I’m not exactly sure what this site is, but they have up some interesting photos of old saxes and stuff. http://www.aerophone.de/
Jason Marsalis vs. JNI
I agree with this. I’ve never heard of Jazz Nerds International (JNI)…..
Peterson iStrobe is now $0.99
By far my favorite tuner App, now for a buck.
“For a limited time, we have reduced our price on iStroboSoft to 99 cents! No promotion code needed. Visit the App Store to purchase.
Peterson Strobe Tuners popular StroboSoft tuning application for the iPod touch and iPhone. iStroboSoft™ offers the unmatched accuracy of a mechanical strobe tuner for the highest degree of precision available in a software tuning application.
Plug in and tune your electrics and acoustics quickly and easily with 1/10th cent accuracy. (External mic required for iPod touch.)
Peterson Tuners has offered tuning solutions for over 60 years and is the only company specializing in hardware and software tuning products for all levels of musicians.”
Dood Blows $5760 on an Eigenharp
Oh come on, a stand created by K&M? It’s a Bass Clarinet/Bassoon Stand guy. Been around forever. And they include a BACKPACK!?!? Wow, I’m sold.
Seriously though, why? You need to take the “backpack”, the stand, a real laptop, and then the actual Eigenharp to a gig. Oh, plus an amp. So……why didn’t they include a cart? Or a small truck for it?
Well, the guy seems happy…..I guess that is all that matters. When they come out with one that doesn’t need all that crap with it, and costs about 1/2 as much, call me.
Bill Trimble Dies
I’m really late in finding out about this, but Bay Area saxophonist William Trimble died on February 22nd after having a heart attack the day before. Bill was the saxophone teacher for the first 3 years of my schooling at Cal State Hayward. Thought I never really got along with him he did enlighten me on a lot of classical saxophone literature and techniques.
I have mixed feelings about him. On one hand, he was an amazing saxophonist in his genre. On the other hand, he treated CSUH saxophone students as second rate, generally missing half of the lessons we were supposed to get each quarter and not making them up. That eventually lead a bulk of the students to take our grieves to the department chair and us getting a saxophone teacher who would actually show up when we had lessons scheduled (Dann Zinn). Or show up for our recitals. Not that I hold a grudge, in fact, it was a good thing, as it lead me to talk more clarinet lessons and flute lessons. So, it all worked out. And it worked out for him too. He liked San Jose State better (closer to Aptos).
Regardless, he was taken too early. My best wishes to him and his family.
iBrecker is Back
Yup, seems like it got resurrected. Good stuff. Check it out. iBrecker
iPad Steel Drums
Ok, I’m still waiting for the Coltrane or Brecker App…..but this is kind of cool.
Don Menza On Tone
Dunno what is up with the dark glasses. Nor the using of the Metal Link (is that a metal link?). Last time I saw Menza he was totally into getting vintage rubber mouthpieces and modding them to his liking….
MusicReader For iPad
There are lots of very interesting Apps coming out for the iPad. One that has come out for musicians is MusicReader for the iPad. While the iPad App is free, the software to get files into the program costs anywhere from $59 to $99. Outrageous? Damn right. Seriously, this is highway robbery. A more reasonable solution would be maybe to charge $4.99 for the program and give the converter program out for free. But $59? You have to be kidding.
I’d stick to GoodReader, which is $.99 and request that the author of this GREAT program to add annotations, which would basically do what MusicReader does. I have scanned in or printed to PDF a number of things and you can read them easily in the GoodReader. For $0.99 rather than nearly $60…..
The Real Book Play-Along – Volume 1
Hal Leonard is selling a CD set of backgrounds to ALL the songs in the Real Book Vol. 1. For about $100, you get 12 CDs of piano, bass and drums background that range in time from about 2 1/2 minutes to 6. Depends on the song. A couple of songs, like Wave, have guitar on them….sorta….it almost sounds like a synth patch. Or it was added as an afterthought. Some of the tracks could have been better with just guitar, bass and drums (like wave or Summer Samba). A couple of songs they took the piano out and replaced it with an electric keyboard type sound (like Sugar) which isn’t bad, but it isn’t as good as, say, a good B3 type of sound.
Is it worth the $100? Yes. Originally I thought this would be sort of a lame package, or something that wouldn’t really add anything to the songs one might already have the Aebersold versions of. Or maybe that my favorite program, Band in a Box could do what this offers and more. The backgrounds on these discs are accurate playings of the songs found in the Real Book that Hal Leonard publishes (or if you still have the “illegal” version that used to float around until Hal Leonard picked it up). The guys on the discs will give you whats on the page. I suppose that Band in a Box could do that too with some work, but it still couldn’t capture the drum hits on songs like Some Skunk Funk.
