Author: ericdano

Polymath, musician, awesome.

Beechler vs Larsen

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Saxcessful writes “I have been playing a Berg 100/0 on my tenor with various reeds, depending on the mood. Recently I have been offered (on the net) a Beechler Bellite 8 which is about the same lay but I have no idea about what sort of sound they produce. I am familiar with a Lawton 6 (a friends) and also play a modified Otto 7. I like all the sounds that I can get out of these mouthpieces but “the” sound alludes me. I would appreciate comments about the Beechler as they are not too common here in NZ and they are rather expensive. Thanks….”

Yes. “the sound”. We all know what you mean. You can’t describe it, but you know what it is. I haven’t used a Beechler since………..um……..Clinton was in the White House. Beechlers, as I remember them, were really punchy mouthpieces. I would describe them as similar to a metal Berg Larsen, but without the body (or tone). I would really suggest trying one before buying it, otherwise you might be stuck with something you don’t use. I mean, I think we all have that mouthpiece box (or boxes) of various pieces you liked for a week or two, then discarded.

Articles

Finale Productivity

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When the author of the Finale Productivity package died last year, it was a shock. Bill was a great guy to email back and forth with, and I’m sorry I didn’t save every email we exchanged. He was very insightful about how things should look, and how to be clear on with music notation. Bill developed templates, fonts, and processes for Finale and sold them to people who wanted to make their music “engraver quality”. One of the last projects he completed was a Articulations font which addressed the LACK of articulations available in a traditional (ie: Finale’s Maestro) font. Bill’s articulations font looks great with Maestro, and has a complete set of articulations that one would need for any modern music notation (scoops, bends, falls). It looks great.

Then Bill left us, and it seemed his invaluable package of fonts, templates, insights, and processes would be lost.

Luckily, the rights to sell it were bought by NPC Imaging and is available here. I think Bill would be very happy to see that his efforts are living on. And I hope there will be continued work on the package in the future.

Articles, News

Band-in-a-Box 2007.5

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The elves at PGMusic have been working away at yet another version of Band-in-a-Box, 2007.5. Not a lot of “new” features, but a lot of great REAL DRUM tracks. I think we are at nearly 9 gigabytes of drum sounds now. Lots of new styles as well. Couple the Real Drums with Garritan JazzBand and you have one awesome practice/performance tool. Check it out.

Reviews

Passing on Finale 2008

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MakeMusic came out with a new version of Finale. 2008. Looking at the lackluster feature list, I’m am passing on the update. Basically, the only items that sound remotely interesting are the Cut/Copy/Paste Improvements, and ScoreMerger (taking a bunch of files and putting them together). All the other stuff, the Record/Import Audio, More Garritan Sounds, New Selection Tool, Vista Compatible, Integrated Sound Libraries, Enhanced Setup Wizard, Document Styles, Colored Noteheads and Boomwhackers® Sounds, Improved Scanning, Expanded MusicXML Support, Expanded Human Playback Support, More Powerful Templates, New & Expanded, Documentation, Improved HyperScribe are not enough to warrant the price of the update. From the various discussion groups, it seems a lot of bugs still exist, and features that have problems or issues, such as 2007’s Parts, have not been addressed.

Plus, I have a suspicion that the new version saves Smartmusic files in a format that SmartMusic 10 cannot read (2007 did that from August of last year up to when when finally came out with Smartmusic 10 in April).

Articles

SmartMusic 10 Updated…….sorta

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Since it was released in April, SmartMusic 10 has not been updated. That changed last Tuesday, when the program informed me that updates were available. The proceeding 30 minutes of downloads yielded some new things, and some not so new things………

First, the new things……..

Additional play-alongs. 60 titles like they promised? Maybe. There is no list of new things, and Smartmusic.com has no information on the release. I see a lot of Concert Band things, and TWO new Jazz Band ones. And not all that great of Jazz Band songs either. Oh well.

That is it for the new stuff.

