I found this flattened saxophone on Ebay, and bought it and mounted it in the hall outside of my studio. It is pretty cool. Best $36 I’ve spent in a while!
Here is how it was most likely made.
Category: Articles
Ditching Pro Tools For Logic
For various reasons, I decided NOT to upgrade my ProTools to the new version. I won a system in 2007 that included a copy of ProTools M-Powered version 7. I upgraded to 8 as well, and mixed a big band album with the gear. I thought about moving to 9, but the upgrade costs were huge. Plus, I had also, in 2007, bought Logic 8 when Steve Jobs issued $200 credits to the first buyers of iPhones (love you Steve!).
Anyhow, when Mac OS X 10.7 Lion came out, the fate of ProTools for me was sealed. Version 8 didn’t run on it. But Logic ran on it. And for $199 I could buy Logic 9 from the App Store. And I did. And I haven’t looked back.
Is there something I miss about ProTools? I think the flow of working with audio is a little better, and the tools are incredibly cool. That is not to say that Logic doesn’t have these tools, but like to put in a Fade in ProTools vs Logic, it seems to be more precise in ProTools. I do miss my McDSP plugins though. I had bought them when they were RTAS, and I do miss them. Especially some of the compressors. Oh well. Oh, and Altiverb 6 sorta works in Logic in 64bit mode but shows up as unsupported. Strange.
I DO however, love the Exporting out of Logic. You don’t have to play the whole thing back. You bounce it, and boom. It is done in mere seconds. Logic also has a wealth of built in plugins.
If you use a Mac, and are sick of ProTools reaming you for upgrades, get Logic.
Finale Songbook
Though this author likes the program, I think MakeMusic has missed the mark again. No transposition, no DropBox or any cloud integration. No annotations. No sale (even though it’s free). Maybe version 2 will correct this, but given how fast (or rather, slow) MakeMusic does updates to Finale and its other programs, I think the competition is going to continue to be way ahead of Finale.
If you want a good music reader for iPad, get ForScore
I am happy to announce that Finale has finally released its first mainstream iPad app, Finale Songbook. Finale Songbook is a free app that allows you to read Finale files on your iPad. I love the name of the app, as it hearkens back to the song books of the jazz standards. The app opens to the main library, in which you can view your selections by playlists, title, composer, or file name. The library also includes a search bar, as well as a number of sample files and instructions on how to use the app.
(Via Technology in Music Education)
‘It Can’t Be Done’: The Difficulty Of Growing A Jazz Audience : A Blog Supreme : NPR
‘It Can’t Be Done’: The Difficulty Of Growing A Jazz Audience : A Blog Supreme : NPR:
“Well, if education isn’t the answer, what’s the solution? How do we develop and maintain a strong jazz audience?”
Audience development is a complicated issue, and it’s not limited to jazz. Every artist and arts organization is trying to answer the same question. We’ve identified a problem and we’re going to “build” something to solve it. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it?”
(Via www.npr.org)
Excellent article. I wonder though if it is really a problem Jazz faces in the United States more. In Japan and I believe in Europe, Jazz music gets as much attention as Pop music. Heck, they even have huge public performances of the music of Final Fantasy! Yoko Kanno and T-Square concerts sell out.
If Danny Elfman did a concert tour in the USA……..would anyone attend? Probably very very few. A Katy Perry or Justin Bieber concert though……sells out in hours. It’s a sad state of affairs here…..
History of UA’s 1176 Compressor
One of my fav compressors for saxophone.
History of UA’s 1176 Compressor:
That same year, Bill Putnam is making the transition from the old standard vacuum tubes to new solid-state technology with his Universal Audio-brand preamps and compressors. The legendary engineer and equipment manufacturer had previously redesigned his original 108 tube microphone preamp (taken from his UA/United Recording consoles in Chicago and Hollywood), into the new 1108 — utilizing the recently invented Field Effect Transistor (FET). Subsequently, he redesigned his successful 175/176 tube compressor (based on the popular variable-Mu design) using FETs, and thus was born the 1176.
(Via The Loop)
How To Audition for Cirque du Soleil as a Musician
Excerpt from a great article on how to Audition for a major show. $60K is pretty good money for playing.
How To Audition for Cirque du Soleil as a Musician:
I want to preface this article with this: I didn’t get the gig. I got a free trip to Japan for 5 days of interviews and auditions, but in the end the gig went to the other guy.
So I can’t exactly tell you how to get a gig with Cirque, but I can tell you how to audition (and, maybe, what not to do).
