Kinda cool I guess… [Continue]

MakeMusic finally released SmartMusic 10.2 today. Highlights of the new features: Support of Mac OS X Leopard Microphone Check Wizard ensures proper microphone levels for recording and assessment Easier-to-Use – many aspects of SmartMusic have been simplified and made more intuitive, including the installer, login process, activation, and update [Continue]

The potential of a touch interface is amazing, as exhibited by this video I found at Gizmodo: Lots of potential for all kinds of interesting things. Now where is the saxophone sound?? [Continue]

Not sure what happened to the Music Education Alliance, but Steinberg announced their Classroom Resource Pack. “Computer technology is increasingly being used for teaching music in schools world-wide,” comments Mark Porter, Steinberg’s International Sales Manager. “But often the task of providing classroom resources is left [Continue]

I just was given, to look at, some technology thing from some guy named Wilson, who is in charge of CMEA (California Music Educators Association) technology or something. Anyhow, it was about Band in a Box. It read like this guy had just found the Holy Grail. And, he had really BAD rendered backgrounds done [Continue]

Why do you need “real people” when you can get this? Vision DAW and East West announce an 8-Core Xeon Server-Class Workstation, including the complete Quantum Leap Orchestral collection. This set runs with Play software (64 bits) and the virtual orchestra takes up a 4U rack with 2 Quad-Core Xeon 5440 at 2.83GHz, with 16 [Continue]

I came across this article from Hometracked.com. Pitch correction software has applications from restoration and mix-rescue to outright distortion of a voice or instrument. I’ll discuss some of the more tasteful uses of these auto-tune tools (whether the original from Antares, or a variant like the free GSnap) below. But first I thought [Continue]

I got into recording a while ago, my first interface being an original MOTU 828. That thing works great. However, it is not supported in ProTools, and I kind of want to start using ProTools more. Plus, I want to move it to my home studio to hopefully make it easier to record virtual tracks [Continue]

The NAMM show kicked off the other day. So far, I haven’t seen anything that pops out “Whoa, that’s neat” to me. Some interesting things are: New line of AKG Headphones. I use AKG headphones, and they are excellent. Tascam DR-1 Portable Recorder, Yamaha Pocketrak 2G, and Marantz Digital Performer 6 Lots of recording devices [Continue]

From Korg: We recently achieved a milestone — over 20 million tuners sold worldwide. To mark the occasion, we have increased the warranty on all of our tuners and metronomes sold to three years. Now you can stay perfectly in tune with the latest in Korg tuner technology, backed by the high quality of these [Continue]

The idea, which I have had for years, was to have a digital studio where I didn’t go through reams of paper every year. I finally did it. Using an iMac, and it’s video spanning capabilities, I made a digital music stand. While the technology has been there, the costs were way too high. The [Continue]

Ok. Brass instruments have had that Silent Brass system for a while. Most sax players wish they would use it all the time . Now, it seems saxophone players can have something similar. E-Sax is a new case/silent practice thing. Interesting stuff. Looks really funny, but they say it works. You can even do Karaoke [Continue]

Kottke.org has posted 50 Things to do with your iPod. A great list of, almost 50 things there. He missed How to get Google Maps on your iPod, plus there is a ton of Podcasts out there. I’ll be adding a section of Jazz/Sax related Podcasts soon. [Continue]

The NYT has an article entitled ‘Play It Again, Vladimir (via Computer)’ that discusses efforts to transform old recordings into new, computer played performances, by determining how the previous performer made the sounds and redoing it. Further efforts attempt to distill the ‘style’ of a performer and play other scores [Continue]

Two days ago Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced that iTunes 4.9 will include integrated podcast support. The update will let users browse and download podcasts. This is big news. What? You haven’t heard of Podcasting? It perhaps is the death of internet “radio”. It perhaps is the latest, greatest way to promote your band [Continue]