Jazz-Sax, all things Jazz and Sax
The NAMM show kicked off the other day. So far, I haven’t seen anything that pops out “Whoa, that’s neat” to me. Some interesting things are:
I haven’t seen anything saxophonish yet……..
Belkin has a product coming out that looks rather good. Belkin Podcast Studio.
Belkin Podcast Studio is an advanced attachment for your iPod to add high quality recording capabilities. Dual XLR and 1/4-inch channels offer a solid range of recording options. A built-in mic and speaker are powered by their own battery, saving your iPod juice better used for listening to your genius later.
Engadget has some more pictures of it.
Seems no one knows if it has phantom power or not (probably not), and it seems to be 16 bit. Though, if you hook up a iPod Nano to it, and have 4+ gigs of free space, that would easily give you 6 hours of 16bit 44.1Khz recording.
Two potential problems. First, battery life. If it is iPod battery powered, who knows how long it will last. Plus, if it has phantom power on the XLR plugs, that would probably kill the iPod’s battery in no time. Recording on my Marantz flash recorder using phantom power pretty much kills 8 AA batteries if I record 3 hours of stuff.
Second problem, Windows formatted iPods. You can’t get, as far as I know, over 2 gigabyte files on a FAT formatted drive. I tried copying Pirates Of The Caribbean on an FAT (PC) formatted iPod that was 2.6 gigabytes in size. The iPod did not like that. Mac formatted ones didn’t complain.
So, it’s an interesting idea, especially since most everyone already has an iPod, but until we see it actually come out (June?), we can only guess.
I’m a little late on this, probably due to not having internet during this time, but Frank Morgan passed away on December 14th.
Frank Morgan, 73, a jazz saxophonist of impeccable ability, whose claim to the mantle of the celebrated Charlie Parker was clouded by his heroin addiction, died Dec. 14 at his home in Minneapolis. He had colon cancer and kidney failure.
I have a few Frank Morgan albums, and he plays his ass off.
There are a lot of music related shows coming up. CES (next week), NAMM (towards the end of the month), and MacWorld (Jan. 15th I believe). Lots of cool music related items to be showed there. Here is a peek of a few.
Belkin’s RockStar. Connect 5 headphones to one iPod. $20
Sennheiser wireless headphones. These new ones use something other than bluetooth or wifi, and supposedly sound better and have a better battery life as well.
More things soon.
Ok, after some tinkering, I think everything is working ok. The biggest problem was getting the site to send out Emails for new users and existing users who are subscribed to receive updates. If anyone is experiencing anything strange, drop me a post or email.
There is a new Coltrane book out by Lewis Porter, Chris DeVito, David Wild, Yasuhiro Fujioka, and Wolf Schmaler.
Few jazz musicians have had the lasting influence or attracted as much scholarly study as John Coltrane. Yet, despite dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and his own recorded legacy, the “facts” about Coltrane’s life and work have never been definitely established. Well-known Coltrane biographer and jazz educator Lewis Porter has assembled an international team of scholars to write The John Coltrane Reference, an indispensable guide to the life and music of John Coltrane.
The John Coltrane Reference features a a day-by-day chronology, which extends from 1926-1967, detailing Coltrane’s early years and every live performance given by Coltrane as either a sideman or leader, and a discography offering full session information from the first year of recordings, 1946, to the last, 1967. The appendices list every film and television appearance, as well as every recorded interview. Richly illustrated with over 250 album covers and photos from the collection of Yasuhiro Fujioka, The John Coltrane Reference will find a place in every major library supporting a jazz studies program, as well as John Coltrane enthusiasts.
At a whopping $150 for 608 pages, is this a must own for Coltrane nuts?
No no, it was not some sort of FBI raid, or something that took us down. It was signing up for AT&T’s new Uverse service under the impression that you could keep your existing DSL line (on another number other than what Uverse was going to be installed on). Well, that was NOT the case as the DSL went down on December 11th. After a few calls on the 11th, and 12th, on the 13th someone from AT&T informed me that you cannot have Uverse and DSL coming to the same residence even though they are on different phone lines. So, I cancelled the Uverse service (not all that great anyhow), and the next 2 1/2 weeks began my struggle with AT&T to get them to activate the DSL again. They promised the following Tuesday, 18th, which they missed and said that Friday the 21st it should be up. Nada. Then on Monday the 24th, someone finally saw that there was some sort of Uverse hold on it, and cleared it, and Thursday the 27th was the date to get it up. No. The tech who came out on the 27th finally went to bat for me, and today, the 31st, the internet is back. Whew. What a pain. AT&T is getting a nasty letter from me, and the PUC is getting one about this as well.
Two good things came out of this whole mess. One good thing though was that I discovered Google Applications. There is a way to host your email there. That is huge, and it filters out a ton of spam. Previously, email was being served by this server, and I got all the strange spam and stuff. The other good thing was that I really, really relied on my iPhone during this. Even on the Edge network, I was able to connect to my daily sites, email, etc. In fact, I seem to miss the whole browsing with your fingers thing now……though it’s nice to have it hook up via WiFi now.
