Category: Articles

I describe my previous pedal board setup here. A couple of months ago, I replaced the Nano POG with a TC Electronic HOF Mini. I found with the Eventide H9, having the Nano POG was sort of redundant. Plus, I have the Eventide H9 on bluetooth midi, allowing me to easily configure it to change patches when I switch pages in ForScore. 

Having a reverb is really nice to help fill out one’s sound when dealing with different sound systems or performance spots. I still haven’t quite figured out how to get the EWI into this rig yet. The last attempt the volumes from the mic and instrument in on the Eventide Mixing Link were wildly off. Hopefully I’ll figure out a fix soon.

The other addition to the pedal board are the two switches on either side. This was a little project I did last week to incorporate a bluetooth page turner. This project will be documented in the next post.

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Such a good article…..

Saxophone player Justin Walker has fulfilled his childhood dream of “being able to just sort of stand around and wait” professionally, after recently joining a local ska band, elated sources confirmed.

CNet has an article up about LPs.

The continuing audiophile fascination with LPs is a mystery, LPs are ancient tech, records can be noisy, they’re fragile, expensive and they take up a lot of space. The best turntables, high quality phono cartridges, and preamps can cost a fortune. Even so, a lot of audiophiles still favor LPs, I know I do.

I know I still have a bunch of LPs, but do not have any space for them (they are in storage). Why do I have so many LPs? Because, before about 2003 or so it was cheaper to spend $20 and go get a bunch of used LPs of music rather than buying a CD. Digital music was just starting to come out more mainstream. Yes, the late 90s saw Napster. And of course I partook in Napster. Quite honestly, the quality and quantity of music I like was not really good on Napster “back in the day”. And stuff was horribly mislabeled and the encoding was all over the place (anyone remember OGG audio format? Anyone?)

A while ago, I did an article about using FinaleScript to format charts for an iPad. I’ve been working on some charts for a new group I might be playing with, and further added to my script to make the charts work on the iPad.

page layout tool
menu item "Page Layout/Page Margins/Edit Page Margins"
type "0.3" 
tab
type "0.10069"
tab
type "0.10069"
tab
type ".12153" 
tab
select radio "all pages"
press "apply"
press command + "."
select first meas to the end
note spacing
unlock systems

First part of the script opens the selects page layout tool and opens the menu for editing the page margins (first two lines). Then we start filling in what we want (assuming inches are set up as the document default). 0.3″ at the top, 0.10069″ at the sides (why, I dunno, just have used that. You could probably set it to 0.1). Then selecting ALL PAGES and applying it to the pages. Next command closes that window. Then we select ALL the measures, and apply note spacing again. Then we finish off by having it unlock the systems, and it then adjusts how many measure per system to better fit with the new spacing and margins.

Generally, I love how this works. Save a TON of time, and on Finale 25, it works perfectly every time. In the last version of Finale, it would frequently not fire off correctly.

Anyone who uses an iPad for music, you really NEED to get rid of your margins. Things look better on the iPad if you have it formatted like above. I’ve said this for years, since the iPad came out.

On the heels of the last post, An Open Controller For Woodwind Instruments comes this from hackaday.com:

MIDI has been around for longer than most of the readers of Hackaday, and you can get off my lawn. In spite of this, MIDI is still commonly used in nearly every single aspect of musical performance, and there are a host of tools and applications to give MIDI control to a live performance. That said, if you want a MIDI foot controller, your best bet is probably something used from the late 90s, although Behringer makes an acceptable foot controller that doesn’t have a whole bunch of features. There is obviously a need for a feature packed, Open Source MIDI foot controller. That’s where the Pedalino comes in. It’s a winner of the Musical Instrument Challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize, and if you want a MIDI foot controller, this is the first place you should look.

Check it out. Pedalino.

From Hackaday.com:

Engineers, hackers, and makers can most certainly build a musical gadget of some kind. They’ll build synths, they’ll build aerophones, and they’ll take the idea of mercury delay line memory, two hydrophones, and a really long tube filled with water to build the most absurd delay in existence. One thing they can’t seem to do is build a woodwind MIDI controller. That’s where [J.M.] comes in. He’s created the Open Woodwind Project as an open and extensible interface that can play sax and clarinet while connected to a computer.

One of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. Believe it grew out of this project. Can’t wait to see what is created with this.

Steve Neff has a great article about Michael Brecker’s addition to the Living Jazz Archive.

Steve Neff’s Blog Post:

Dr. David Demsey at William Paterson University contacted me a few years ago to tell me about the “Living Jazz Archives” that the University was building and how they were adding a Michael Brecker Archive to the already existing archives that they already had. The Living Jazz Archives are:

A TEACHING TOOL for William Paterson University Jazz Studies majors, for classes in other academic areas across campus, and for visiting groups of students of all ages from public schools, from other colleges and universities, and the general public.

A RESEARCH CENTER for professional scholars, authors and researchers and for faculty from other institutions.

A MINI-MUSEUM honoring the lives and careers of these great jazz artists and their important contribution to the history of jazz, by displaying their music, artifacts and memorabilia using audio, video and multi-media.

AN ARCHIVE, containing the archived collections of Clark Terry, Thad Jones, James Williams, Michael Brecker, Mulgrew Miller and other collections, maintaining and preserving those materials in perpetuity.

Makemusic today released Finale 26. It adds a number of new features. You can find a run down of the new things at ScoringNotes.com.

As a long…..long time Finale user (I think I used it with version 2.5 back in the 90s), Finale is a solid notation program. While there are some great free ones, like musescore, that have gotten popular, Finale is really for people who care what their music looks like. And the ability to make your music look good is important. No one wants to waste time trying to figure out bad notation.

I’m probably going to update to Finale 26 soon.

I’ve had a few pedalboard layouts now. The big issue I have had with the other setups is size, and transporting it. I started off with a Q-Tron on the board. But that got dropped off due to it feeding back a lot. Plus I could never tell if it was engaged or not.

The main input is the Eventide MixingLink. It sounds great, and lets me bypass my effects chain if necessary. It has a couple of different settings, I usually keep it in the latch mode and FX Only. You can set it to be like a mini-mixer if you choose one of the other modes, but I don’t do that.

The first item on the effects chain is the Nano POG. Now, this pedal is probably not going to survive much longer on the board. Why? Cause the next pedal, the Eventide H9 pretty much does everything it does, plus I can control it via bluetooth. I suppose I have left it on the board cause I could engage the Nano POG, and then run it through the H9 to get like 3 octaves of Q-Tron like sounds. Or Distortion. But in reality that has yet to happen. Ideally, I think I am going to sell it to get like a dedicated reverb unit. The orange pedal is a Valeton EP-2 Volume Expression pedal that I’m using as an expression pedal for the H9.

The pedalboard is a Pedaltrain PT-M16-TC Metro 16. Basically, I wanted something small, portable, but also protects the pedals.

The whole thing is powered by the new Eventide PowerMax.

Generally, this setup is pretty solid. Originally, I wanted to run an EWI 4000s through the board, but inconsistent volume issues killed that. I haven’t had time to revisit it yet.

Things to add. I’m considering hacking up my Donner Bluetooth Page turner to put on the board. Or perhaps making a switcher using and Arduino or RPI Zero W.

Anyone else use pedals on their sax?