Steinberg – Classroom Resource Pack

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Steinberg – Classroom Resource Pack

Not sure what happened to the Music Education Alliance, but Steinberg announced their Classroom Resource Pack.

“Computer technology is increasingly being used for teaching music in schools world-wide,” comments Mark Porter, Steinberg’s International Sales Manager. “But often the task of providing classroom resources is left to the individual teacher, even if their personal experience using modern music technology products has been somewhat limited. So the huge quantity of structured, high-quality resources provided by the Steinberg Classroom Resource Pack will be invaluable to music teachers everywhere, whether they are experienced Cubase users or are completely new to using computers – because it gives them more time for applying their teaching rather than preparing for it,” he continues.

Blah, blah, blah. Look, kids don’t want stupid worksheets to do. They want to play. The want to learn music, not do some generated worksheet. Technology. CMEA just discovered Band in a Box. Maybe in 10 years they will discover this? Maybe? Perhaps?
UPDATE: 02/16/08 by E: The latest issue of Time Magazine has an article about “How To Make Better Teachers”. Funny thing is that technology is not mentioned in the article. Hmmm….

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CMEA and Technology

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on CMEA and Technology

I just was given, to look at, some technology thing from some guy named Wilson, who is in charge of CMEA (California Music Educators Association) technology or something. Anyhow, it was about Band in a Box. It read like this guy had just found the Holy Grail. And, he had really BAD rendered backgrounds done off the Macintosh version of it. Like Nintendo type backgrounds.
First off, I don’t know if I should be amused or saddened by this. On the one hand, it is great that this guy has found Band in a box, but at the same time, it has been out since….the Atari ST. Which would be 1988 or so. And CMEA is just now finding out about this? And they want tax payers to pay more money for the schools? What?
Band in a Box is a great program, but you should avoid the Macintosh version. It is 5 versions behind at my last count. It lacks a ton of features that the PC version does. If you want to run it on a Mac, get an Intel mac, and do the Boot Camp thing or run it with Parallels. It works fine.

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Orchestra In A Box

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Orchestra In A Box

Why do you need “real people” when you can get this?

Vision DAW and East West announce an 8-Core Xeon Server-Class Workstation, including the complete Quantum Leap Orchestral collection. This set runs with Play software (64 bits) and the virtual orchestra takes up a 4U rack with 2 Quad-Core Xeon 5440 at 2.83GHz, with 16 Go RAM (8 x 2Go at 667MHz), 1 Teraoctet storage, a dual screen video card and a sound card RME Hammerfall 9652. Possibility to customize RAID configuration.
Dreamin’ Price for the whole symphony orchestra starts at $5,800

You can go really insane in configuring this thing….pimped out, you can spend $14K or so…

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Scientists With Too Much Free Time

Posted on By ericdano 6 Comments on Scientists With Too Much Free Time

I wonder why things like this get funded.

John Coltrane and other famed jazz saxophonists hit piercing high notes that amateurs can’t by expertly changing the shape of their vocal tracts, research now reveals.

No shit Sherlock. It’s called having chops. Practicing for a long time.

Untangling this mystery has proven hard, since it is challenging making precise acoustic measurements inside the mouth during playing.

You think? Really? No way.

“It’s wet in the mouth and the acoustic conditions in there are really variable, and it gets really loud in there during playing,” explained researcher Jer-Ming Chen, an acoustician at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

No, you think?
Can I get a grant to do pointless research like this? Jer-Ming Chen, why not focus on IMPORTANT SCIENCE? Oh, maybe creating renewable energy, or creating a cure for cancer? No? Too hard? Is that why you had to spend time on this “science”?

Chen added that for pro saxophonists to reach these notes, “they say they have to hear the sound in their head, to kind of get a mental image of the sound. This suggests they have some muscle memory with this tuning. I think that means anyone can learn how to do this, but you need to put in a lot of practice to get that same muscle memory.”

A scientific study which “proves” the obvious. I give you a nice “golf clap” for this. Now go freaking do something worthwhile with science. Geeze.

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Hancock/Brecker Win At Grammy Awards

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Hancock/Brecker Win At Grammy Awards

I’m a little confused as to what the difference is between Album of the Year and Record of the Year. But, anyhow from CNN:

Amy Winehouse had a great night at the Grammys, winning five awards, but in a shocking finish, the big award — album of the year — went to Herbie Hancock for “River: The Joni Letters.”

