Jazz-Sax, all things Jazz and Sax
On Kickerstarter, there is an interesting kickerstarter for a new wireless/wired page turning pedal, the PageFlip Firefly. Looks like a great way to get one for cheap (probably like $20 off). They don’t ship until Feb 2014 though.
I don’t have any experience with using these on an iPad, but I have been using a “classic” X-Keys pedal for about 6 years for my dual monitor teaching setup. It works great.
For several years now, I have been storing my digital assets on a RAID5 system. The first system was a box I build from old PC parts and a raid controller. It held a whopping 1 terabyte in storage. It was loud.
The second system was a ReadyNAS NV. This was a little shoebox size computer that held 4 drives. It worked remarkably well, even when I swapped out the original 250 gig drives with 1 terabyte drives (to make my total storage close to 3 terabytes). Great little unit, but it was slow (650mhz processor).
Last year I upgraded to a Synology DS1512. The first unit I got had a serious firmware issue, and they had to send me a new unit. It had been running flawlessly until about two weeks ago. Then, a drive failed….
No big deal. I had two drives fail on the readynas unit. You simply take up the disk, put in a new one, and it rebuilds itself…..no data lost. The synology unit should be the same. So, I proceeded to go on amazon and order a new drive…..then the improbable happened……a second drive failed.
Now, RAID5 is designed to handle one drive dying, not two. Technically, the drive didn’t completely die, the system map got screwed up somehow. Basically, the unit crashed miserably, and probably was not recoverable (didn’t even boot)
Luckily, over the summer, I got a two disk synology unit, and had been remotely syncing changes from the DS1512 to it. Plus I had also been using the readynas nv as a backup as well. So, I didn’t lose nearly 3 terabytes of songs, movies, books, and recordings.
Now, you probably don’t have a NAS. But you probably have a computer. You need to backup files now. Get a hard drive and use time machine on the Mac or whatever similar program exists for windows. Backup. Seriously consider getting a CrashPlan or similar service account.
You can never have too many backups.
Sibelius 6 has just been announced. I’m not seeing much that makes me go “whoa” like when they put in Parts and Score linking. The noteworthy features I saw are:
They also seem to have snagged some of Finale’s “features” like Sing in Music, Slurs, chords, putting dynamics in based on how hard you played. Go check it out.
Kinda cool I guess…
Gearjunkies.com has opened a neat new little site called Gearjunkies UserStudios. Here, people can flaunt their pro, semi-pro, project, or home studios. Though, right now, it seems that a lot of info is left out such as microphones, computers used, etc. But it was just launched, so, hopefully, that will be coming soon.
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…
I 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.
Read More “M-Audio Fast Track Ultra” »
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……..
I’m sure all of you have seen or played Guitar Hero. Or perhaps the bigger, and some say better, Rock Band. Here is something even better. Guitar Wizard. I believe it is a new, way better version of this. Done right, it would be very cool. Could be a new way to learn an instrument. Naturally, the company could apply this to any and all instruments, including saxophone. Check out a video of it with the HOT Veronica Belmont.
You’ve probably heard of YouTube. I’d say, it’s kind of like Napster of almost 10 years ago. People post all kinds of videos there, some are legal, some not (TV Shows, probably some of these videos, etc).
Anyhow, there are a number of great Jazz videos there. Do a search of Coltrane, or Michael Brecker. There are some fantastic videos there, even a recent one of Michael playing a new EWI. So go over to YouTube, and type in the name of a few of your favorite musicians. I’m sure you’ll find a good clip there. I’m still looking for a good clip of Quincy Jones (on Sat Nite Live) doing Manteca with Michael Brecker.
On a related note, if you like the video a LOT, you can download a program like PodTube to have it on your iPod.
Update: 08/28 18:30 GMT by E :Here are some of my favorites so far:
And a whole lot more.