Year: 2013

Google Shutting Down Reader

March 14, 2013March 14, 2013 ericdano No Comments

One of the things I use A LOT on the internet is Google Reader. It is a way easy way to get feeds from a ton of sites in one place where you can view them all, and if you are interested click on them and go to the site and read more. I spend at least 30 minutes each morning going through my feeds and reading things I find interesting. Google Reader fetches all these and keeps them insync for me, so if I happen to use Reeder iOS app to read some of the NYT Arts articles, later when I am on the computer, it won’t show me those again. It has been a huge thing for me for a while now. Now Google is killing it off.

The internet was in an uproar about it. I was too. Damn Google.

Alternatives? So far I think NewsBlur is the top for me. I already paid for a year ($24). I also bought Fever, but for some reason it won’t import my exported Google Reader data. Fever sounds really great, and it would be my own private store of feeds, and I could use my favorite Apps (Reeder) to view the feeds. Hopefully my email to the creator of Fever gets a response.

Articles, News

San Francisco Symphony: On Strike, Concert Canceled | KQED News Fix

March 13, 2013 ericdano No Comments

San Francisco Symphony: On Strike, Concert Canceled | KQED News Fix:

Musicians for the San Francisco Symphony went on strike today after eight months of fruitless talks with management centered on wage and benefit issues. The immediate impact: The symphony announced a concert scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday has been canceled.

(Via blogs.kqed.org)

I’m sorry, but when the AVERAGE salary is $165K a year, I have NO SYMPATHY for these guys. The rest of us musicians maybe make $60K a year before taxes, and since Obama and the recession, I think a $40K is more realistic.

Articles, News

Launch Equity Acquires MakeMusic

March 13, 2013March 13, 2013 ericdano No Comments

Launch Equity Acquires MakeMusic:

Today, MakeMusic announced that Launch Equity will purchase the company. You can read MakeMusic’s press release here. Launch Equity proposed the buyout last July (July 15, 2012), with the intent of taking the company private and then investing money into the company for a new CEO as well as updating software (particularly Finale’s base code).

(Via Technology in Music Education)

This is great news considering Avid is falling off a cliff and the development team of Sibelius was sacked and have started a new project with Steinberg.

However, this did crop up. Seems everyone isn’t happy about this.

News

Sheet Of The Week – The Kiss (Carly Rae Jepsen)

March 11, 2013 ericdano No Comments

Sorry, was busy with gigs and stuff. Here is another song by Carly Rae Jepsen.

The Kiss by Carly Rae Jepsen for Eb Instruments (88.5 KiB, 52 hits)
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The Kiss by Carly Rae Jepsen for Bb Instruments (93.2 KiB, 37 hits)
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Sheet Music, Sheet Of The Week

What the best jazz musicians and business brains have in common – CNN.com

March 10, 2013 ericdano No Comments

What the best jazz musicians and business brains have in common – CNN.com:

How do you cope when faced with complexity and constant change at work? Successful leaders do what jazz musicians do: they improvise.

They invent novel responses and take calculated risks without a scripted plan or a safety net. They negotiate with each other as they proceed, and they don’t dwell on mistakes or stifle each other’s ideas.

(Via www.cnn.com)

Great article. Must get this guy’s book.

Articles

No One Sets Out To Be A Smooth Jazz Musician | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

March 10, 2013 ericdano No Comments

No One Sets Out To Be A Smooth Jazz Musician | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source:

Look, I’m not going to lie to you. Nobody ever just woke up one morning and thought, “Of all the things possible in the vastness that is life, what I’d really like to do is play smooth jazz 250 nights a year.” It just doesn’t work that way.

(Via www.theonion.com)

So True!

Articles

Band In A Box 2013 Macintosh

March 10, 2013 ericdano No Comments

NewImage

PG Music has released the latest greatest version of Band in a Box for Macintosh. This is one of my favorite programs, hands down.

Here are some of the new featuresI like:

31 More Jazz RealTracks, 35 Rock-Pop RealTracks.
New Song Form feature.
Remembers recent RealTracks that you selected
Easy Buttons for Transposing (Display only) to Eb, Bb and other clefs/instruments
Woodshed Tempo button

They also have some “SuperMidi” things, to make the midi tracks sound better. The main feature for me in this update was the Woodshed Tempo button. Now, Band in a Box has HAD this function for a while, buried in the preferences somewhere. I believe during the 2012.5 Beta test I suggested it would be a good idea to put it in a button and move it out front. PG Music did just that. The Woodshed button works by you giving it a start tempo, say 120, and then tell it how fast to get to (say 240) and in what increments. It’s very very nice to have. I’m hoping that they add the ability to have the Woodshed stuff be able to be dumped into an audio file at some point. They seemed interested when I made that suggestion. I think it would be VERY useful for making practice for students and stuff.

Some of the new Real Tracks are amazing, and at least one (Euro Dance) is crap. PG Music STILL hasn’t fixed/added a feature I think is essential, the ability to have the Open by Title be able to traverse subdirectories. It is a great feature, Open by Title, that shows the song name, key, tempo, and style for all the files in that directory. BUT if you have a subdirectory, it doesn’t open and do those files. That is stupid. It is easy to have upwards for 5,000 band in a box files (I have something like 12,000) if you download all the free fake book changes and what not freely available on the internet. Does PG Music want us to store everything in ONE directory? Yikes!

