So You Wanna Record A Big Band — Redux

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Back in October 2008 I did a post that estimated the cost of getting all the gear to have a recording rig for your big band. Now, lets take a look at if things have changed.

The original post I went with an Alesis HD24 which was $1600 then. Its the same price now. For preamps, I went with the PreSonus’s DigiMax D8 which were going for $450. Now they go for about $400. We need three of these to give us 24 tracks. For mics, I had two options. Option one was 13 Shure 57s with stands and cables. Then they were $124 each. Now they are $109. Lets keep it simple and stick with that option.

Case for the PreSonus preamps and the Alesis. Its still about the same, $200. And we will keep the same snakes, which are still the same price. We need three of them. $200 each.

Running total now is $5017. Before it was $5412. The only real price difference was the DigiMax D8s and the Shure Mics. We still need to add in drum set mics which haven’t changed in price ($400), and two Rode NT4s, one for the drum overhead and one for acoustic piano. They haven’t changed in price. $530 each. And two SKB mic cases, which haven’t changed in price either. $150 each. And you need a vocalist mic, a Shure 58, which is $99, was $109.

Final total…..$6876. A year and a half ago, it was $7277. The single biggest cost are the microphones. I went the Shure 57 route due to cost and their reliability, but there are alternatives out there that are cheaper. And there are alternatives that are more expensive. If money was NO OPTION, I would probably replace the 13 mics used for the horns with Sennheiser 421s. However, at $299 not including stand and cable, replacing the Shure 57s with these would about $3887 and that is NOT including cables and stands. However, the microphones are really THE thing to spend money on.

So, it is slightly cheaper to get the gear. This is for all new stuff too. If you are internet savvy, you could probably score most all of the gear off Ebay or Craigslist or you could get the scratch and dent deals or open boxed ones. This could lower the costs by hundreds of dollars.

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Wind Controller+TouchOSC+PureData=Cool

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Ok, now this guy is rocking technology. He’s using a Yamaha WX 5, TouchOSC and an open source program called PureData. Just watching this opens up a LOT of interesting ideas. Like using the TouchOSC to control loops, or change patches, or apply filters, or…….the things are endlessly possible.

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Rico Saxophone Strap

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A few months ago, RicoReeds.com had a survey or something (honestly don’t remember) on their website that, if you took the time to fill it out, they’d send you a neck strap. Well, lo and behold months later, I received said strap.

(it looks sorta like the one on the right, sorta. The patterns different.) If I was buying this strap for $10, I would. The hook is great, and it adjusts in a snap. That is what I love. My favorite neckstrap to take on gigs, especially if I have to switch saxophones a lot or use a bass clarinet, is a Ray Hyman strap.

Why you say? It adjusts instantly, and easily. But it has no padding?!? True enough, but generally in Orchestra Pit work and gigs, one wears a shirt with a collar. However, since I am down to ONE of these Ray Hyman straps (from 3 :-/), this Rico Strap will probably be the strap of choice. It is more comfy than the Hyman, but still has its adjustability. Oh, and they also make the same strap but padded.

I like this strap. Even though it says Tenor/Baritone, it works fine on Tenor/Alto. Thanks Rico/D’Addario for finally sending it out!

Reviews

100 Major II-V-I Bebop Lines SK “Single-Key” Edition

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Dear all,

Greetings!

I am writing to let you know the complete set of “100 Major II-V-I Bebop Lines SK Edition” is now uploaded to the Downloads section at JKChang.com.  The SK “Single Key” Edition features bebop lines from the original “100 Major II-V-I Bebop Lines vol. 1” organized into individual key. This organization is designed to help improvisers to work on II-V-I lines in specific keys and might be helpful additions as the pre-chromatic transposition exercises.

Edition Information:

“This volume of the Jazz Improvisation Series, an extension of 100 Major II-V-I Bebop Lines, emphasizes upon major II-V-I jazz lines stylized in the Bebop tradition. In this edition, 100 Bebop lines are grouped into single keys to facilitate the development and familiarity of Bebop idiom of specified key. It is recommended that users start the exercises in a comfortable speed and gradually build up the facility to satisfy the technical demands in faster tempos.”

