The UK Magazine The Telegraph has a great interview with Sonny Rollins about turning 80, touring the world, and generally being awesome. Check it out.
Wither and die sheet music/music stands?
There are already several apps for the iPad for viewing sheet music PDFs, including apples iBooks. It makes sense, the iPad is just about the right size for viewing a page of music.
Now, there is a mount for iPads.
$39.95. Now we just need a Bluetooth foot peddle page turner…..for that price….
And for saxophone players, if you use this with a microphone stand, this also solves the problem of how to hear yourself….as in the iPad should provide some reflection of the sound back at you if you have it just above the bell. Wonder if that would mess with the microphone capturing one’s sound correctly…..I should get one and try it out….
UPDATE: Oh, the foot switch is coming!
Mouthpiece Rack
Most of the time saxontheweb is annoying, but sometimes a gem comes out. And here is one such gem….a mouthpiece rack.
Wood, brass door stoppers with the tops cut off. Genius. Good job!
Solo Sax and Electronics
While nothing really new (people have been doing this since the 70s), it’s good to see it still happening.
Buddy Collette Dies
From Kanascity.com
“Buddy Collette, a Grammy-nominated jazz saxophonist, flautist, bandleader and educator who played important roles in Los Angeles jazz as a musician and an advocate for the rights of African American musicians, has died. He was 89.”
If you have never heard of him, check him out, especially his flute albums. Great stuff.
Adam Savage – How I Do It
Adam Savage, of MythBusters, gave an excellent speech to the Maker Faire in May (I think?). Though it applies more to his path, it also applies to us musicians as well. It’s very interesting.
Apple Launches Ping
Well, seems like the new version of iTunes has some social functions now. Though Ping is newly born, some people, like eternal Apple hater Peter Kirn seem to have already written it off. That is a huge mistake. Kirn also has said that the iPad is a failure as well. Heck, he thinks that because Apple has not allowed Flash on the iPhone/iPad….that the iPad isn’t OPEN SOURCE and it’s not a Mac. Seems to really have hurt the iPad sales…..NOT. Ok, so lets put away Kirn’s ramblings and assumptions….he sometimes publishes things worth reading when he isn’t pushing his Open Source dementia upon us.
Ping. I think it is very interesting. A highly focused Social integration about something we all have in common. Much better than Facebook. Geeze, Facebook recommends friends who I have NOTHING in common with…..or friends of friends which it assumes will be friends of mine. I think not. Ping on the other hand, narrows its focus to what types of music you like. Though it only lets you select THREE Genres of music, I expect that at some point it will have some sort of Genius type feature which will scan your library and recommend things from that. Genius in iTunes works fairly well……..not 100% but it comes up with some interesting stuff sometimes. What if Genius and Ping worked together, so Genius started looking at what your Friends are listening to, and perhaps recommending stuff based on that? And vice versa? Ping is now in existence, and I think we will be seeing this shortly. I’d expect by December we will have gone through a couple of iTunes versions, probably up to 10.5. Anyone remember how the App store or the iPhone OS started? Apple tip toes at first……so expect things to get interesting soon.
Ping displays on your profile Albums that you Like, Rate, Review or Purchase. Now, iTunes won’t let you review an Album unless you buy it. However, you can Rate, Like and Post it. Rating an album, even though you didn’t buy it from iTunes, shows up on your Ping profile. Liking an Album does as well, and Posting it lets you put a message about the Album, like “Get the track Doctor Sax off this…..Michael Brecker tears it up!”.
The problem is that there is way to Ping things that are not in iTunes. So that bootleg recording of Brecker Brothers or that hot Japanese Fusion band……if they are NOT in iTunes, then you can’t Ping them. Nor can you ping just individual songs off Albums. Nor do your Ratings of Songs that are in your iTunes Library show up on Ping. Now, I think these will be showing up in Ping real soon. It makes a LOT of sense to do this (if the user wants to).