9/10. It’s a little costly, some of the songs aren’t as long as I would have liked, and I wish there was more variety than 90% if the tracks being Piano, Bass and Drums, but it still offers a lot of songs (240 according to my iTunes playlist after I imported all of them) to practice with.
Saitara Software AC-7 Pro Control Surface for iPad
Yes, the iPad is out. Yes, it is amazing. No, it is not simply a bigger iTouch or an iPhone without the phone part. If you haven’t been able to try one, then go to a store and try it. You will be hooked. There are a few music apps out, like Magic Piano which is neat-o to show your friends, but really has no practical use in my opinion.
However, there are a few functional apps in the store, and one that I’m growing fond of is the AC-7 Pro Control Surface for the iPad ($9.99). It turns your iPad into a virtual fader board and DAW controller for Logic, Digital Performer, and Pro Tools. It does this “magic” by utilizing your WiFi network to connect to your Mac using an open source program called DSMI to connect to the app and translate its messages to midi. You then go and configure your DAW to receive the midi stream from DSMI as a Mackie Control. And it works….mostly.
I say mostly because, well, there are issues. First off, using your general wifi network (ie the network that your mac, iphone, ipad, internet connection is on) it seems to work most of the time, but it will lose connection every now and then. Usually when you really need it. General consensus seems to be that on an busy network, if there is a packet that gets dropped, DSMI and the app don’t retransmit it. Or something to that effect, resulting in programs like Pro Tools complaining about the HUD connection or worse, messing up the position of the fades, which could be bad.
If you have a Mac that has built in WiFi, you can create a private wifi network, and put the iPad on it, and then the App works flawlessly (at least for me). But if you have a MacPro that doesn’t have its own wifi transmitter, well, you are going to have to suffer for a while. To get dynamic track names, you also need to use a freeware program called midipipe.
So, it is a start. I think really what needs to be done is a custom app on the Mac side that connects properly with the iPad app and won’t drop packets and drops the need for midipipe. If you can get through the setup, it is a very slick app. The Pro Tools support is basic, but the support for Digital Performer and Logic is pretty darn complete. And it can only get better with updates which will hopefully add more Pro Tools support. It’s bleeding edge, but workable. It is really nice now to not have to be tied to the computer to control Pro Tools. If you have an iPad, or an iPhone/iTouch (there is a smaller version for iPhone/iTouch), and work with DAWs a lot, check this app out.
8/10 (2 points deducted because there is no unified mac app for it…..you have to run 2 programs, and the configuration is not totally apparent).
Some guys demo of it.
Why this guy is wearing a Microcrap shirt I don’t know……(Update: He works for Microcrap….I can hear the chairs being thrown by Steve Ballmer now….)
Hear You Hear The Difference?
Ok, a little hearing test for you all. I got them ALL right 
And I did NOT cheat. I found the second one, the louder one, a tad bit harder.
Can you hear like an audio engineer?
Can You Hear Which Is Louder?
WAV vs. MP3
Metallica-Enter Sandman (Smooth Jazz Version)
Ok, not sax related, but I thought this was really really well done.
Band in a Box 2010 for Macintosh
It has been really hard keeping the cat in the bag (I was a beta tester for the last 2 weeks or so), but tonight PG Music finally released Band in a Box 2010 for the Macintosh. As was the case in the previous version, this version is Intel only. So, you people with G5s or other PowerPC chipped computers….you are out of luck. Though the speed increases in this version (more on that in a sec) probably would have made Band in a Box 2010 tolerable for G5 Macintoshes.
There are quite a few new features, and I’ll list the ones that I think are the best.
1. “No more long waits for RealTracks to generate! RealTracks generate much faster, 4X faster on average. A typical song with RealTracks that took 20 seconds to generate will generate now in about 5 seconds. And if you freeze some or all tracks in the song (see below), playback of RealTracks is almost instantaneous.” In Band in a Box 2009.5, generating Real Tracks took FOREVER. Even on a MacPro, it took a while. On an iMac…..it could take nearly a minute in some cases. NOT ANYMORE. On my iMac from 2006 (a lowly 2 Gigahertz Core 2 Duo iMac), it was fast in generating real tracks. Most took maybe 5 seconds to do. I think the longest (like 10 choruses with 4 real tracks and a real soloist) took maybe 10 seconds. Ok, 12. But that was still totally fine. They are NOT kidding about the speed. It is way faster. Useable fast.