Not so new. Bugs. User Created

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Tabuteau Lessons/Note Grouping

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Two related items I finished recently. The first is a very interesting CD, Marcel Tabuteau’s Lessons, which Tabuteau himself explains his phrasing system. Well, it is more than that, it is lessons on music from a great master. It was started in August of 1965, using a tape recorder in Tabuteau’s apartment, and abruptly finished in 1966, the last recording made the day before he died (or, as Tabuteau called it, his audition date with St. Peter). It is oboe specific in areas (reeds), but most of it easily applies to saxophone (or any other instrument for that matter). Well worth a listen if you want to gain insight from a master on how to play music.

The second item is Note Grouping by James Morgan Thurmond. This is basically a written down version of what the Tabuteau CD is. Same idea, different author. Keep in mind, this book was originally a thesis paper, and reworked/written to be a book. Parts of it are very “thesis paperish”, but the information contained within is invaluable, especially the insights into how modern music has come about.

Reviews

Pimped Out Studio

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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 costs for this was around $650+/-. $70 for the VESA Mount, $100 for the Conga stand, $300 for the monitor, $25 for the iMac video adapter, $120 for the USB foot pedal, and $6 for the plastic cover and connectors (Tap Plastics rocks). A year or two ago, this would have been a lot more. A year from now, it will be less. That’s technology for ya.

Pictures and more inside……

I have a lot of songs that I have done on Finale and on PDF, enough to fill a 3 inch binder. In fact, I have 5 such binders that I have tried to store copies of the songs so I wouldn’t need to print them out if I wanted to play them with a student. One problem with this system is finding songs. An Index? Well, I suppose, but it is a pain keeping it up to date, and flipping though a huge 3 inch binder is not fun. Plus, the Manhassette stand won’t keep raised with a full 3 inch binder on it. Then there are page turns. It was just a hassle.

Now, with the all digital setup, I can load a song up, display it on the other screen. Simple. No printing. If it is multiple pages, no problem, the 22″ monitor handles it with no problems. Three pages? That is where the foot peddle comes in. I have the X-Keys programmed (using iKey) to advance to the next page if I stomp on the right of the peddle, back a page if I stomp left, and in the center, it toggles one or two page mode. I can also do the same stuff using PDF files. So, anything I’ve scanned in I can view in the same way. It works very well so far.

The other thing is SmartMusic. It’s easier to use, though SmartMusic does not do two pages. Though it does seem to work alright if you flip the monitor around and put it into portrait mode.

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Articles

Three Michael Brecker Things

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In a previous story, I noted that Virtual Instruments Magazine was coming out with an article about Michael Brecker’s EWI/Logic environment. That article is now out in the June/July 07 issue. It is very insightful in how Michael Brecker approached technology and how he was able to take two 4 foot racks of gear and put it all on a Apple Powerbook. I almost want to get Apple’s Logic program and try it. Wonder if you can do that with Digital Performer…

iBrecker has a link to a video of interviews with the players from Michael Brecker’s last album (Herbie Hancock, etc). Sadly, no interviews with him, but you get to hear him playing, see studio shots, and even a little bit of him tinkering with his tenor between takes (looks like he had a full on repair case with him).

Update: 06/09 02:01 GMT by E :A intrepid reader, Dave Kiffer, from Alaska, informed me that Downbeat has an electronic readers poll. Go vote for Michael now! (Also updated the title of this article to reflect the three items)

News

SmartMusic 10

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MakeMusic, after much hype, delay, and then more hype, has finally released SmartMusic 10 in April. This is really what the program should have been from the get go. There are a lot of great Concert Band, and String Orchestra music on the screen selections. There are a few Jazz Band ones as well. The program is Universal Binary for Macintosh, meaning it is really responsive.

The short review of this is to get it. If you can get it for the $25 a year subscription price, it is a huge value. There are tons of great tunes, exercises, and other things in there.

However, the promised “60 New Titles A Month” has not materialized as of yet. And there are some bugs need to be addressed….

The New Stuff

In the previous version of SmartMusic a lot of the arrangements were installed when you installed the program. Now, SmartMusic downloads what it needs. For people with fast internet connections, that is great. For people on Dialup….you have my sympathies. Though, on the flip side, once you have them, you don’t need to download them again.