It was January, 2010, when I got a call from a colleague of mine. He had previously worked as a keyboardist for Cirque in Vegas and had since operated, now and then, as one of their recruiters. He told me Cirque was looking for a new music director for a tour they had in Asia and my colleague had recommended me for the spot.
He wasn’t sure what the pay would be, but he estimated that it would pay about as much as a music director on Broadway would earn, which is somewhere around $150,000+/year. Of course I said yes. I told him I would go through the audition and recruiting process and make him proud.
My colleague forwarded me the music that I would need to learn for the audition. That included 9 selections from the show, along with demo recording of the songs and backing tracks that I could record to.
(Via Musician Wages.com)
Neil DeGrasse Tyson On Math, Science and Music
Neil DeGrasse Tyson is awesome. You know who he is…..I hope. He’s been on the Dailyshow, Colbert, TV, Nova….lots of things. On Jazz Inspired with Judy Carmichael he talks about Music. Good stuff. I too can’t really listen to music anymore while driving.
Mid-Side (MS) Mic Recording Basics
Found this great gem from The Loop:
“But while XY microphone recording is the most obvious method, it’s not the only game in town. The Mid-Side (MS) microphone technique sounds a bit more complex, but it offers some dramatic advantages over standard coincident miking. If you’ve never heard of MS recording, or you’ve been afraid to try it, you’re missing a powerful secret weapon in your recording arsenal.”
Honestly, never used Mid-Side recording. Since I have a Rode NT4 (XY Mic) I never have the need. However, this does sound interesting.
Synology DS1512+
Years ago, in 2006 I bought a Infrant ReadyNAS NV. The thing has been ROCK SOLID in storing my 2.8 terabytes of archives, music, pdfs, backups. Everything. Love it. Though it is getting long in the tooth. It’s 360mhz processor, lack of software updates, support for just 2 Terrabyte drives, Ext3 filesystem, lack of software support……there is a list of things it doesn’t do that I’d like it to do. Though it has NEVER lost any data. A failed drive? Replace, it rebuilds, and we go on.
So, I decided to upgrade the NV to something new. Not that I plan on getting rid of the NV, but I’d like 2 copies of my stuff. So, I looked into Netgear (who bought Infrant) and their line of NASes. Not really cutting edge. Solid I’m sure. I also looked into Synology. They have a LOT of NASes they sell, and have some amazing software and even iOS apps to monitor the units. SOLD!
So, I get a unit on the 15th of March along with 3 2 terabyte seagate hard drives. Put the drives in, made a volume, updated the Synology software. Everything looked great. Awesome web interface, a speedy 2.1 gigahertz processor, FIVE drive bays. I’m in love.
Next up was to copy my ReadyNAS NV stuff to the Synology unit. I chose to use RSync on the ReadyNAS unit to make sure everything was copied, and that if I did any changes to the NV (cause I was still going to use it while it was backing up) the second pass of Rsync would catch any changes. So, I started the RSync job on Thursdays the 15th.
It finished on Saturday the 24th. It was slow (the ReadyNAS’s fault). The second pass of Rsync took like 20 minutes and caught all the changes I had made. Awesome. Ok, so next up was to power down the ReadyNAS, rename the Synology unit and reboot the Synology unit. Renaming it and rebooting it would make it show up as the old unit on my network and my iTunes share and network paths should, in theory, work without any tweaks.
Disaster…..so, I rebooted the Synology unit. And it never came back. It now blinks a steady BLUE power light. Scanning their support FAQ, if you take the drives out and power it up again, it should blink blue then beep and go solid. It doesn’t. It died. WTF! So, I email their tech support (actually before I did the taking the drives out). Nothing. Seems their tech support doesn’t work weekends…..which I think is unacceptable. I also posted in their forum my plight….seems at least 2 others right now, with newer units, have the same problem. Reboots or power back ons that just hang.
So…..what do I take away from this so far? Synology has shitty tech support. No support on the weekends? At all? Not ONE person in the company can be bothered to check and reply to the emails over the weekend? Terrible. A unit that is a week and 2 days old DIES when you simply reboot it? And I’m supposed to maybe have some sort of reliance on this product?
I would SERIOUSLY, as of right now, NOT RECOMMEND SYNOLOGY PRODUCTS. Go somewhere else. Netgear’s stuff is solid but doesn’t have the bells and whistles of Synology. But at least they have people replying to emails on the weekends and have members of their support staff monitoring and replying to forum posts.
I’m giving this a 0 out of 10 right now. I left a 1 star review on Amazon, and have contacted them through Amazon (still no reply). If it isn’t fixed by Monday, I will be filing a complaint with Amazon to get my money back.
