Category: Articles

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

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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

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

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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

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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!

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Band In A Box 2013 Macintosh

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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

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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.

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Sibelius Refugees Building New Notation Program

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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

SmartMusic Updates It’s Pricing

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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

Going All Digital

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If you’ve noticed, there have been a lack of new posts lately? “Oh no, he’s losing interest in the site. Where are we going to get our latest Katy Perry sheets?” you might say. Fear not, there are a lot of things in the pipeline. So where have I been? Busy. Actual high paying gigs, working on CDs for my students, and…..finally going paperless.

Since getting an iPad in 2010, well, actually, before that, when I decided in 2007 to get a second monitor attached to my computer in my teaching studio, I have wanted to abandon all my physical books. Actually, probably iTunes ushered in this era, where you could have ALL your teaching materials (Aebersold, other play-alongs) available instantly on your computer. When I first started teaching full time in 1999, I bought a 300 disc CD player to hold all the Aebersold volumes I had, then other play-alongs I had. I had books strewn all over the place. I had printed sheets, which some of the kids called the “Reject pile”, on the floor (songs that I had made on Finale and printed to try, but then for various reasons it wasn’t going to work for them). It was a mess. But iTunes started to change that. Spending a few months ripping my mass collection of CDs into iTunes, it was amazing. All of a sudden I could instantly pull up a Aebersold blues in F, or in C on separate volumes. Gradually the CD player was being used less and less. Now, it is still in my studio (above the DAT recorder I have). It hasn’t been plugged in for well over a year, probably two. I really don’t know.

When I put a second monitor on my teaching computer, partly to use SmartMusic (which started to put sheet music play-alongs in the program), and partly to see the songs/exercises/arrangements I did in Finale, I was stunned by how it changes your teaching. Finding stuff is simple. In the case of having something in Finale, does it need to be in a different key? Click….done. Transposed down an octave? Click…..done. And no more piles of paper. 

But, I still had a huge collection of books. Aebersolds, Fishman, Snidero, more flute books that I care to count, clarinet books, oboe books, jazz books. Books books books! Great stuff in the books, but it was and still is a PAIN IN THE ASS to find something. Maybe there was an exercise in flute book X…..now where is flute book X…….oh, I can’t find it…..did I lend it out to someone never to get it back? So, sometime in 2008 I decided to scan some of my books that I use a lot. 

Scanning a book though is a pain. Mainly, because they are double sided. It takes a lot of time to scan, even if you break the binding or cut the binding off. I had been using a Brother All-in-one to scan one side, then I’d have to scan the other side, and then go through and number them, then assemble them into a PDF…….it was a lot of work….but I did it for a lot of books I used a lot. It made finding them instant now, and copying a page as simple as a Command-P now. But there are still hundreds of books left…….

ScansnapEnter my Christmas gift…..a Fujitsu Scansnap 1500M. How do I explain this…..it is like maybe being Christopher Colombus and getting GPS and a modern boat at the same time? No…..maybe getting an iPhone in 1970? That is closer to what it is. This machine was not cheap ($430 or so), but it is worth it. It does well over 20 pages a minute, double sided, high resolution. Puts them into a PDF, OCRs them…..it is amazing. In the week and a half I’ve had it (it came Jan 2), I have blown through 2 boxes of old music magazines, and probably a hundred books (a lot of them are drum books for a drum teacher….who’s paying me to do the scanning). And now I have easily tripled the number of books in my digital collection. I’m using stuff out of books I had totally forgotten about. It’s great.

The ONE downside is that I still have NOT found a good organizer of PDFs. The big issue is that I have all my digital stuff on a NAS (RAID5). I mean, it would be STUPID not to have some sort of digital insurance like that (plus Crashplan). But all the cool PDF like organizers either don’t find the OCRed text in the files on a network share (iDocument) or what to put all the PDFs into a tome (Devonthink Pro). I don’t want to put them into one tome/database file because I still want to have them in iTunes (I have playlists with the PDF and the tracks on ones that have audio tracks). So, that is the only weak link right now. Like if Devonthink would just symbolically link to a PDF and still be able to search the text there…….that would be great. Supposedly iDocument is going to add this. 

So, that is what I’ve been up to. No more paper or paper books. I’m digitalizing all of the stuff I have that I use or want to use. Things seem like they are getting less cluttered in my studio as the books disappear (they go into the recycle bin once I am happy with the scan). It’s great. I’d HIGHLY recommend this scanner to everyone. It EATS paper. 

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Applescript To Convert Files To 96Khz/24bit Files

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My audio interface I use in the studio is capable of recording at 96khz. Now does recording in that higher rate make things sound good? Yes, it does. But one of the things that is a pain in the ass is converting things to get ready to record in Logic at 96Khz. I have a Logic template set up that defaults to being at 96khz, but if I drag say a Band in a Box generated background over, or want to use something I did that is in my iTunes, Logic will switch it to a lower rate. Ugh. So, I came up with this Applescript that I hacked together from various sites on the web, such as this one. It’s drag and drop, and will work with multiple files. Enjoy


property destlocation : missing value
property my_Folder : missing value
property s_a_folder : missing value
property command_start : "afconvert -f \"WAVEf\"" & space
property command_text_spec : space & "-d \"I24@96000\"" & space
property command_rate_spec : ""
property theitemname : missing value
property rootloc : missing value
property the_file : missing value
property the_data : missing value

on open these_items
my convert_audio(these_items)
end open

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What Do I Want For Xmas?

