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5 Ways Steve Jobs Changed Music

October 19, 2011 in Articles

Steve Jobs changed a lot of things, including music. Thanks Steve!

5 Ways Steve Jobs Changed Music | Complex:

By putting the interests of artists and fans above those of executives and corporate shareholders, Steve Jobs turned the music industry power structure upside down. Every artist, producer, DJ or blogger who leverages their own creative resources and energy against all odds follows in his footsteps. #ThankYouSteve.
He always told people to listen to their heart and follow what they loved. "You can't connect the dots looking forward," Jobs once said, "you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

(Via www.complex.com)

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Live Jazz Concert Recordings

September 27, 2008 in Articles

Sometimes on the internet, you find some great sites. This is one such site. “You Are What You Hear” is a great site that has concert recordings from great artists such as Dave Liebman, Michael Brecker, Chris Potter, John Scofield……to name a very few. Well worth spending some time getting some of the recording here.

I think the best recording is the Michael Brecker : Montreal Jazz Festival 27.6.2001. Simply amazing.

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MP3 Compression Explained

October 4, 2007 in Articles

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.

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Future Of MP3 and Surround Sound

February 21, 2006 in Articles

Wired magazine is running a story pondering the MP3 format, how long it will last, and where surround sound is going to fit in. Basically, it looks like it will be around for a while even though better formats, like AAC or MP3Pro, are out. AAC is part of the MPEG4 standard, but a lot of people, like the geeks on Slashdot have issues with Fairplay encoded AACs (or Digital Rights Management (DRM) AACs. Stuff you buy off iTunes Store for example).

For myself, I gave up encoding to MP3 years ago. Most everything I encode now is 160 or 192 (due to cymbals in some jazz recordings getting “washed out” at 160) bit AACs. They sound great on my iPod (and new iPod video), and on both my stereo systems (studio and home).

I see AAC and MPEG4 winning out over other formats, though we will probably have to put up with WMA (Microsoft) formats for a while longer.

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iPod “Video”

February 20, 2006 in Reviews

After nearly 3 years of faithful service, my 3rd generation iPod died. It wasn’t the battery. It was the hard drive. The hard drive finally decided to check out. I was sad.

For the last 2 or 3 weeks, I’ve been going through iPod withdrawal. Shuttling my music files between home and the studio is a pain. I’ve been using a “portable HD” that I usually use to backup my stuff. Plus, those nights when you want to listen to music before going to bed? Or in the car?

So, it was a choice between an iPod Nano or an iPod (with video). The Nano is very nice. A number of my students have them. However, 4 gigs is just too small. My finale files I transfer back and forth take up nearly 500megs, plus if I wanted to put all my Aebersold play-alongs on there, I couldn’t. So, I decided to go with the iPod. Wow…..

(Update: 02/21 21:00 GMT by E :The Aebersold AACs/MP3s take up about 10 gigs. I don’t have all the playalongs, but I have 85-90% of them)

First off, it “looks bigger”. But it is not. In fact, it is the same width, and the depth is almost half that of my 15 gig iPod. It looks bigger due to the screen. And the screen is absolutely incredible. Clear, color, crisp. Man, in 3 years they have done wonders. I haven’t watched any videos on it, but I imagine they look great.

Sound quality is great. I plugged in the standard headphone and it sounds great. I plugged in my Shure headphones, and it sounds “greater”.

Two bad things. First is the case. It’s really flimsy. I am planning on getting a better case ASAP. I don’t want any scratches. Second bad thing, no dock. My previous iPod came with a nice little dock, this one comes with nothing. They will sell you one for like $40. Um. No. Not right now, thanks.

Rating. 8 out of 10. No dock and a poor case are the two points taken off. They could have at least done a clip case like what came with the 3rd generation iPod. And no dock, that’s just cheap Apple.

Update: 02/28 08:50 GMT by E :Found another interesting thing. When you unplug the headphones while playing, the iPod will put what it was playing on Pause for you. That is a very nice little thing to have.