UPDATE 3/29: After several emails with their support, and bitching about it, seems they will ship me another one to replace the unit. I did get the unit up at home on Monday. Passed the self test, and then I powered it down, and put the drives in, and it worked perfectly. So, I powered it down, brought it to my studio….and it did the blinking blue light thing again. I called their support, and they were like “it needs to go back from where you bought it”. And I was like “But I bought it FROM YOU through Amazon”. Ugh. So, after being disgusted on the phone with them, and having the unit completely unplugged again, I plugged it in, and it started working. I powered it down, and put the drives back in, powered it up and it works!
It’s a great little unit when it is working. The software is awesome, including the iOS apps for streaming music. Very cool. And you can remotely stream music as well. VERY COOL. Except that I’m worried about if I have to power it down or turn it off.
So, I’m going to revisit my rating of it. I’m going to give it a 5 out of 10. When the unit runs, it’s awesome. EXT4, awesome web interface, remote access, it’s FAST. However, their quality control seems suspect (a couple of other people on the Synology forums had similar issues with the XX12 series of units) and their tech support leaves a LOT to be desired (no email support over the weekend, no 800 number for support). I’d hold off buying a unit for a few weeks until they figure out what is the matter with these units. I suspect it is some sort of software issue with their DSM4 software.
Inside The Loudness Wars
Interesting article about compression and loudness in modern music.
Within the world of audio, both on the consumer and pro sides, there has been no greater point of contention than the increasing levels of compression used to produce music.
The phenomenon grew to the point where it was given the name “loudness wars,” because it reached a level where one engineer would try to outdo another engineer by making his recording louder. The problem is that it employing compression destroyed the dynamic range of many of today’s recordings.
I hardly ever use that stuff when work on recordings. Also not a huge fan of pitch correction either. I mean, I do use the tools available, but I’d rather use them to ever so slightly enhance a recording, not totally change a recording.
How Aebersold Needs To Embrace Technology
A while ago, I wrote a post/rant about Aebersold pushing the Superscope Elevation software. Enough said about that. But I get these mailings from jazz books.com about sales, and they are still pushing these Superscope CD things that are like $999. Insane.
It makes me wonder WHY Jazzbooks/Aebersold has not embraced the digital age yet. The writing has been on the wall for about 2 years now that print media is a dying business. As is the making of CDs. Aebersold is running the risk of becoming like Kodak.
So, how to change this? Here is what I would propose if I was in charge. First, offer digital versions of the catalog. The play-alongs, put them in Amazon and iTunes for $.99. When someone buys the them that way, they also get the lead sheet in C/Eb/Bb/Bass clef. Would I put them out as tomes like they are now? No. What I would do is fully embrace technology and develop an App that would allow purchases of new songs within it. So, if someone ends up buying 100 songs that Aebersold produces, then they will be within the app, easily searchable, indexed, etc. You could just display the Eb versions, or whatever. And allow annotations of the lead sheets (i.e. let people mark up the sheets if they want).
The App would also have a slowdown function, and the ability to loop sections. Heck, some of the FREE slowdown things on the iPhone/iPad do this already. The ability to change the pitch would also be included, as would the ability to record what you are playing and the ability to hear just what you did, or you with the track. And you can mix it when you are playing back. And send it to like Garageband if you wanted. Or get it out of the App. The annotations that you did you could send via email, or print, or make a PDF.
So, the base App would be free and include maybe a couple of freebee tracks to entice people. Then in-App purchases would be $.99 for a new song complete with Eb/Bb/C/Bass lead sheet.
Ok, that takes care of the legacy Play-Alongs, but what about all the books that they publish. I’m not sure how they would do as EPUBs like in the iBook store. They might do better as a Textbook created with iAuthor. I would think that most of these could be make into PDFs fairly easily. Regardless, they need to be digital. PDF would be great, EPUB if possible, or maybe even an App for each book (like Greg Fishman’s stuff). Though, I would think that if they went the App per book route, they could use the engine that the play-alongs use. Then everything would be all together and you don’t end up with 30 apps for everything.
I don’t know if Aebersold is planning this sort of thing, but they need to. All these sales emails has me concerned, and it just makes more sense. With the iPad continuing to be a huge hit……who wants to carry around huge books or Superscope devices when an iPad can all that and more….
The Deflavorizing Machine
Stereophile has an article up about how Digital is killing music. (I see these like every week or so)
“A few engineers talked about superstar vocalists who record literally hundreds of takes of a single song, then leave it to the editors to assemble from these a single “perfect” performance, a fraction of a second at a time (footnote 1) Pardon my snark, but imagine how much better records by James Brown, the Beatles, or Led Zeppelin would have been had they had Pro Tools in the 1960s and ’70s. Sadly, it’s a tool that some artists can’t resist using to the point that there’s nothing left of the original performance.”