PDF file (200+ pages) is located in the Downloads page.  Click “Featured Download” banner to access the corresponding page for SK Edition.  Additionally, please submit your ideas and suggestions in the “comment” section of “Downloads” page if you have specific requests for new biab materials.  Please leave suggestions for existing projects in their corresponding pages. Thank you.

As always, I hope these materials will be useful to some of you:-)

Regards,

J.K.

Sheet Music

Capo 1.1.4

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Capo 1.1.4

The world of programs to slow down songs to figure them out has another member, Capo ($49). Right off the bat, this program has a great interface.
Capo Screen Shot
Smooth, and Mac. It also has a great vocal remover. And you can export sections of the songs to a file, or if you removed the vocals, you can save it to a file. You can also add markers for sections of the song and stuff. Pretty cool.

Yet…..for a $1 more, you can get Transcribe, which might not have the amazing Mac interface, but has way more functionality….like using the markers to divide up the beats between measure markers. Or the spectrum analysis (which is EXTREMELY helpful).

So, while I like Capo’s feel, for the same price, you can get Transcribe….which is better. Maybe if they dropped the price to $25 or so, it might be worth having in the arsenal. But not for $49 when there is something way better for that price.

Reviews

Mixing a Big Band CD – Part 1

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Back in August of 2007 and January of 2008, a Big Band that I play in recorded two live performances for a “Demo CD”. Well, in the 2 some years since we made the two recordings, the project has become a full-blown album that is currently playing on Jazz Radio stations and available on the iTunes store. This is the multipart story of how I mixed 8 of the 17 songs on the CD.

The original idea was that we wanted more gigs, and that a lot of people wanted to hear the band before booking it, so we needed a “Demo CD”. At the time we had live recordings that I was making using my Rode NT 4, but a lot of them suffered from crowd noise, wind noise, etc. We wanted something a little bit better. So, we hired someone to do a live recording of the band. Each person individually mic’d, etc, etc. The first concert was in August of 2007, part of a Jazz thing the area puts on (though I don’t think they did it this year…..darn economy). It was held at the Blackhawk Auto Museum.

If you have been to the museum, or look at the pictures…..it is a recording person’s nightmare. Marble floors, surfaces where things bounce off of (cars, pillars, people), plus crowd noise. The crowd was there for a night of socializing and stuff, and as the evening went on, the noise became louder and louder (more on that in later). Anyhow, we had the concert, I made a live recording using my gear, and listened to it. Lots of noise, people talking, eating, dropping glasses, etc. Lots of reverb from the room (more like a Batcave to me).

The mix engineer pretty much decided that the session wasn’t going to yield a lot of material. I think he looked at 3 tracks or so. The project pretty much sat in limbo until the next concert where the scene was totally different. An actual performing arts center. A quiet audience. Acoustic grand piano (the Blackhawk gig the piano player used a keyboard). Different lead alto. Different microphones. Pretty much totally the opposite of the first recording session.

In the interval between the two concerts, I won a contest. Yeah. It DOES happen to people. So, suddenly I had stuff that was like…..pro level. Stuff I didn’t now how to use (I was a Digital Performer person since…..forever). And in January of 2008, my trusty old PowerMac Quicksilver 2002 (or my hackintosh, since I upgraded it to dual processor, etc etc) died and I replaced it with a 2008 MacPro Dual Quad-Core. The stars were aligning. In I believe March of 2008 I got to go to a mixing session. I had mentioned to the engineer that I had recently come into a ProTools setup (M-Powered), and if I could maybe get the tracks to the first concert to mess around with to get my feet wet in ProTools and whatnot. He agreed, and during that session in March, I brought a portable drive with me, and he loaded up a blank session (with like 3 edits he did) that was the Blackhawk concert. Something like 18 tracks totaling over 20 gigs of data……

Part two (what I got…..what a mess!) Coming soon.

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Big Thanks To All!