This is also true of the Pro Audio backgrounds. One of the new features of SmartMusic 10 is the inclusion of professional background recordings. So, instead of a midi rendition of a Jazz piece, you now get a great sounding real version of the song. But…..you need to download it. For dialup users…..well, that could be a time consuming thing. Once you download them, the recordings seem to be stored in a SQLlite database as MP3s. I’ve tried out a lot of the Concert band and Jazz Ensemble ones. Very nice. Recording quality is excellent. You can also select whatever part you want to play. So, you can play Oboe parts, or Clarinet 2, or Bass Clarinet, or Drums. Very cool and fun stuff.

Music on the screen. The previous version of SmartMusic had a very limited amount of music on the screen. There were a dozen or so classical pieces, the Alfred Jazz stuff, Wynton Jazz stuff, and the exercises. SmartMusic 10 has a ton of music on the screen. ALL the pro audio selections have music on the screen.

There are some things to track student assignments and stuff. I really am not interested in that, so, I did not try it.

The Bad Stuff

First, content. MakeMusic is promising

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Reviews

Michael Brecker’s Logic Environment

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iBrecker has a new article up about Michael Brecker’s last EWI/Computer setup. Basically, the advance of software allowed Michael to replace 2, five foot racks of tone modules with a Logic and Reason. Amazing stuff. Michael’s EWI/Computer setup is going to be profiled in an upcoming issue of Virtual Instruments magazine. Look for it.

Update: 04/23 00:06 GMT by E :Oops, forgot to put the link to the iBrecker article. Fixed.

Virtual Instruments Magazine has a link to the diagram of the Logic Environment.

Articles

New Michael Brecker Album

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iBrecker.com has a link to a video teaser of an upcoming new album from Michael Brecker. Pilgrimage can also be pre-ordered via Amazon.com as well. Herbie Hancock, Brad Mehldau, Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnette, and John Patitucci. 30 second clips of all the tracks are available on the Amazon link.

Album is scheduled to be released on May 22nd. For all you Brecker fans, this is a must have.

News

SmartMusic 10 M.I.A.

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For months, MakeMusic has been saying SmartMusic 10 is coming. The amount of hype they have been making is akin to Microsoft and it’s “new” Vista operating system. MakeMusic hasn’t even updated the current version of SmartMusic to handle files generated by Finale 2007 which was released way back in August. To create files, you need to have 2006 still installed on your computer.

The other day, I received a packet from MakeMusic. I was shocked. It looked like SmartMusic 10 had been release. Alas, it was not. Instead of spending money getting the stupid program out, they chose to spend quite a bit of money to continue the “hype” of the vaporware SmartMusic 10. This packet probably cost $10 to put together. Perhaps more.

Let us examine the contents of this “hype” package….

First

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BMG “Jazz” Music Club

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I am part of the BMG “Jazz” Music club. I very rarely buy things from them as they charge you up the *#?@#^& in shipping, and it ends up being not all that cheap. I tend to get most of my stuff off Amazon.com used.

Today, I received the BMG Early Spring 2007 Catalog. Not a SINGLE mention of Michael Brecker on it. Nada. They do have, on page 18, Michael’s “Wide Angles” Album. No promo box about him. Nothing. Instead, they are peddling yet another Coltrane album called Gold on page 19. On page 3 they have a big box with Mindi Abair. On page 9 they have Richard Elliot. On page 13 they have Marion Meadows. No Brecker. Not even an insert about it. One would think they could, in addition to Checks Unlimited insert, the Build the Ultimate DVD Collection insert, and the BMG Music store insert, they could have put in a Michael Brecker special or something. I might have actually have bought something from them then. It makes one wonder what they will do when Sonny Rollins or some other titan dies. Are they going to ignore the event and feature the likes of Mindi Abair instead?

I am disgusted with BMG now. I am writing them a nasty letter and canceling my account with them.

Update: 05/04 16:11 GMT by E :I got another BMG thing in the mail. They are featuring KENNY G? What the Hell? Amazing. The “Jazz” club featuring Kenny F@#*$*% G……

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