One of the greatest pianists, Oscar Peterson, died today. I was lucky to see him once in concert. Amazing. He was probably around 75 at the time. He made it look easy. He will be missed.
Announced at AES, SSL Pro Convert sounds like a very cool piece of software. Say you have a project you recorded in Digital Performer, and want to put in ProTools M-Powered. You can’t. Nope. Yeah, it sucks. It is stupid. But you simply can’t export a OMF file out of Digital Performer and open it in Protools M-Powered. So, all that stuff I won a while ago, I can’t use ProTools on projects I have in Digital Performer. In fact, most of my stuff is in Digital Performer as that is what is in my teaching studio, since you need to have M-Audio or Digidesign hardware to run Protools (in addition to a iLok USB key).
Anyhow, SSL Pro Convert seems to be a piece of software that sounds like it would overcome this problem. Not sure how much they are going to want for something like this, but it might be worth it to some people. Though, that new M-Audio interface, coupled with Protools looks real tempting.
It is out, the latest version of Band in a Box. I took some guesses at what might be new in this version, and sadly, it looks like only two were put in. And that one was kind of a jest suggestion on my part.
From PG Music.Com
RealTracks. With the previous release of Band-in-a-Box, we added RealDrums. Now we’ve added three additional “Real” instruments, including Real Pedal Steel, Real Acoustic Guitar, and Tenor Sax soloing (RealSax). These tracks replace the MIDI track for that instrument, and can be controlled just like the MIDI instrument (volume changes, muting etc.). Best of all, they follow the chord progression that you have entered, so that you hear an authentic audio accompaniment to your song. These are not “samples,” but are full recordings, lasting from 1 to 8 bars at a time, playing along in perfect sync with the other Band-in-a-Box tracks. RealTracks can be built in to the style, and would replace either the bass, guitar, piano, or strings part, or they can be generated to the Soloist (or Melody) track using the Soloist feature.
Band in a Box starts the process of leaving its roots, and becoming more like a really bad GarageBand. In GarageBand, you can graphically create songs, preview the loops you are going to use, and then put them together, graphically. Band in A Box (BinaB) is becoming the MS-DOS version of GarageBand. You type in the text you want, then it will generate the loops for you, rather than doing it graphically.
I’m sure it all sounds good, real people playing beats midi usually.
Read More “Band In A Box 2008 Released” »
Gotta love technology. M-Audio has introduced a new USB2 audio/midi interface. 4 really excellent microphone preamps, and DSP (for near zero latency mixes/monitoring). List price, $450, but the street price is quite a bit less.
UPDATE 11/28 by E: After checking the Mic preamp specs, and that of the Project Mix I/O, the Mic preamps on this new box are a lot better. After doing some recordings with the Project Mix I/O at 96Khz, I thought the preamps were amazing……..so this little box might be capable of some even more amazing recordings.
This was posted yesterday on PGMusic.com.
We’re looking for current users of Band-in-a-Box 2007 to help us test some of our latest features. In order to qualify as a beta tester, you must be:
- A current user of Band-in-a-Box 2007 For Windows.
Seems the Macintosh version will languish another year without an update (yet again). Wonder what is going to be in the new version. Last year, they introduced RealDrums into the program. This year? I don’t know, but lets speculate a little.
Read More “New Version of Band In A Box Starts Beta Testing” »
I don’t know about you, but this is disturbing:
Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of the open-source WordPress blogging software, last night celebrated a $25 million “bonus” from investors by purchasing a $1 million Louis Armstrong trumpet, which he plans to use as a fruit bowl.
There are a lot of things a trumpet used by Louis Armstrong could be used for. A Fruit bowl is not on my list. In fact, why not donate the money to some worthy foundation? Or maybe set up a scholarship program in the bay area for music? There are a lot of things you could do instead of buying a historic instrument and using it for a fruit bowl. Seriously. And $7 million for a house? Hope the tech bubble does not burst again….
You know, you think you never will win these contests that you enter online. Well….NA NA NA NA! I seem to have won one.
I subscribe to the great SOS magazine which has all kinds of invaluable tips and insights on……tons of stuff like recording, using programs like Logic or Digital Performer or Protools, micing techniques, how to make your mixes sound better, etc. I decided to get a subscription last year when I came across their site while researching some audio products. I have saved many, MANY of the articles for future reference.
Anyhow, they have these contests you can enter. And I try to enter them, but you know you never expect to win. Ha! Woohoo. Not quite sure exactly what I’ve won yet, but I’ll keep you all posted…….(I think it is like $4K worth of stuff, like an M-Audio keyboard, monitors, etc…..maybe a Project Mix I/O? I hope???)
*Dances* Funny thing is that I was getting ready to purchase a new Firewire interface…..but now……not sure I’m going to need to 
Read More “Won Stuff From SOS and M-Audio” »
Seventh String software, which makes the excellent Transcribe software, has released two free programs (java applications). A Metronome and a Tuner. Nifty!