In all, Ping isn’t Facebook. I think that is a GOOD thing. Facebook is just stupid now……news outlets, companies, everyone is using it. And the result is that you end up not caring about what your “friends” are doing. Or you just end up playing the games there. I think what Apple is trying to do with Ping is, like it has done before, narrow it’s focus on something and make it amazing. I think Apple can and will be doing some interesting/amazing stuff with Ping shortly.
I have to wonder though…..in a long term game plan, what if Apple has been watching Facebook, and sees some things that it thinks it can do better, and puts that into it’s Mobileme? I mean, I think me.com could be an amazing Social site that, if it took the good parts of Facebook, and tied it into iOS, GameCenter and me.com……that would be pretty interesting….
Anyhow, if you are on Ping, follow me
Tie Swab
Rico Reeds Videos
Rico Reeds has some really great videos of Walt Weiskopf up explaining one exercise from his book “Around The Horn” (which I highly recommend!).
They also have some great videos from other artists like Chris Potter, Mel Martin, Ronnie Laws, etc.
But then, they have videos from this Shannon Kennedy chick which were……..what? I dunno what to make of them. They have these great pros talking shop and technique, and then you have……who? Shannon who? I mean…..who is she? And she discovered fire….I mean that you can play faster if your fingers don’t move too far from the keys? No……way……amazing. Though Eddie Daniels might disagree, but what does he know? Seriously…….I mean like…..OMG……Eddie Daniels. I mean…..psh.
Leon Breeden Dies
“Leon Breeden, the longtime director of jazz studies at the University of North Texas, who half a century ago transformed the program from a clandestine enterprise into the international Mecca for jazz training it remains today, died on Wednesday in Dallas. He was 88.”
My college band got to do a concert with North Texas State’s One O’Clock band (well after Mr. Breeden left). We were rehearsed and sounded good playing Thad Jones arrangements. They came in and sightread all the tunes we had prepared and sounded better. Damn.
Wendy’s Kids Meals Toy – Saxazoo
Seems Wendy’s kids menu toy, in conjunction with “America’s Got Talent”, has a Saxazoo instrument with it. I don’t think it’s going to create a huge demand for playing the real thing though….
Modified EWI
Got an old EWI? Yes? Then check this out:
“The META-EWI is a modified EWI (Akai’s Electric Wind Instrument) to which was added a whole new set of controllers based on sensor technologies, specifically eight continuous controllers and 16 digital switches. These clearly succeed at stretching the expressiveness and the range of musical gestures found on the original instrument allowing the musician to have a more complete and far reaching control of a great variety of meaningful musical parameters.”
Double Slide Controller…..why?
“Developed by composer and researcher Tomás Henriques, the instrument mixes computer music software, sensor technologies and flexible hand/arm gestures to generate rich, complex sounds.” My question is why? So we can do more Zen type music? Why do all these “demos” of new controllers and stuff always have like an atmosphere drone? I would have been impressed if this guy busted out some changes and played a chorus or two of “Autumn Leaves” or something. But no, we get F-ing drone Zen music. Another Eigenharp type device. Whoohoo!
iPad Sheet Music Page Changer
From Engadget:
“If you carry your sheet music in a laptop, AirTurn’s got a USB dongle for that, but if you’ve migrated your musical cues to an certain slate, never fear, Bluetooth is on the way. The AirTurn BT-105 will bring the company’s page turning technology to iPad, using a transmitter that attaches to standard professional footswitches, allowing you to turn full pages and half pages of sheet music while keeping hands firmly affixed to your instrument. Though there’s no word on price, we imagine it’ll cost close to the existing 2.4GHz version, which runs from $40 for a dongle to $100 for a package with two Boss pedals, and when it surfaces in Q4 of this year, we’re hoping it will extend bicycling input to all the other wild and crazy apps you dream up. PR and video after the break. “
Opens up a LOT of doors. For what it is worth, I have put a lot of stuff I practice on to my iPad, and it works great.
Dan Higgins Ripping It
If you don’t know who Dan Higgins is, you have heard him…..in movies, on TV soundtracks, albums, etc. He’s everywhere. Check him out.