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So, I did a list of thing that you might consider getting for Xmas. But what is on MY list? Well, here it is.

First thing is that I always need money. Who doesn’t? Running this site is not free, and the little money made with Google Ads does help with the phone bill, but not a lot. Money is always good.

Second, I really could use more Hard Drives and an SSD. Hard drives for storing various projects and for backups. SSD for maybe doing an Apple Fusion drive Hack on my MacPro to get it performing better.

Third, a better Tenor case. I have a SBK case that my tenor came in over 15 years ago. I would love to get something better for it.

Fourth, a Fujitisu ScanSnap 1500M. I still have mountains of things to convert into digital, and having a device that does BOTH sides of the paper at the same time…….that would be a HUGE savings of time. My Evernote account would love that 😉

Fifth, Books. I still don’t have Greg Fishman’s Jazz Phrasing Vol. 2 and Vol. 3. Nor do I have the Duets Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 or the new Hip Licks Vol. 2. I like his books. Also there are some other miscellaneous books on my Amazon Wishlist (mostly oboe). There are a couple of other books on my radar, like Ben Britton’s new book.

Sixth, Reeds. Always in need of a box of 3 Rico Jazz Select Filed for Alto, Soprano and Rico Plasticover 3s for Tenor.

Seventh, More memory for my computers

Eighth, iPad 4. I have an original iPad. It still works, but there are a number of programs that don’t run on it (cause it doesn’t run iOS 6).

Ninth? Bari Sax with a low A? Sopranino? English Horn?

Articles

2012 Christmas Buyers Guide

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I don’t think I did one last year, but this year I think I am. So…..you have a saxophonist that you want to get a little holiday gift for huh? Well, here are some ideas.

Band-in-a-Box – Though they have different versions of this program, you need the version with the Real Tracks. Period. This is an essential practice tool. Always at the top of my list.

iPad – Yes, there are other knock off tables. But with the huge, rich, totally awesome App eco-system Apple has, why mess around? ForScore is my App of choice for storing and reading PDFs, with GoodReader a close second. Plus, add programs like Garageband on……there is so much you can do with this device.

iPod Touch – This little device is awesome. You can record stuff on the fly. Or perhaps take a picture of some chord changes you need to work on? Or maybe listen to some tunes? The iPod Touch is great. Use it as a tuner, a metronome, a camera……so many uses. I find I use mine (well, the iPhone version of it) for tuning, or snapping a shot of a chart I need to shed, or doing a spot recording. 

Just Joe Strap – There was some make believe controversy about this strap, but it is still hands down the best neck strap I have ever played. Comfortable. Well worth investing in.

Ultimate Support JS-DS100 Jamstands Double Sax Stand – Everyone needs a stand, and the Woodwind & Brasswind has these for $4.99 with FREE Shipping. How insane is that. I have another one of these on order just because it was so cheap!

Dayton Audio Sub-800 Subwoofer ($79) – Add some bottom to your sound. This is a great little subwoofer.

Logic 9 or Reaper – Reaper is a great, almost free program that does a LOT. Logic is a battle tested Pro Audio program that many musicians have done whole albums with. Logic also comes bundled with a TON of Loops and plugins. Either will get you making music.

Mighty Bright Orchestra Light($40) – The best stand light. Hands down. Includes some batteries, a case, and an AC Adapter.

Pelican Cases – I am not happy with my current case, a SBK tenor case. For Alto, I use a Selmer Tripack case. Not really happy with that either. When I came across Battle Cases, I know what I want for my next case. At least for Alto. After seeing Battle Cases, I think a 1650 case modded to hold a curved soprano, alto, clarinet, flute, piccolo and oboe would be awesome. Sadly, since Battle Cases wants $150 to set up each instrument in the case, I probably would do this myself. I suppose another option is something like a Walt Johnson case.

Microphone – Recording yourself is a great way to refine your art. You can’t go wrong with a Shure SM57, or if you have some more money to spend, a Rode M3 or Rode NT1A or a Blue Spark (Engadget Review). These are just starting points. There are plenty of other microphones out there.

Portable Recorder – I myself have an OLD Marantz compact flash recording device. Old, I mean probably 8 years old now? There are a LOT of portable recorders on the market now. Though everyone and their mom swears by the Zoom Recorders, I have never heard anything recorded on them that sounds good. The microphones are really not very good. That being said, a flash recorder that does 24bit and 48khz or above that has XLR inputs would be ideal. Something like the Tascam DR100 MKII. 

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A Double Sax Stand……for $5?

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So, the Woodwind and the Brasswind had this insane thing on their website. $4.99 for a double stand (Alto/tenor). So, I bought one. And it came today. And it is GREAT!

The Ultimate Support double stand was a freaking steal. It is basically a knockoff of the Hamilton Double Saxophone stand. They look identical.

Anyhow, it seems they are out of them now, but it was a great deal. I’d watch their site to see if they offer another deal like that soon.

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