There is a LOT of new things in this amazing program. If you do music, you NEED this program.
Can’t wait until the Macintosh version comes out….
Check out the video.
Month: November 2017
Holiday Gift Guide For Woodwind Musicians 2017 – Books
Do you have a musician whom you want to get a gift for? Or perhaps thinking about treating yourself this holiday season? Here are some ideas of books to get that musician for the holidays.
- Zinn and the Art of the Saxophone is a collection of 6 books that will teach you everything you need to play saxophone, how to practice, and just be a bad ass saxophonist. Of all the books I have, and believe me, I have hundreds of books on saxophone, this is the most well thought out, and concise series of books.
- Greg Fishman has a TON of great books. I highly recommend his Lobster Theory book along with any of his other excellent books.
- Walt Weiskopf also has some excellent books out. My favorite is Intervalic Improvisation – The Modern Sound: A Step Beyond Linear Improvisation. His other book, Around the Horn is quite good as well.
- Any books by Jim Snidero. I don’t think he’s published anything “bad” in my opinion.
- Dan Higgins – The Jazz Etude Book. This is a GEM that I’ve had for years (decades perhaps?). I really don’t remember where I got it, but it is a great Etude book. If you don’t know who Dan Higgins is, you probably have heard him. He’s one of the guys who gets all the Movie work in Hollywood. He was the saxophone in “Catch Me If You Can” intro. He was also the lead alto in Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band for the first album.
- Jerry Bergonzi Inside Improvisation series of books. These are a great resource to learn how to play more “modernly”.
- Bobby Stern – The Melodic Minor Handbook: A Jazz Player’s Perspective. Never heard of Bobby Stern? He’s the great saxophonist who played with Marvin Gaye. He has this great book out, plus check his site out for other great things.
Anyone else have any recommendations?
The Making Of A Steinway Piano
Amazing stuff.
Musicians Have Better Memories
Bobby Owsinski linked to a interesting study,
The study found “a slight superiority of musicians over non-musicians” in long-term memory tasks, and a larger one in both short-term and working-memory tasks. Musicians performed best on working-memory tasks involving “tonal stimuli,” as you would expect, but their “advantage extended to verbal stimuli, too.” And on short-term memory tasks, musicians showed superior skills whether the item they were asked to recall was a musical tone, a verbal instruction, or a visual image.
Duh….
Pedal Board 1.1
Pedal Board 1.1
This is a dual input, one output rig. Basically, I wanted a rig where I could do both Saxophone and EWI and run it through effects. Lets look at the signal flow.
EWI – The input starts by going into the MX Micro Amp. Then goes into the volume pedal. Why? In live performance, sound guys tend sometime not to pay attention. That lead to performances with the EWI not being heard. Having the Amp and the Volume pedal lets me control the volume. I can boost it, or lower it. The signal then goes into the Eventide MixingLink. The mixing link then can send it to the effects loop.
Sax – The input starts by going into the Eventide MixingLink. Great little box that has nice preamps, and allows you to send things to an effects loop, or not, or send things to the effects loop and mix in some of the sax (or EWI) sound. It’s pretty flexible.
Effects Loop Signal flow
- First stop is the KLIQ Tuner. Hey, you have to check the pitch every now and then.
- Electro-Harmonix Nano POG. This is a great little pedal that one thing, alters pitch an octave above or below. It tracks really well.
- Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron. This the model Jeff Coffin uses, with pretty much his settings. In pedal board 1.0, it was having issues, now it’s back. It’s fun to also put the Nano POG on as well through the Q-Tron.
- Last but not least is the Eventide H9. This is an awesome pedal that does everything. It can do reverb, harmonizing, effects, distortions, etc. Again, its fun to have the Nano POG go through the pitch stuff on the H9, then I can sound like a horn section(ish).
Then everything comes back to the Eventide Missing link. I have the Missing Link set in DI mode (not line level).
And that is the pedal board as of today. It’s been working well.