Louis Armstrong’s Trumpet Used As A Fruitbowl?

Posted on By ericdano 6 Comments on Louis Armstrong’s Trumpet Used As A Fruitbowl?

I don’t know about you, but this is disturbing:

Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of the open-source WordPress blogging software, last night celebrated a $25 million “bonus” from investors by purchasing a $1 million Louis Armstrong trumpet, which he plans to use as a fruit bowl.

There are a lot of things a trumpet used by Louis Armstrong could be used for. A Fruit bowl is not on my list. In fact, why not donate the money to some worthy foundation? Or maybe set up a scholarship program in the bay area for music? There are a lot of things you could do instead of buying a historic instrument and using it for a fruit bowl. Seriously. And $7 million for a house? Hope the tech bubble does not burst again….

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Teaching “Alternate” Fingerings

Posted on By ericdano 6 Comments on Teaching “Alternate” Fingerings

So, there is this guy who goes into local schools. He’s a “sax expert” or whatever. He also seems to be talking up a bunch of smack as well (directed towards your’s truly). Anyhow, he is telling all the kids to play middle D with the side palm D open. Huh? The reason, “The tone is better.” Ok, that is good and all, but shouldn’t they just get the basic fingering down first? Plus, it makes it even more of a technique problem for them. PLUS, it really does not sound good. I recorded a student playing a song where he was sometimes using this supposed “sax expert” fingering, and it sounds bad. It is out of tune, and the tone……is not good.

Keep it simple. Basics. Teaching them all three alternatives (or perhaps all four) for fingering Bb would be higher on my list than to require them to play all their middle D’s with the side D open. BTW, he seems totally against 1 and 1 Bb. And he plays flute too…….strange….

I use the Middle D Fingering with the side D open...

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Articles

M-Audio Project Mix I/O First Impressions

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on M-Audio Project Mix I/O First Impressions

I have been setting up all this new gear, and I finally got a chance to play with the Project Mix I/O a little. All I have to say is, whoa. Fun, cool, Rad (can we still use that word?). I mean, motorized faders……so much fun. I haven’t used it in Protools yet, but in Digital Performer it is great. I have my analogue modules coming in on channels 7 & 8, and the GPO stuff on 5 & 6. Though, coming from the PC, 5 & 6 are noisy. I’m thinking about moving that to a SPDIF input…..more soon.

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Find Out What People Are Listening To

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Find Out What People Are Listening To

This site, powered by Gracenotes (the company that provides lookups for CDs via computers), shows a map and a list of what people are listening to. Though, you have to take it with a grain of salt. It is a stats map of CDs people put into programs such as iTunes, and then iTunes looks up the CD on the internet and provides track names. Doesn’t track anything else. I didn’t see any Jazz artists on there at all………

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Won Stuff From SOS and M-Audio

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Won Stuff From SOS and M-Audio

You know, you think you never will win these contests that you enter online. Well….NA NA NA NA! I seem to have won one.

I subscribe to the great SOS magazine which has all kinds of invaluable tips and insights on……tons of stuff like recording, using programs like Logic or Digital Performer or Protools, micing techniques, how to make your mixes sound better, etc. I decided to get a subscription last year when I came across their site while researching some audio products. I have saved many, MANY of the articles for future reference.

Anyhow, they have these contests you can enter. And I try to enter them, but you know you never expect to win. Ha! Woohoo. Not quite sure exactly what I’ve won yet, but I’ll keep you all posted…….(I think it is like $4K worth of stuff, like an M-Audio keyboard, monitors, etc…..maybe a Project Mix I/O? I hope???)

*Dances* Funny thing is that I was getting ready to purchase a new Firewire interface…..but now……not sure I’m going to need to 😉

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Articles, News

Favorite Brecker EWI Video

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Favorite Brecker EWI Video

Pretty much anything Michael Brecker did was awe inspiring. I remember back in the day seeing the Michael Brecker band when I was in High School. I had no clue who he was. I was a newbie, or noob at the whole saxophone thing. I basically went to the concert to see Spyro Gyra. Anyhow, Michael Brecker blew me away when he played saxophone, then he did something like this:

Years of the therapy has not helped so far…..and it still is amazing what he could do.

Articles, Videos

Oboe Mouthpiece?!?!?

