Year: 2021

Victor gets it. Our educational system of learning music is broken. It’s all about playing. That is how I approach it when teaching.

Epic.

HornFX has started a series of Youtube tutorials about using pedals with saxophone. His debut video is using the Boss PS-6. I like this idea and this content was sorely missing on the internet. I hope the volume levels get sorted out on the next video.

I am a owner and a fan of the Woodwind Design stands. Brilliantly designed, and just…….a game changer. Having a stand that fits in the case and adds effectively ZERO weight? That is a no brainer. Why carry around one of those “yellow” ugly ass looking Hercules stands?

Anyhow, the designer of the previously mention woodwind stands for alto, tenor, and bari (plus a ton of other instruments), has come up with a carbon fiber music stand. This guy is amazing. Period.

The Akai Professional EWI 4000s was discontinued in June of 2019, after 14 years of its release, but it is still in very high demand. Many consider the 4000s to be the best EWI (after 16 years of its release in 2005) for its sounds that are not compatible with newer EWI models. It is very hard to get a hold of one these days because of the discontinuation, because there are so many people looking to get this instrument, and almost every existing unit being sold out. It is unlikely that this petition will do anything, but it’s worth a shot to get this legendary instrument back into production.

Sometimes, you just need a good OLD fashioned petition to fix a problem.

This is a fascinating video on how they made the new Leland notation font and Edwin text font for Musescore 3.6. Hopefully there is going to be forthcoming support for Finale to use these.

As an original buyer of the “Jazz Font” before it was bought MakeMusic and bundled with Finale, I have tried several music fonts over the years. There is a thicker version of the jazz font called “Swing Font” made by the creator of the jazz font, Adobe used to make a font called Sonata font (for my PRE-Finale time when I used Encore on a music SE/30), there was Ash Font, man…….I probably still have the floppy discs for most if not all of these.

For the last 12+ years, I adopted using Finale’s Maestro font in conjunction with the late Bill Duncan’s Jazz Articulations font. Why? I kinda think the “Jazzfont” is over used, and just looks bad. It is the comic sans of music.

Anyhow, it this video is a great history lesson of how Score (I never used it) shaped and still shapes the notation industry, and how much care and thought goes in to creating a really nice font.

FYI, Musescore looks great. If you are getting sick of Sibelius and it’s yearly fees, Musescore really has been getting better every version.

This is a great concert to watch if you want to see how jazz fits into pop music. Features a young Chris Potter, Bob Sheppard, Cornelius Bumpus, Peter Erskine, and a little known but bad ass Drew Zingg.

YouTuber Dr. Wally Wallace has launched a fantastic online Saxophone learning program. FOR FREE.

Seriously, new stuff each month, good videos, a Jazz Etude, exercise PDF for tone quality, technique, listening assignments, and more.

Highly recommended. The Saxophone Academy (link to the courses is in the YouTube video description)