Year: 2018

Steve Neff has a great article about Michael Brecker’s addition to the Living Jazz Archive.

Steve Neff’s Blog Post:

Dr. David Demsey at William Paterson University contacted me a few years ago to tell me about the “Living Jazz Archives” that the University was building and how they were adding a Michael Brecker Archive to the already existing archives that they already had. The Living Jazz Archives are:

A TEACHING TOOL for William Paterson University Jazz Studies majors, for classes in other academic areas across campus, and for visiting groups of students of all ages from public schools, from other colleges and universities, and the general public.

A RESEARCH CENTER for professional scholars, authors and researchers and for faculty from other institutions.

A MINI-MUSEUM honoring the lives and careers of these great jazz artists and their important contribution to the history of jazz, by displaying their music, artifacts and memorabilia using audio, video and multi-media.

AN ARCHIVE, containing the archived collections of Clark Terry, Thad Jones, James Williams, Michael Brecker, Mulgrew Miller and other collections, maintaining and preserving those materials in perpetuity.

Makemusic today released Finale 26. It adds a number of new features. You can find a run down of the new things at ScoringNotes.com.

As a long…..long time Finale user (I think I used it with version 2.5 back in the 90s), Finale is a solid notation program. While there are some great free ones, like musescore, that have gotten popular, Finale is really for people who care what their music looks like. And the ability to make your music look good is important. No one wants to waste time trying to figure out bad notation.

I’m probably going to update to Finale 26 soon.

I’ve had a few pedalboard layouts now. The big issue I have had with the other setups is size, and transporting it. I started off with a Q-Tron on the board. But that got dropped off due to it feeding back a lot. Plus I could never tell if it was engaged or not.

The main input is the Eventide MixingLink. It sounds great, and lets me bypass my effects chain if necessary. It has a couple of different settings, I usually keep it in the latch mode and FX Only. You can set it to be like a mini-mixer if you choose one of the other modes, but I don’t do that.

The first item on the effects chain is the Nano POG. Now, this pedal is probably not going to survive much longer on the board. Why? Cause the next pedal, the Eventide H9 pretty much does everything it does, plus I can control it via bluetooth. I suppose I have left it on the board cause I could engage the Nano POG, and then run it through the H9 to get like 3 octaves of Q-Tron like sounds. Or Distortion. But in reality that has yet to happen. Ideally, I think I am going to sell it to get like a dedicated reverb unit. The orange pedal is a Valeton EP-2 Volume Expression pedal that I’m using as an expression pedal for the H9.

The pedalboard is a Pedaltrain PT-M16-TC Metro 16. Basically, I wanted something small, portable, but also protects the pedals.

The whole thing is powered by the new Eventide PowerMax.

Generally, this setup is pretty solid. Originally, I wanted to run an EWI 4000s through the board, but inconsistent volume issues killed that. I haven’t had time to revisit it yet.

Things to add. I’m considering hacking up my Donner Bluetooth Page turner to put on the board. Or perhaps making a switcher using and Arduino or RPI Zero W.

Anyone else use pedals on their sax?

DPA seems to be one of the mics everyone who does a LOT of live playing go to. Jeff Coffin uses them with the DMB. They are everywhere. MusicTech Magazine had an interesting article about how the microphones are made. Worth a look at.

DPA originated back in 1992, when two employees at the sound and vibration measurement company Brüel & Kjær, Ole Brøsted Sørensen and Morten Støve, left the company to found ‘Danish Pro Audio’, transforming the technical ideas fostered at their former place of work into incredibly accurate and clear pro-audio microphones, including the well-regarded 4060 omni.

Several years ago I posted about 432 tuning. Bobby Owsinski had an article and a video about it today. Interesting stuff.