2. “Time for generation of MIDI arrangement is much faster – now ‘instantaneous (less than 1 second)!” Yup. Midi arrangements are nearly you press play and it goes. Even if you do 20 choruses with 5+ instruments.
3. “There is now a “Plug-in” mode for your favorite sequencer (GarageBand, ProTools, Logic, Nuendo, Reaper and more). With the new plug-in mode, BB is open as a small always-on-top window, and acts as a plug-in for your favorite DAW/sequencer, so that you can Drag-n-Drop MIDI and audio (AIFF) tracks from BB to your favorite sequencer. Work in your favorite sequencer, type a progression in Band-in-a-Box, and then simply drag the track from Band-in-a-Box to your sequencer’s track at the desired track and bar location.” This is actually really cool, though how it works is a little strange initially. You can, say, load up Garage Band, and say you have been working on a tune that is in 3/4 and is in the key of A and you need a guitar line. Or solo. You can fire up Band in a Box, type in some chords, select a style or soloist or real track, or real soloist (or whatever they call it), and switch Band in a Box into DAW mode, tell it you want to generate AIFF or m4a audio tracks or Midi tracks, and drag the track right into Garageband. Boom. (I did leave out one step, but I feel you need to SEE it to understand it)
4. “Freezing (locking) MIDI or Real tracks/RealDrums. Any track can now be frozen (MIDI or Real track). When frozen, it won’t get changed or re-generated. This saves time when replaying previous songs, and allows you to freeze an arrangement that you like. If you freeze the whole song, you don’t have to wait at all for the song to regenerate. Next time you play, it is ready to go. (Note: this new freeze feature is different than the previous limited freeze feature that renders the whole arrangement to the audio track)” Kinda cool, but since it is so much faster overall in generating tracks I didn’t really use it much. Though if you FREEZE all the RealTracks, it plays back the song instantly.
There are some other things like it will Normalize a rendered Audio file, Endings of songs work better, you can resize the window, things are saved with the song. All good stuff. But the 4 listed above I think are the bread and butter. Ok, so, there are still some things that are in the Windows version of Band in a Box that are not present in the Macintosh version. Most notable is the Ear Training part (which is really nice). It doesn’t detract from the overall amazingness that this program has. If you do music, you NEED to have this program on your computer. If you are a Jazz student, or someone who plays jazz, this program is something you need to have for working out that new chord progression at whatever tempo, for 30 choruses, in a Polka style. Or whatever.
Upgrade price from Band in a Box 2009 is $159. First time purchasers $399. You get something like nearly 70 gigs of stuff. Amazing sounds. Totally worth it. 10/10 (and I can’t remember the last time I gave something a 10 out of 10)
So You Wanna Record A Big Band — Redux
Back in October 2008 I did a post that estimated the cost of getting all the gear to have a recording rig for your big band. Now, lets take a look at if things have changed.
The original post I went with an Alesis HD24 which was $1600 then. Its the same price now. For preamps, I went with the PreSonus’s DigiMax D8 which were going for $450. Now they go for about $400. We need three of these to give us 24 tracks. For mics, I had two options. Option one was 13 Shure 57s with stands and cables. Then they were $124 each. Now they are $109. Lets keep it simple and stick with that option.
Case for the PreSonus preamps and the Alesis. Its still about the same, $200. And we will keep the same snakes, which are still the same price. We need three of them. $200 each.
Running total now is $5017. Before it was $5412. The only real price difference was the DigiMax D8s and the Shure Mics. We still need to add in drum set mics which haven’t changed in price ($400), and two Rode NT4s, one for the drum overhead and one for acoustic piano. They haven’t changed in price. $530 each. And two SKB mic cases, which haven’t changed in price either. $150 each. And you need a vocalist mic, a Shure 58, which is $99, was $109.
Final total…..$6876. A year and a half ago, it was $7277. The single biggest cost are the microphones. I went the Shure 57 route due to cost and their reliability, but there are alternatives out there that are cheaper. And there are alternatives that are more expensive. If money was NO OPTION, I would probably replace the 13 mics used for the horns with Sennheiser 421s. However, at $299 not including stand and cable, replacing the Shure 57s with these would about $3887 and that is NOT including cables and stands. However, the microphones are really THE thing to spend money on.
So, it is slightly cheaper to get the gear. This is for all new stuff too. If you are internet savvy, you could probably score most all of the gear off Ebay or Craigslist or you could get the scratch and dent deals or open boxed ones. This could lower the costs by hundreds of dollars.