I mentioned before that I get this email letter thing from Shure every now and then. Well, the latest issue is out, and it gives some stereo micing techniques tips.
There is also an archive of all the previous ones. Great, free information.
Rowan Atkinson – Invisible Drum Kit
Pure genius!
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.
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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New Metronome/Tuner From Seventh String
Seventh String software, which makes the excellent Transcribe software, has released two free programs (java applications). A Metronome and a Tuner. Nifty!
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…..
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…….
MP3 Compression Explained
Found a very interesting article about how MP3 compression came about. It is, at times, rather techie, but very interesting none the less.
But what is MP3? The usual explanations usually take one of two forms. The long version, available in technical papers, is written in jargon and filled with math. The short version, often used by newspapers and nontechnical periodicals, simply states that the process eliminates parts of sound not normally heard by the human ear. But this one-sentence description raises more questions than it answers for any reasonably tech-savvy reader: how does it find those unheard sounds, and how does it get rid of them? What’s the difference between the different bit rates and quality levels? If you’re anything like me, you’ve often wanted to know the mechanics of MP3, but not to the point of writing your own encoder.
Nintendo + Logic =……..?
Create Digital Music has an interesting article about using your old Nintendo NES with Apple’s Logic Studio. Not sure exactly why you’d want it, other than maybe to get your geek on and add some Mario sounds to your next album.
If you want some more nutty things, check out Musicthing. They have things like making a mellotron out of 4 walkmen, and other strange things.
Herbie Hancock Talks Math, Music and Mastering the Tech Toolbox
Wired magazine has a very interesting interview with Herbie Hancock out. Way too short of an interview. But some interesting insights from the piano master.
Gibson Launches Self Tuning Guitars
Engadget is reporting that Gibson has launched a line of self tuning guitars.
Gibson’s Powertune system has been in the works for quite awhile, and although there are other axes out there that claim to tune themselves, only a Gibson will do for some. Reportedly, the firm is readying a “new line of instruments” that are equipped with the system, which includes “an additional set of pickups mounted underneath the strings that are used specifically for the tuning process.”
Whoa. That is pretty neat stuff. Wonder if Steinway will do something like that with pianos….
Sightreading Jazz by Bob Taylor
First off, I need to apologize to Bob Taylor. He sent me this book a while ago. Months ago, and I just plain got busy. So, finally, here is a review of the book.
Sightreading Jazz is a 130 page, spiral bound book that addresses jazz sightreading. Being able to come to a musical situation, and play stuff for the first time with a high degree of accuracy is an essential skill. Bob Taylor’s book focuses on sightreading jazz music.
The first part of the book gives you some history, things to look out for, counting rhythms, swing rhythms, articulations, and accents. The second part is where the meat of the book begins, the Rhythms. 2 and 4 bar rhythms. Mr. Taylor recommends practicing these with one pitch, or two or three pitches that you pick out, or using a scale (going up or down as the notes go by), or an arpeggio, or two octaves, or using thirds. Whew. PLUS, you can do the rhythms across the page, down the column….and upside down (just kidding).
Actually, upside down come in the next section, where
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Tags and Categories
Upgrading to WordPress 2.3 was painless. However, they did change a number of things. Categories and Tags. Kind of confusing, but here is a quote to better explain it:
So categories can be tags but tags cannot be categories. Categories are like the huge signs you see on aisles in supermarkets – “Food”, “Hygiene”, “Frozen” etc, they guide you to sections where you can find what you are looking for. Tags are like the labels on the products themselves.
So, in an effort to clean up my categories, I’ve been tagging. Though, it is, like moving over the old Slash content, going to take some time.
Changed Themes
Yeah, things look different. WordPress allows you to really mess with the look of a site really, really easily. So, we are trying this one out……
I think it is more of what I want it to look like……
UPDATE: 09/23/07 4:30 PM by E: Added an Archives page
UPDATE: 09/24/07 1:50 PM by E: Moved the Submit Article to the menu
UPDATE: 09/24/07 9:20 PM by E: Upgraded to WordPress 2.3. Woot!
UPDATE: 09/25/07 12:35 AM by E: Tags……I’m not quite sure what to make of them yet……
Keyless Saxophones
When I was in college, I heard the story of Siguard Rascher having a keyless saxophone. Basically, a conical tube in the shape of a sax. Mr. Rascher was reported to be able to play anything on it.
Well, looks like you can actually get one and try to be a virtuoso like Siguard Rascher. Hollywood Winds sells an alto and a tenor version for $495 and $695 respectively.
I wonder if it would be cheaper to get an old C-Melody off of Ebay and just plug the holes….