One of my favorite sites every year is the NAMM Oddities site where Barry Wood puts up strange things he saw at the annual NAMM show. This year there were a LOT of iPad things. Most of the things are geared towards drums and guitar and tech. However, there was ONE thing on the NAMM oddities page that caught my attention.
JoyTunes has developed a rather interesting learning system for recorder. Check it out. It could easily be applied to any woodwind or brasswind instrument. Stuff like this has been around for piano for ages. Sorta like Guitar Hero/Rock Band. Check it out for yourselves and decide.
If you don’t know who Isaac Asimov is then go education yourself. He coined the term Robotics, beat the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, and wrote a bunch of stuff. He also seemed to pretty much predict what we have today. He has some interesting ideas about education that we should pay attention to. He would have been in his 90s now if he had not died of HIV which he had contracted during a triple bypass surgery in 1983. He would be amazed to see what we have done.
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.
JazzU offers all students of Jazz — players, teachers, arrangers, and Jazz lovers – an invaluable computer-based resource for the study of Jazz music with top instructors and players. JazzU faculty members are professionals whose credentials embrace both formal study and a wealth of experience as performers on the bandstand, the concert stage, and in the recording studio. For the student, JazzU offers the insights of top professional musicians and teachers who combine an appreciation of the rich Jazz tradition with the ability to play and teach in all styles and genres – Traditional, Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, Latin, Modern, Fusion, and beyond.
For $50, it sounds like a good deal. The only thing that it lacks, it seems, is a way to evaluate how you played them. Programs like Teach Me Piano do this, and they are brutal. But it is an effective way to get better.
Sometimes, you need to get help with stuff. Mostly, it seems nowadays people need help with tech stuff. Finale, Sibelius, Protools, Digital Performer, etc. What if you could, for a small fee, have access to an expert guiding you through these and other programs? You can. HowAudio.Com offers a growing number of online tutorials. They have a woodwind section, a Protools section, a Digital Performer section, and more. There are some samples that you can view to get a taste of what the tutorials are like. $19.99 a month for all of the tutorials. Interesting stuff!