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About a year or so ago, I added Google Ads to my various websites. I chose to do a rather unobtrusive banner ad rather than something more obnoxious like everything you click on brings up a popup. Well, I finally got a check from Google. So, those clicks on ads do actually turn into money! It took about a year to get past the $100 mark. Can we do it sooner this time? Maybe? So far we are at $6….

Perhaps I’ll put something cool up from my archives if we can reach $100 within a shorter time……wonder how much money I could make if everything little thing caused a popup ad to happen…..hmmm………

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The Apple iPad…..Revolution

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Ok, so, unless you have been living in a Cave, you know that there was a great event held on Wednesday. Something all the media covered. Something everyone was waiting for with baited breath. Steve Jobs announced the fabled Apple Tablet. (And some guy named Obuma was doing some standup comedy later in the evening as well).

A lot of Gadget people were bemoaning the lack of this or that. No camera (front or rear), no USB, no HDMI, no Verizon, no Multitasking, no FLASH. Waaa! Sadly, these people are missing the point. It does need to have these things and was designed not to (except maybe the camera…rumors are that there was a prototype version that had one, and the software seems to have hooks for them).

So, what does this mean? And what does this mean for musicians. Can start scanning all our books into the computer? Can we ditch that lame electronic music things like this, this and this? Well, for traditional musicians, I think that scanning your music is a music regardless of what you plan on viewing it on. It might sound like a waste of time, but when you can’t find that book of etudes by so and so that you know you have but don’t know what happened to it….and that it is out of print. Yeah, you’ll be happy that you had the foresight to scan a copy for your archive. Now, viewing music that was made for 8 1/2″ by 11″ pieces of paper on a 9.56″ x 7.47″ device (slightly smaller actual viewing area)? Dunno. Obviously the music would need to be scaled down. Would that make it unreadable then? Dunno. However, if the music is formatted for that size, it would be no problem. Perhaps some witty programmer will design a program that will slice up music PDFs and make them more viewable. I for one plan on offering up iPad versions of stuff here. So, people with iPad can practice the tomb of II/V patterns, or Brecker solos, or whatever.

I think the bigger impact is going to be the cool apps for this. If you have an iPhone/iTouch, you already know all the handy apps out there for it. Now, increase the screen size 3 times and make it faster……can we say mixing applications? Slowdown apps? Multitrack recording device? Practice tool? Tuner? Hmmm….

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Run ProTools On Mackie Hardware? Say What???

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This summer, Mackie unveiled a new line Onyx-i firewire mixers that you could, with the purchase of a $50 driver, run Pro Tools M-Powered 8 with. You don’t need to own a M-Audio interface. It would just “work”. A lot of people thought Mackie was going to get a taste of Digidesign’s lawyer division in short order. BUT….it seems they have indeed licensed something with Digidesign, so it is now “legal” to run Pro Tools on a Mackie Onyx mixer.

So, why? And why should you care? I think the reason is that Avid (Digidesign and M-Audio’s parent company) has seen that tons of people are using other pieces of software. Logic, Sonar, Digital Performer, Cakewalk, to name but a FEW. Allowing Mackie hardware to use ProTools allows the software, which is really great IMHO, more exposure. Plus you could have a full 32 track studio happening if you bought 2 Onyx 1640i mixers. True, you don’t get the motorized faders that something like the 003 has (if you have Pro Tools LE) or the Project Mix I/O. But both of these only have 8 preamps.

Anyhow, It is great news. Mackie and Digi working together? Hmmm….

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Rock Band Network…..Saxophone Hero?

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I’ve seen this around the net, even linked from SyFy.com. It’s kind of neat, but…..could we please have real notation? Also….why bother doing this in the first place? I mean, it’s one thing to play pop/rock songs on saxophone (which I have no qualms about doing), but I don’t really see this doing much for anyone….

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Misa Guitar

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Ok, forget that Eigenharp Alpha. What Akai needs to do for the next EWI is something like the Misa Guitar.


Engadget describes it as “Essentially a MIDI controller, the Misa guitar has 24 frets and a large multifunctional touchscreen, which you can use to interface with the appropriate software on your pc.”

Ok, now someone get on putting a large, 10 inch by 2 or 3 inch touch screen on something you can blow into. That would be amazing I think.

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