If you don’t know who Dan Higgins is, you have heard him…..in movies, on TV soundtracks, albums, etc. He’s everywhere. Check him out.
Tag Archives: Studio
Spare Room to Studio in 10 Minutes
The SOS Forums had this interesting thread about a bloke who can turn his guest room into a studio in about 10 minutes.
My studio set up consists of a control room/office which is unusual in that it has no parallel surfaces, even a sloping roof. This room is loosely triangular being a maximum of 4.8m long and 4.5m deep. There’s a short 1.2m corridor (which I call the portal) that leads into a guest bedroom which is 3m by 2.7m.
Sometime ago I renovated the guest room so that I can convert it into a studio in around 10 minutes and I thought this might be interesting/useful.
The guest bedroom has a permanently installed double bed in it, but I’ve put it on hinges! It’s really easy to hinge the bed onto the wall
Pictures and other info with the original post.
Gearjunkies User Studios
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.
Pimped Out Studio
The idea, which I have had for years, was to have a digital studio where I didn’t go through reams of paper every year. I finally did it. Using an iMac, and it’s video spanning capabilities, I made a digital music stand. While the technology has been there, the costs were way too high. The costs for this was around $650+/-. $70 for the VESA Mount, $100 for the Conga stand, $300 for the monitor, $25 for the iMac video adapter, $120 for the USB foot pedal, and $6 for the plastic cover and connectors (Tap Plastics rocks). A year or two ago, this would have been a lot more. A year from now, it will be less. That’s technology for ya.
Pictures and more inside……
I have a lot of songs that I have done on Finale and on PDF, enough to fill a 3 inch binder. In fact, I have 5 such binders that I have tried to store copies of the songs so I wouldn’t need to print them out if I wanted to play them with a student. One problem with this system is finding songs. An Index? Well, I suppose, but it is a pain keeping it up to date, and flipping though a huge 3 inch binder is not fun. Plus, the Manhassette stand won’t keep raised with a full 3 inch binder on it. Then there are page turns. It was just a hassle.
Now, with the all digital setup, I can load a song up, display it on the other screen. Simple. No printing. If it is multiple pages, no problem, the 22″ monitor handles it with no problems. Three pages? That is where the foot peddle comes in. I have the X-Keys programmed (using iKey) to advance to the next page if I stomp on the right of the peddle, back a page if I stomp left, and in the center, it toggles one or two page mode. I can also do the same stuff using PDF files. So, anything I’ve scanned in I can view in the same way. It works very well so far.
The other thing is SmartMusic. It’s easier to use, though SmartMusic does not do two pages. Though it does seem to work alright if you flip the monitor around and put it into portrait mode.
Continue reading Pimped Out Studio
Running Band in A Box Under Parallels
Ok, so we all know that the latest Macs all run Intel processors. You might have heard of an Apple Beta program called Boot Camp where you can get your Mac to boot up as a *shutter* Windows XP computer. You might also have heard of a program Parallels that lets you mitigate Windows to just a Window. Well, if you take the two programs, and add in Band in a Box 2007 for PC, you get a very functional program that runs pretty flawlessly.
Yes, Virginia, it works fine….
Ok, so, first off, you need to download Boot Camp, and get Microsoft Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2. Not Vista. Vista, as of right now, works fine in Boot Camp (IE: Dedicating the whole machine to it), but has a lot of issues with Parallels. Boot Camp is picky, and you need to have Service Pack 2.
Now, having Continue reading Running Band in A Box Under Parallels
Xmas Guide 2005
Yes, it is only November. But there is no time like the present to start thinking of presents for people (woohoo, good play on words there E).
To start things off, iLounge has a very good, free, Holiday buyers’ guide available. Of course the guide is for people who own an iPod. And if they don’t own an iPod, that would be the #1 thing to get people. An iPod nano is only $199. Amongst the things they recommend are AKG’s new K 701 headphones. I own a pair of AKG 271 headphones, and they rock. The 701s are around $399.
Other things to consider getting a musician are:
- an iTunes music store card.
- Transcribe for figuring out solos
- Greg Fishman’s Jazz Etude Book
This is just a start…..I’m sure there are other potential presents out there.