Author: ericdano

Polymath, musician, awesome.

Record Companies Finally Win One

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After all the lawsuits they have started, they finally won one.

In a major win for record companies seeking to establish precedent for prosecuting those who trade copyrighted material on the Internet, a federal jury awarded six firms $222,000 in damages from a Minnesota woman who shared music online. Jammie Thomas, 30, was ordered to pay $9,250 for each of 24 songs that were part of the case. The complaint alleged that she had shared 1,702 copyright-violating songs online. The Associated Press quotes Richard Gabriel, lead attorney for the music companies: “This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK.”

What does this mean? Good question…….

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MP3 Compression Explained

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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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Nintendo + Logic =……..?

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Create Digital Music has an interesting article about using your old Nintendo NES with Apple’s Logic Studio. Not sure exactly why you’d want it, other than maybe to get your geek on and add some Mario sounds to your next album.

If you want some more nutty things, check out Musicthing. They have things like making a mellotron out of 4 walkmen, and other strange things.

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Gibson Launches Self Tuning Guitars

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Engadget is reporting that Gibson has launched a line of self tuning guitars.

Gibson’s Powertune system has been in the works for quite awhile, and although there are other axes out there that claim to tune themselves, only a Gibson will do for some. Reportedly, the firm is readying a “new line of instruments” that are equipped with the system, which includes “an additional set of pickups mounted underneath the strings that are used specifically for the tuning process.”

Whoa. That is pretty neat stuff. Wonder if Steinway will do something like that with pianos….

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Sightreading Jazz by Bob Taylor

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First off, I need to apologize to Bob Taylor. He sent me this book a while ago. Months ago, and I just plain got busy. So, finally, here is a review of the book.

Sightreading Jazz is a 130 page, spiral bound book that addresses jazz sightreading. Being able to come to a musical situation, and play stuff for the first time with a high degree of accuracy is an essential skill. Bob Taylor’s book focuses on sightreading jazz music.

The first part of the book gives you some history, things to look out for, counting rhythms, swing rhythms, articulations, and accents. The second part is where the meat of the book begins, the Rhythms. 2 and 4 bar rhythms. Mr. Taylor recommends practicing these with one pitch, or two or three pitches that you pick out, or using a scale (going up or down as the notes go by), or an arpeggio, or two octaves, or using thirds. Whew. PLUS, you can do the rhythms across the page, down the column….and upside down (just kidding).

Actually, upside down come in the next section, where

Read More “Sightreading Jazz by Bob Taylor” »

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Tags and Categories

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Upgrading to WordPress 2.3 was painless. However, they did change a number of things. Categories and Tags. Kind of confusing, but here is a quote to better explain it:

So categories can be tags but tags cannot be categories. Categories are like the huge signs you see on aisles in supermarkets – “Food”, “Hygiene”, “Frozen” etc, they guide you to sections where you can find what you are looking for. Tags are like the labels on the products themselves.

So, in an effort to clean up my categories, I’ve been tagging. Though, it is, like moving over the old Slash content, going to take some time.

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Changed Themes

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Yeah, things look different. WordPress allows you to really mess with the look of a site really, really easily. So, we are trying this one out……

I think it is more of what I want it to look like……

UPDATE: 09/23/07 4:30 PM by E: Added an Archives page

UPDATE: 09/24/07 1:50 PM by E: Moved the Submit Article to the menu

UPDATE: 09/24/07 9:20 PM by E: Upgraded to WordPress 2.3. Woot!

UPDATE: 09/25/07 12:35 AM by E: Tags……I’m not quite sure what to make of them yet……

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Keyless Saxophones

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When I was in college, I heard the story of Siguard Rascher having a keyless saxophone. Basically, a conical tube in the shape of a sax. Mr. Rascher was reported to be able to play anything on it.

Well, looks like you can actually get one and try to be a virtuoso like Siguard Rascher. Hollywood Winds sells an alto and a tenor version for $495 and $695 respectively.

I wonder if it would be cheaper to get an old C-Melody off of Ebay and just plug the holes….

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Korg Sells Its 20 Millionth Tuner

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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 products plus years of guaranteed performance

I’ve never owned a Korg tuner. I do have a Korg M1 though…..

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Joe Zawinul Dies at 75

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&uotFew of the major US networks picked up on this,

Zawinul died early Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Vienna’s Wilhelmina Clinic said, without giving details. He had been hospitalized since last month and suffered from a rare form of skin cancer, said Risa Zincke, his manager, according to the Austria Press Agency.

Some articles about his death are here, here, here and here.

Weather report was one of the first jazz/fusion groups I was exposed to (Tom Scott and the L.A. Express was the other). Sad to see another great pass on.

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PG Music JazzU

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PG Music has a new product out, JazzU

JazzU offers all students of Jazz — players, teachers, arrangers, and Jazz lovers – an invaluable computer-based resource for the study of Jazz music with top instructors and players. JazzU faculty members are professionals whose credentials embrace both formal study and a wealth of experience as performers on the bandstand, the concert stage, and in the recording studio. For the student, JazzU offers the insights of top professional musicians and teachers who combine an appreciation of the rich Jazz tradition with the ability to play and teach in all styles and genres – Traditional, Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, Latin, Modern, Fusion, and beyond.

For $50, it sounds like a good deal. The only thing that it lacks, it seems, is a way to evaluate how you played them. Programs like Teach Me Piano do this, and they are brutal. But it is an effective way to get better.

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Apple Logic Studio

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Today, Apple announced it’s Logic Studio. Not only did they pack a ton of features into an already feature rich product, they dropped the price to $499. Amazing. There are new features such as mainstage, five Apple Jam Packs, more software instruments, and thousands of other sounds. Plus, you get Soundtrack 2, which is an excellent sound editor (at least that is what I hear from my Final Cut nerd friends).

I think I might have found where that $100 Apple Store credit is going now….Wonder what the next version of Digital Performer is going to do to match this….

UPDATE: 09/12/07 by E: A couple of other sites have some first impressions about Logic Studio.

Will post more links as I find them.

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Interactive Video Tutorials

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Sometimes, you need to get help with stuff. Mostly, it seems nowadays people need help with tech stuff. Finale, Sibelius, Protools, Digital Performer, etc. What if you could, for a small fee, have access to an expert guiding you through these and other programs? You can. HowAudio.Com offers a growing number of online tutorials. They have a woodwind section, a Protools section, a Digital Performer section, and more. There are some samples that you can view to get a taste of what the tutorials are like. $19.99 a month for all of the tutorials. Interesting stuff!

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The Dust Has Settled…..Sorta

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Looks like things have settled down after the transition from Slash to WordPress. First, on the right you’ll see the Be Active header. Here you can write articles, questions, interesting things you saw on the net or heard about. Second, there are still about 300+ stories that have not been migrated from Slash to WordPress. It probably will be a couple of weeks until everything appears again.

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