Posted on By ericdano 1 Comment on Oboe Mouthpiece?!?!?

I almost won this item on ebay. A Chedeville Oboe Mouthpiece.

Oboe Mouthpiece Picture 8

Wow. It got to pricey for me. Plus I just had to shell out a lot of money to the IRS. 🙁 Interesting discussion about it here. Seems it isn’t so great. Looks kind of cool though. Probably would help out some poor doubler out there than wanted to add oboe to his weaponry.

Here are some pictures taken off the auction

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Finale Users Defecting To Sibelius

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Finale Users Defecting To Sibelius

There has been a LOT of discussion on the Finale List (which is NOT managed by the company) about the disappointment with Finale 2008. I decided to pass on 2008. To stir things up, Sibelius is offering a 50% off trade-up program.

It is sad to see so many veterans of Finale, people who have contributed tips, insights, short cuts, and what nots, finally get fed up with MakeMusic’s total lack of attention to detail. Their main complaints are the bugs that are never fixed from previous versions, and the company’s failure to finish new features, namely the Parts feature from Finale 2007. Nothing got fixed, or changed.

Two things keep me from switching to Sibelius. One, is the ability to easily convert the thousands of Finale files into Sibelius. I want to be able to just open them in Sibelius, not MusicXML crap. Just open, and it’s in Sibelius. The second thing, is being able to use Bill Duncan’s elegant engraver articulations. Honestly, the Sibelius jazz font thing just looks silly. Real silly. I absolutely love the professional look that I get using Bill’s fonts.

I suppose the third thing is SmartMusic. I couldn’t make Smartmusic exercises. That would be a problem as well.

Ok, THREE things. If they can get TWO of those working, I’ll switch.

UPDATE: 10/13/07 After some thought, the $100 price was too tempting. I ordered a copy. We’ll see if I actually use it.

Articles

Managing The Paper Clutter

Posted on By ericdano 2 Comments on Managing The Paper Clutter

I don’t know about most people, but I have stacks of paper all over the place. Articles out of magazines I thought were interesting, old manuscript paper, etc, etc. For receipts, I have been in the practice of scanning those for a while, for taxes and stuff. But the paper stacks, I try to scan them, but it just takes too long (there are a LOT of stacks, and they are fairly thick). My Epson CX6600 is good, but scanning takes a lot of time. And then, there is the “what now” problem.

A sheet feed scanner sounds like a great solution. Fujitsu makes this ScanSnap product that can, supposedly, do up to 18 double sided pages a minute. It’s a good chunk of change though, nearly $500 (they have some rebates going at the moment). It does come bundled with Adobe Acrobat 8 though. Plus, it has some OCR stuff which will allow the scanned things to be searchable.

I had, years ago, a Visoneer Paperport that was great, but it died.

Getting rid of paper is a definite goal, but is it really worth the $$? Having all

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Moving From Slash To WordPress (DONE)

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Moving From Slash To WordPress (DONE)

Ok, after a LOT of work on my end, 98% of the stories and files have been moved to WordPress. They have all been put into 4 categories, and tagged. Though, the tagging might need to be revistited in the future.

Things not moved are the user ids from the old slash site. Journals have not been moved either. Polls and the comments in them are one of the things that still need to be moved, and will be done so by the end of the weekend. The other thing that has not been moved yet is the player setup database I had. Not sure how I’m going to do that one at the moment…….I might need to learn a little PHP to do that.

There might be some links in stories that do not work. If anyone see these, please shoot me an email and a story link. These are kind of hard to find and fix…….

UPDATED 10/6/07 11:50PM by E: Ok, it’s done. The Slash site is offically gone. Perl has been removed from the Apache webserver. Memories of Slashcode start to fade…..

News

Record Companies Finally Win One

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Record Companies Finally Win One

After all the lawsuits they have started, they finally won one.

In a major win for record companies seeking to establish precedent for prosecuting those who trade copyrighted material on the Internet, a federal jury awarded six firms $222,000 in damages from a Minnesota woman who shared music online. Jammie Thomas, 30, was ordered to pay $9,250 for each of 24 songs that were part of the case. The complaint alleged that she had shared 1,702 copyright-violating songs online. The Associated Press quotes Richard Gabriel, lead attorney for the music companies: “This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK.”

What does this mean? Good question…….

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