I still rate Band in a Box is an ESSENTIAL tool for anyone learning Jazz. Or learning music. Or composing. The ability to pick a key, type a chord progression, pick a tempo, and then a style and go is amazing. And the Real Tracks add to the program. Anyone buying this program needs to pony up for the Real Tracks, or at least the Real Tracks they would be using. Once you start using them, the Midi Stuff is just so 1990s.

Articles, Reviews

Musicians Need to Rethink Their Struggle with Piracy

March 10, 2013March 11, 2013 ericdano No Comments

Musicians Need to Rethink Their Struggle with Piracy:

This isn’t a ‘4 steps to beating piracy guide’, but we might as well start at the beginning. Prepare a game plan for your music. Figure out what path you want to take with your music and then stick to it. Do you want to get your music out in the world trying to get the most people to hear it, or do you need to make a monetary return on your recording investment? If you need to make a return, don’t give away your music for free, expecting some people to pay or donate. If your goal is awareness and popularity, then giving away a bunch of songs or the entire album may be the way to go.

(Via news.allaboutjazz.com)

Interesting. I had a discussion with a bass player about things like Spotify and Pandora. He was all “they pay you” and I was “like .000001 cents per play”. I think the way to go is to either put it into iTunes, or perhaps do what some people are doing and make it a “pay what you want” thing.

UPDATE – Actually, the rate is $0.21 per 100 streams of a song. And Pandora supposedly pays $0.12 per 100 streams.

Articles

Kenny G Played and Signed Saxophone Now $1000

March 2, 2013 ericdano No Comments

I first posted about this back in December. Some guy bought a saxophone and had Kenny G sign it and wanted $1600.

Well, lo and behold, it is now been marked down to $1000. This is the star power that the might G brings to the table……NOT.

Articles

What Is Up With Avid?

March 1, 2013 ericdano No Comments

Protoolerblog posted this yesterday:

“If you’re a Avid stockholder you might just freak out a bit right now: the company has postponed earnings from last quarter of 2012 and is now under investigation by at least two law firms.”

Avid makes ProTools….and they used to own M-Audio until they sold it this past summer. They also own Sibelius….after they fired the core developer group. Sorta a BIG deal when this company has two big industry leading (ProTools) or at least industry tying (Sibelius) pieces of software.
The Boston Herald has more:

“The digital audio and video technology maker said the company needs additional time “to evaluate its current and historical accounting treatment related to bug fixes, upgrades and enhancements to certain products which the company has provided to certain customers.”

Now, is this bad news? Probably……www.investopedia.com answer on why companies delay earnings doesn’t sound good:

“However, most often, the delay will be a result of the company not completing the report on time due to audits taking longer than expected, inexperienced officers completing their first report and the firm losing some or all of its financial data due to a technical error, fire or theft.”

Ok, no fire, or theft. Inexperienced Officers? Perhaps. Losing it’s financial data? Probably not. So…..it is probably them trying to polish a turd. Meaning Avid’s sales sucked last year, that users are still baulking at the price of ProTools 10 and it’s upgrade price from previous versions. That selling M-Audio didn’t do much for the company, and in fact might have hurt them more.

I guess we will know in 45 days or so the exact financials, but I don’t expect it to be good at all. May I suggest all you who use ProTools consider learning other programs just in case (like Logic!)

News

Sibelius Refugees Building New Notation Program

February 24, 2013 ericdano No Comments

The computer notation market is dominated by two players, MakeMusic’s Finale and Avid’s Sibelius. Avid didn’t always own Sibelius, having bought it in 2006. Sibelius started WAY back on Acorn Computers. And Avid, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided to gut the core team who have worked on Sibelius for many many years and users were not happy about this. In my opinion, this is pretty much the death blow of any further development of the software. I think Avid will eventually just roll the whole program into ProTools at some point, to help it’s cash cow do better in the Consumer/Prosumer market against programs like Logic, Ableton, Reaper, Cubase……to name just a few.

Anyhow, the team that was developing Sibelius and that was sacked by Avid have been hired by Steinberg and tasked to create a new notation program. No actual betas or screen shots. A lot of lofty ideas though. Steinberg is a Yamaha subsidiary, meaning that funding probably isn’t an issue, and we will, at some point, see a notation product by them.

Am I excited? Not really….unless this new notation program contains an essential feature. The ability to open and properly convert Finale and Sibelius files into the program. Not the crappy MusicXML stuff. If they want me to use the program, then I need to be able to open my old files with no issues. Or they need to at least have a batch converter.

I don’t expect to see anything from this effort for at least a year. Hopefully, in my case, MakeMusic won’t go out of business in that interval.

Articles

Sheet Of The Week – One More Night (Maroon 5)

February 23, 2013April 5, 2013 ericdano 5 Comments

Another song by Maroon 5.

One More Night by Maroon 5 for Eb Instruments (93.9 KiB, 93 hits)
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One More Night by Maroon 5 for Bb Instruments (99.1 KiB, 60 hits)
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Sheet Music, Sheet Of The Week

SmartMusic Updates It’s Pricing

February 19, 2013 ericdano No Comments

Today, MakeMusic, the makers of SmartMusic, announced new pricing for SmartMusic. I believe they have jacked up the price by $5 a year, BUT they allow you to install it on multiple computers and devices (like iPads for their upcoming iPad version).

So this is actually GOOD news for the average student. But….

If you are a school, it is going to be a lot more expensive. They are charging a per student license of $8 a student, which what I hear is about 7x’s more expensive than it was.

Still, with all it’s quirks, the SmartMusic program is still an excellent tool for practice. The shear amount of band music they have in there is worth it.

Articles, News