For me, I still think some of the best recordings are live. Michael Brecker is way better live. The Buddy Rich big band? Live is the only way to go. Thad Jones? Yep, live. Something about the sound, and maybe the mistakes or glitches that happen. Those are the things that make it better. Sinatra singing perfectly in tune? That would be better? Hardly. Or maybe Cannonball, Charlie Parker, or Coltrane having a flubbed note fixed? Or a squeak removed digitally? That would be better? Nope.
Heck, I think we have too many tools in the tool box nowadays. Using less EQ, Compression, AutoTuning would be the way to go. When I do my student CDs, I don’t auto tune it, I add minimal EQ, and a slight room reverb (since we are recording close mic’d). That’s it. Even though I have a TON of plugins, and could use Melodyne to fix the pitch. But every time I hear a new CD, usually smooth jazz but sometimes straight ahead, I hear way too much reverb and compression. Probably some auto-tuning in there as well. Pity really.
Slow News Day On CNN: The Making Of A Prodigy (Grace Kelly)
It’s obviously a slow weekend when this story about what makes a prodigy is on the front of CNN. Not that CNN is really a relevant news source nowadays with their Twitter usage and general lack of a cohesive professional face.
So, we see these “prodigy” stories ever few years. Grace Kelly is the current one with that mantel (from whomever hands them out). Previously it was Alex Hann, then probably some people before him. I remember as a high schooler Amani A.W. Murray as being THE next big thing. The prodigy of the 90s. Charlie Parker reincarnated. Yet I can find just one CD of his? But he was all the rage…..heck, he made me hit the practice room with more zeal than ever before…..
Anyhow, so, big piece on Grace Kelly. The most interesting comment though was from John Renborn which was
How much did Grace’s parents pay CCN to write yet another publicity stunt for Grace? Her parents have paid Lee Konitz, Phil Woods and others A LOT OF MONEY to play with her. Think Jessica Simpson on sax. Why didn’t CNN ask her about this? She is not a prodigy. She is self centered. Ask her why no one at Berklee wanted to be involved with her. She is not a musicians’ musician. With Grace, it is a carefully organized and well funded campaign by her parents to promote a semi talented performer. Ted Gioia, the noted critic and jazz historian, saw right though her as did the NY Times and others. Take a pretty Korean girl, dress her up in tight, low hung leather pants, high heel sneakers and a tank top, give her a sax… You get the picture. Now she wants to go viral aka like Britney Spears. Pathetic.
As a manager and long time jazz promoter I can tell you she is not a prodigy, not even close. She is a somewhat talented kid who plays decent sax, sings so-so, has parents who have spent hundreds of thousand of dollars promoting her by paying well known sax players, and is not deserving of the another poorly researched article.
I think the better example would have been Lana Del Rey or Rebecca Black but whatever. Grace sorta reminds me of Saori Yano, but Saori Yano is way way hotter. Same sorta thing though. Semi-talented to talented performer using sex appeal. Not like that never happens….gosh, using sex appeal. Though Grace has none for me….maybe that is why they are using the Prodigy approach?
Did the parents pay for this? I know that there is another local music store that frequently gets little lame ass write-ups in the newspaper about what they are doing. Like their stupid group Uke classes. Or that they are selling plastic trombones. So yeah, maybe Grace Kelly’s parents did grease the way for this story on CNN. Would not surprise me in the least. When she gets into Newsweek or Time then I’ll be impressed. CNN? Not impressed.
Difference in Selmer Saxes
So, I guess there was some sort of Saxophone Smackdown this weekend. Anyone, someone attended it and came away with some interesting information from Jerome Selmer.
Check it out. Interesting stuff.
Finale Notepad 2012…..FREE……AGAIN
File this under news no one really cares about….
One of the biggest bone head decisions was MakeMusic charging for NotePad, which had been free up until version 2009 (I think). Well, duh…..no one bought it. And the exposure they got for providing a fairly adequate notation program for free evaporated.
Now, at NAMM, they announced that 2012 version of Finale Notepad is going to be free. Now….if they would only maybe follow through? Hello Minnesota….you there?
I dunno exactly what the point is in announcing something then waiting like a month to deliver it. How hard is it to strip out the DRM in it? Seriously, how MakeMusic stays in business is anyone’s guess.
UPDATE 2/15/2012 Seems they, over a month after they announced it, have released Notepad.