Some other winners are:
Traditional Pop Vocal Album: “Call Me Irresponsible,” Michael Buble
Contemporary Jazz Album: “River: The Joni Letters,” Herbie Hancock.
Jazz Vocal Album: “Avant Gershwin,” Patti Austin.
Jazz Instrumental Solo: “Anagram,” Michael Brecker, soloist.
Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group: “Pilgrimage,” Michael Brecker.
Latin Jazz Album: “Funk Tango,” Paquito D’Rivera Quintet.
Instrumental Composition: “Cerulean Skies,” Maria Schneider, composer (Maria Schneider Orchestra).

Great to see Michael Brecker getting some awards. Finally.

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Auto-Tune Abuse

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Auto-Tune Abuse

I came across this article from Hometracked.com.

Pitch correction software has applications from restoration and mix-rescue to outright distortion of a voice or instrument. I’ll discuss some of the more tasteful uses of these auto-tune tools (whether the original from Antares, or a variant like the free GSnap) below. But first I thought I’d highlight their misuse to illustrate the effects we usually try to avoid.

I think the second example on the page is more of a vocoder thing, ala Gorillaz or Peter Gabriel. However, there is a band I play in where we are trying to do a CD, so, we hired someone to record us live. After 3 months, he had two songs done, and I’d say they are not anything to write home about. He even put in clapping which makes it sound even more fake.
When I record, I try NOT to do much to it. Balance it, sure, but pitch correction…..not really, unless there is something that totally sticks out like a sore thumb. I had a two or three songs that students did before Christmas that I had to do some pitch correction with, but it was not the whole song. Just a couple of notes here and there.

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Talking Jazz

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I came across this website:

New from musician, author, journalist Ben Sidran, Talking Jazz includes an eighty page booklet with essays from writers, critics and musicians, classic photos from Lee Tanner, and 24 compact discs featuring conversations with 60 jazz greats, recorded during a five year period for Sidran’s award winning NPR program “Sidran On Record”.

I’m wondering if anyone heard this collection, or perhaps the original NPR broadcasts. Any good?

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All Plastic Saxophone

Posted on By ericdano 2 Comments on All Plastic Saxophone

There seems to be a resurgence in this idea. Enter the Vibrotosax.

To create more saxophonist in the world is our prime concern. Our designer team need to accomplish 3 objectives….Design a saxophone that everyone can afford, provide a standard fingering configuration and producce a solid saxophone sound. The solution: to replace brass with polymer. By doing so we not only change the material but also the process of saxophone manufacturing which has remained unchanged since 1843.

Besides the strange English (they are a Thailand company and refer to the King of Thailand in their about page), aren’t we experiencing a strange sense of Deja Vu? I mean……haven’t we been there, done that?

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John Coltrane Reference Book

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Here is a review of the forementioned John Coltrane Reference Book.

Porter combines meticulous scholarship with an eye for telling details, the revealing and necessary details about Coltrane’s life and music that constantly open up new perspectives. There is no gratuitous quoting of literary figures irrelevant to Coltrane, or bizarre factoids (the attendance at a New York Museum of Modern Art Chagall show the year Coltrane’s classic quartet recorded at The Village Vanguard (see page 69 in Ratliff).

Though the price is still daunting……$150

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M-Audio Fast Track Ultra

Posted on By ericdano 59 Comments on M-Audio Fast Track Ultra

Fast Track Ultra PictureI got into recording a while ago, my first interface being an original MOTU 828. That thing works great. However, it is not supported in ProTools, and I kind of want to start using ProTools more. Plus, I want to move it to my home studio to hopefully make it easier to record virtual tracks by connecting my PC and Mac together via the ADAT outputs of the 828. Anyhow, M-Audio came out with a diminutive new little recording box that works with ProTools M-Powered, and supposedly has excellent microphone preamps as well. This box would be their new USB2 Fast Track Ultra interface.

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Music Education Alliance

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Music Education Alliance

This was announced today:

Leaders in their respective fields, Garritan, MakeMusic, Steinberg and Yamaha have formed a partnership that will provide integrated solutions to the music education market in the United States.

Announced at Winter NAMM 2008, the Music Education Software and Hardware (MESH) initiative brings together hardware, software, sound content and curriculum to provide compelling and complete turn-key solutions for today’s music educators, who are often faced with an array of products that can be difficult to navigate and integrate. In addition to aggregating four major components of music education technology into a seamless bundle, the alliance will also provide training to teachers based in the U. S., enabling them to fully utilize the power of computer music technology solutions.

Honestly, why? It sounds to me like a way for school teachers to waste money. Again. Spending thousands of dollars or more on some “solution” to make kids learn better. Money like that could be spent on lowering the student/teacher ratio. Very strange bedfellows as well. Leaders in their fields? Marketing speak at it’s finest!

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NAMM Show 2008

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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……..

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