Year: 2014

I posted a review of a pretty cool, small, and cheap way to get midi wirelessly from your EWI to an iPad or iPhone (and soon to anything with Bluetooth Low Energy (bluetooth 4)).

Great interview with Yoko Kanno on Red Bull Music Academy.

Anime has steadily grown in popularity since the ’90s, and Yoko Kanno is one of the most famous musicians working in the genre. The career of the producer who “changed the history of anime music” became widely recognized in 1994 with the score to Macross Plus. Her splendid orchestrations in combination with vocals, tribal, techno, and breakbeat elements were original to say the least, and garnered accolades from many throughout the Japanese music scene.

Gotta love Anime. They have these amazing musical scores in a season of 12 episodes (or that might be the whole show). Compare that to the music in something like Arrow, which is sorta boring and they use the same things again and again…

Wow, 2014 is over already. Luckily, I spent some of 2014 reading some blogs that I find interesting.

• Best. Saxophone. Website. Ever. This site generally has good articles posted on it, though lately there are other authors posting. And the quality of the articles is a little questionable (like the “Introducing the Most Unique Sax Tone Development Device on the Market).
• Bill Plake Music. Great articles here. You should follow the site.
• Bobby Stern Jazz. If I had to rank my favorite sites, this would be #1. Bobby posts AWESOME exercises, transcriptions, and articles.
• Bret Pimentel posts great, insightful articles.
• Matt Otto Good free things to work on. Glad he stopped charing $.99 for his sheets on Scribd
• Jazz Advice. I think every article they have put out is great. If anything, everyone should read every article here.
• Bulletproof Musician. Like the above site, every one of the articles is great. Go read them. Now.
• Casa Valdez Studios. He hasn’t been posting much, but when he does, you need to read it. Good stuff.

Seems every year, we have another “this is THE vintage Meyer copy” mouthpiece. Here is a review of D’Addario’s latest attempt.

As an owner of a vintage Meyer Brother’s alto mouthpiece, a 4 that was opened up to a 6 by the late great Jon Van Wie, I have never found a mouthpiece like it. Not to say that there are not great mouthpieces out there, there are PLENTY of excellent mouthpieces being made today. They just lack the “character” of a vintage Meyer Brothers piece.