Roland KC 550

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Roland KC 550I recently bought a Roland KC 550. It is a keyboard amp, but you can use it for many other things. I bought it for some gigs this summer. It has an XLR microphone input, plus 3 additional inputs. Easily enough to share with a keyboard player, your EWI and your Sax mic. We touched on the subject of amplification way back (not sure if I agree with my opinions from then, oh well).

Sound. It has a nice, smooth sound, and a real nice low end. Two of these together would make a nice little PA system. One makes for a killer amp for those gigs where no one wants to setup and run a PA system. The KC550 has tons of output. I don’t think I ever got past about 4 on it. It never cut out or distorted on any gigs.

Size. Well,

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Reviews

Making Reeds

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Making Reeds

Ok, are you sitting. Yes? Ok. I play oboe.

Take a deep breath

It’s not as bad as everyone says. In fact, it is a beautiful instrument, and great classical works composed for it. The only issue I have with playing Oboe is reeds.

Right now, I’m using reeds made by the Alan Double Reed company. I really like the Medium Hard Concert reeds they make. But, to truly know the instrument, I decided this summer to learn how to make an oboe reed. I purchased a reed making kit that included some gouged and shaped cane. I also was armed with a copy of “The Art Of Oboe Playing” which has a great guide to reed making guide.

Long story short, I still don’t know how to make an oboe reed. I have yet to make it past the binding the reed to the staple part. Erg. If/When I get past that, then we come into the whole scraping/shaping thing. Maybe I need a good video of the whole process….

Single reed players have it good, but, are there any people out there that actually make their own saxophone reeds? I know that I have, in the past, shaved and trimmed some reeds to make them play better. But to construct a playable reed from a blank? Is it worth it?

Articles

Articles From The Past

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In moving this site to WordPress, and transferring all the old articles, I get to read some of my old posts. I think this one really touched me today, and made me remember what a great guy Jon was.

Jon Van Wie cancer.

Jon Van Wie loses his fight

I traded some emails with him, and he took a vintage Meyer mouthpiece I got off Ebay, and made it great.

Articles

Ralph Morgan Dies

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I saw this on the Klarinet list

“I just received a note from a repairman friend which said that Ralph Morgan passed away on August 23rd. Ralph worked at Selmer for many decades and was brilliant at mouthpiece design and instrument acoustics. He retired many years ago and concentrated on just mouthpieces.

As a maker, I just wish folks like him left behind research notes for the rest of us to learn from!

Dave

Dr. David McClune
University Professor of Music
Director of Bands/Woodwinds
Union University-1862
1050 Union University Drive
Jackson, TN 38305

Office-731-661-5294
dmcclune@uu.edu
www.mcclunemouthpiece.com

News

New Site

Posted on By ericdano 11 Comments on New Site

Welcome to the new Site. Most all of the stories and comments transfered over. The ones that have not should be migrated over in the next week or two.

I think there might be some problems with the Login thing. Can someone check it out and post about it?

Fixed the Download problem I think……maybe……

Also fixed a cache problem. I think it works better now…..now if I could only get the old slash site up to continue to move stories and files over…….

Update 8/29/07, well, there still are about 500 some stories that need to be sifted through. It is long, and boring, and long and boring……but it is going. Hopefully some of the other patterns and pdfs will be up soon.

Update 8/31/07. Still have something like 500 stories/articles to sift through. Erg…..Hopefully sped things up here with some caching and some MySQL tuning.

News

Beechler vs Larsen

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Saxcessful writes “I have been playing a Berg 100/0 on my tenor with various reeds, depending on the mood. Recently I have been offered (on the net) a Beechler Bellite 8 which is about the same lay but I have no idea about what sort of sound they produce. I am familiar with a Lawton 6 (a friends) and also play a modified Otto 7. I like all the sounds that I can get out of these mouthpieces but “the” sound alludes me. I would appreciate comments about the Beechler as they are not too common here in NZ and they are rather expensive. Thanks….”

