*sigh* I feel old. I still think that going to old record stores is a great thing. You can still walk out with hours of music for $10 or less. And perhaps find an artist who’s works never made it to the digital era. Plus, I refuse to buy new or used CDs. They are STILL the same price they were in the 80s if not more. Pure greed on the RIAA’s part.
Tag: Technology
Technology is infringing on classical music?
This author has some very old school ideas of how we need to listen to music. Basically, ban any electronic devices in a concert. Sure, ok, I can see muting them…..no one wants some a**holes ring tone interrupting Beethoven…..but banning them outright?
I think a better idea would be to engage the audience, maybe have an APP or something that is following the music. So you could see the score, or maybe what a particular instrument is playing RIGHT NOW or maybe have an interactive guide that has analysis of the piece as it is being played that can be highly detailed or simple enough for a rock drummer to understand.
Running away from technology is guaranteed to kill any type of music. They need to embrace it, and look for new ways to engage the audience when they are there, and to draw in new people into classical, or any type of music (except for maybe Country……and Dubstep……and some Rap…….and…….no that’s it)
The iPad as a….WTF…..
Honestly, this is lame……I’m all for things iPad, I love the iPad, but using it for this is just…..stupid and hokey.
However, Gorillaz releasing an album that they did on an iPad for free is something that I like.
Don’t Need No Stinking Percussionists!
Kinda cool I guess…
SmartMusic 10.2
MakeMusic finally released SmartMusic 10.2 today. Highlights of the new features:
- Support of Mac OS X Leopard
- Microphone Check Wizard ensures proper microphone levels for recording and assessment
- Easier-to-Use – many aspects of SmartMusic have been simplified and made more intuitive, including the installer, login process, activation, and update messaging
- Create assignments with audio-quality accompaniment for any concert selection. Simply upload the audio file and distribute sheet music; then your band, orchestra, and choir students can practice their part with accompaniment in SmartMusic.
There are some other “features”, but these are the ones that are interesting. Especially the last one. The update is about 80 megs for Windows, 97 Megs for Mac. So, how does it work? In a word, the same as before….
Nintendo DS + 2 iPhones = Band
The potential of a touch interface is amazing, as exhibited by this video I found at Gizmodo:
Lots of potential for all kinds of interesting things. Now where is the saxophone sound??
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….
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.
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…
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.
M-Audio Fast Track Ultra
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.
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NAMM Show 2008
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:
- New line of AKG Headphones. I use AKG headphones, and they are excellent.
- Tascam DR-1 Portable Recorder, Yamaha Pocketrak 2G, and Marantz
- Digital Performer 6
- Lots of recording devices from M-Audio (which sounds pretty good), TC Electronic, Ecler, EMU Tracker Pre and this Focusrite monster.
I haven’t seen anything saxophonish yet……..
Korg Sells Its 20 Millionth Tuner
From Korg:
We recently achieved a milestone — over 20 million tuners sold worldwide. To mark the occasion, we have increased the warranty on all of our tuners and metronomes sold to three years. Now you can stay perfectly in tune with the latest in Korg tuner technology, backed by the high quality of these products plus years of guaranteed performance
I’ve never owned a Korg tuner. I do have a Korg M1 though…..
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.
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Silent Saxophone Practice
Ok. Brass instruments have had that Silent Brass system for a while. Most sax players wish they would use it all the time ;-). Now, it seems saxophone players can have something similar.
E-Sax is a new case/silent practice thing. Interesting stuff. Looks really funny, but they say it works. You can even do Karaoke with it. Woohoo!
I have always been hoping for some sort of noise cancelling system to come out. A system where you’d hook a mic up, and while you play a digital box takes your sound, and then produces and blasts out the inverse and cancels out the sound. Perhaps someday….