Ok, totally unrelated to anything saxophone or jazz but this is just really cool.
Tour Of The C.G. Conn Factory circa 1911
Found this link to a picture tour of the C.G. Conn factory from about 1911. Probably not much has changed. There are actually some iTunes Podcasts from Yamaha that show how they make instruments. Very high tech.
BuddyPress!
This has been on my list of things to do to Jazz-Sax, and now I have. We have gone BuddyPress now. This hopefully will enable more things to happen here, like Forum discussions, and perhaps some sort of group calendar for people’s upcoming gigs, etc, etc. Lots of possibilities. If anyone has any good recommendations on a theme for BuddyPress that would be cool. Or some good plugins for it.
Activity: http://www.jazz-sax.com/activity/
Members: http://www.jazz-sax.com/members/
Groups: http://www.jazz-sax.com/groups/
Forums: http://www.jazz-sax.com/forums/
Register: http://www.jazz-sax.com/register/ (This one doesn’t seem to work at the moment)
UPDATE: Ok, seems my Apache server was configured incorrectly. Things seem to work now.
Best Practices To Clean a Mouthpiece
Discovering Google Reader is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I now am updated on a TREMENDOUS amount of stuff I’m interested in. Curse, because I now monitor SaxontheWeb. Generally, the posts there are…..subpar to be nice. However, there are occasional questions that come up that some try to answer thoughtfully. Like this one on Can Bleach Damage a HR Mouthpiece.
As an owner of a Vintage Meyer Brothers Hard Rubber mouthpiece, and the owner of two Hard Rubber Slant Signature Otto Links, I’d NEVER SOAK my mouthpieces in Bleach. At all. Period. Even diluted. Period. My practices in cleaning a mouthpiece are to use lukewarm water, antibacterial soap, and a old soft toothbrush. I mildly scrub the mouthpiece out with the toothbrush and soap. That lasts maybe 30 seconds. I wash it off, then if there is some calcium deposits, I use Doctor’s Products Mouthpiece cleaner to remove them. This stuff works really well. Then, if I still want to make sure it is clean, I’ll take a Clorox Disinfectant wipe and run it over and through the mouthpiece (these don’t have Bleach).
Done. The short version of cleaning, like when I put on a new reed, is to run a Clorox Disinfectant wipe through the mouthpiece and on the outside. I think every other time (or every few months) I’ll do the more involved cleaning described above.
DYI Saxophone Reflector Project
Interesting project from the UK. Here, I think you’d need to go visit TAP Plastics and get a 8 1/2″ by 12″ sheet, and maybe a Pop Screen to modify.
Crazy Rag – National Saxophone Choir
Ever wanted to see ALL the saxophones in action. Here you go.
Astral Project
If you have never seen nor heard Astral Project, then you need to check them out. Tony Dagradi is a monster player that few, sadly, have heard about…….
Sonny Rollins Interview
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