Yes. “the sound”. We all know what you mean. You can’t describe it, but you know what it is. I haven’t used a Beechler since………..um……..Clinton was in the White House. Beechlers, as I remember them, were really punchy mouthpieces. I would describe them as similar to a metal Berg Larsen, but without the body (or tone). I would really suggest trying one before buying it, otherwise you might be stuck with something you don’t use. I mean, I think we all have that mouthpiece box (or boxes) of various pieces you liked for a week or two, then discarded.

Articles

Finale Productivity

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When the author of the Finale Productivity package died last year, it was a shock. Bill was a great guy to email back and forth with, and I’m sorry I didn’t save every email we exchanged. He was very insightful about how things should look, and how to be clear on with music notation. Bill developed templates, fonts, and processes for Finale and sold them to people who wanted to make their music “engraver quality”. One of the last projects he completed was a Articulations font which addressed the LACK of articulations available in a traditional (ie: Finale’s Maestro) font. Bill’s articulations font looks great with Maestro, and has a complete set of articulations that one would need for any modern music notation (scoops, bends, falls). It looks great.

Then Bill left us, and it seemed his invaluable package of fonts, templates, insights, and processes would be lost.

Luckily, the rights to sell it were bought by NPC Imaging and is available here. I think Bill would be very happy to see that his efforts are living on. And I hope there will be continued work on the package in the future.

Articles, News

Band-in-a-Box 2007.5

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The elves at PGMusic have been working away at yet another version of Band-in-a-Box, 2007.5. Not a lot of “new” features, but a lot of great REAL DRUM tracks. I think we are at nearly 9 gigabytes of drum sounds now. Lots of new styles as well. Couple the Real Drums with Garritan JazzBand and you have one awesome practice/performance tool. Check it out.

Reviews

Passing on Finale 2008

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Passing on Finale 2008

MakeMusic came out with a new version of Finale. 2008. Looking at the lackluster feature list, I’m am passing on the update. Basically, the only items that sound remotely interesting are the Cut/Copy/Paste Improvements, and ScoreMerger (taking a bunch of files and putting them together). All the other stuff, the Record/Import Audio, More Garritan Sounds, New Selection Tool, Vista Compatible, Integrated Sound Libraries, Enhanced Setup Wizard, Document Styles, Colored Noteheads and Boomwhackers® Sounds, Improved Scanning, Expanded MusicXML Support, Expanded Human Playback Support, More Powerful Templates, New & Expanded, Documentation, Improved HyperScribe are not enough to warrant the price of the update. From the various discussion groups, it seems a lot of bugs still exist, and features that have problems or issues, such as 2007’s Parts, have not been addressed.

Plus, I have a suspicion that the new version saves Smartmusic files in a format that SmartMusic 10 cannot read (2007 did that from August of last year up to when when finally came out with Smartmusic 10 in April).

Articles

SmartMusic 10 Updated…….sorta

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on SmartMusic 10 Updated…….sorta

Since it was released in April, SmartMusic 10 has not been updated. That changed last Tuesday, when the program informed me that updates were available. The proceeding 30 minutes of downloads yielded some new things, and some not so new things………

First, the new things……..

Additional play-alongs. 60 titles like they promised? Maybe. There is no list of new things, and Smartmusic.com has no information on the release. I see a lot of Concert Band things, and TWO new Jazz Band ones. And not all that great of Jazz Band songs either. Oh well.

That is it for the new stuff.

Not so new. Bugs. User Created

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Reviews

Tabuteau Lessons/Note Grouping

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Two related items I finished recently. The first is a very interesting CD, Marcel Tabuteau’s Lessons, which Tabuteau himself explains his phrasing system. Well, it is more than that, it is lessons on music from a great master. It was started in August of 1965, using a tape recorder in Tabuteau’s apartment, and abruptly finished in 1966, the last recording made the day before he died (or, as Tabuteau called it, his audition date with St. Peter). It is oboe specific in areas (reeds), but most of it easily applies to saxophone (or any other instrument for that matter). Well worth a listen if you want to gain insight from a master on how to play music.

The second item is Note Grouping by James Morgan Thurmond. This is basically a written down version of what the Tabuteau CD is. Same idea, different author. Keep in mind, this book was originally a thesis paper, and reworked/written to be a book. Parts of it are very “thesis paperish”, but the information contained within is invaluable, especially the insights into how modern music has come about.

Reviews