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Around The Horn Backgrounds Part III

December 14, 2005 in Sheet Music

Final batch of backgrounds for Walt Weiskopf’s book Around the Horn. They were encoded using AAC compression supported by iTunes and Quicktime.

They are zipped for easier downloading. Enjoy!

Band in a Box files for all these.

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Around The Horn Backgrounds Part II

December 2, 2005 in Sheet Music

More backgrounds for Walt Weiskopf’s book Around the Horn. They were encoded using AAC compression supported by iTunes and Quicktime.

They are zipped for easier downloading. Enjoy!

Band in a Box files for all these.

More to come!

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Around The Horn Backgrounds Part I

November 28, 2005 in Sheet Music

Four years ago, I did some backgrounds for the Etudes found in Walt Weiskopf’s book Around the Horn. Well, technology has changed. The original backgrounds were done with Band-In-A-Box version 11 for PC , exported to Midi, and then rendered using a variety of sound modules.

Fast-forward four years, these backgrounds were done using Band-In-A-Box 2005, and Roland’s Super Quartet. These were rendered in seconds using DXi. They were encoded using AAC compression supported by iTunes and Quicktime. They are zipped for easier downloading. Enjoy!

Band in a Box files for all these.

More to come!

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Auto-Discover Free Music With Indy

April 20, 2005 in Articles

Found this via Slashdot:


Indy is a free p2p music download system, which is a new way for independent musicians to find their listerners. From Buzzsonic News, "Indy uses collaborative filtering, a system similar to that used by Amazon to recommend books, etc, to prospective buyers, to learn about your musical preferences in relation to other Indy users.

Will the RIAA go after them. Probably.

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Encoding Music

December 4, 2002 in Articles

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Ogg is on Top

September 9, 2002 in Articles

This is from a Slashdot.org article:

"The Ogg Vorbis format came out far ahead of MP3, MP3Pro, RealAudio Surround, and Windows Media 9 Beta in a comparison of different audio formats by Germany's respected computer magazine c't. More than 6,000 people took part in the test. Heise says Ogg's dominance was most pronounced with 64 kBit/sec samples; the full magazine article (out on Monday) mentions that in pre-tests, some people actually mistook the 128 kBit/sec Ogg samples for the uncoded version. Let's hear it for those strangely named open source file formats!"

This is good news considering that MP3 licensing fees have gone up!

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Where Music Will Be Coming From

March 16, 2002 in Articles

The New York Times has an excellent article about entitled Where Music Will Be Coming From. Very well done. Gives a little history, where we are now, and where we are going.

Update: 03/17 23:48 GMT by E :Here are two more interesting articles, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and
“The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction”

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New Compression Format?

January 8, 2002 in Articles

I came across this article about a new compression technique that is shaking the tech world. Basically, there are two types of compression schemes. There is Lossless, where NOTHING gets lost, and Lossie(I think that is the term) where redundant data is thrown out to save space. Formats like JPGs, PNG, GIF, MP3, WMA, ASF which are common on the internet are lossie formats. Formats like WAV, AIFF, TIFF, RAW are lossless.

The implication is that if this company’s claim is true, then we could have a NEW audio format which could mean CD quality audio at MP3 file sizes. Talk about changing things….

My only concern is that this company could impose strict licensing of their technology, much like Fraunhofer Institut does on MP3 software makers.

Here are some good links on the history of MP3:

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Digital Music Winners/Losers For 2001

December 30, 2001 in News

MP3 Newswire is running two articles that contain their top 8 MP3 winners and losers for 2001.

Rolling Stone has also run their own digital music winners and losers list for 2001.”

Not a lot of suprises here…….

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Future of Digital Music in Doubt

August 31, 2001 in Articles

NPR has an excellent article about the growing trend of ‘real’ radio stations abandoning streaming media due to concerns about advertising, royalties, and (you guessed it) the DMCA. Basically, stations are finding that web streaming isn’t increasing their listener base, but is increasing their costs.

Meanwhile, there’s a study circulating saying that people don’t and won’t purchase heavily restricted music online at higher prices for a less useful item. This is apparently a revelation to the music industry.

Slashdot.org has this article as well.

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