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Kewl Gear Contest from NoiseFX

For those who ever doubted that music gear porn wasn’t a serious addiction…

Kewl Gear Contest from NoiseFX

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iTunes sales collapsing | The Register

iTunes sales collapsing | The Register

I’m calling these numbers into question until I get some more details. It seems pretty counter-intuitive that with Apple selling a million iPods a month (or whatever) and with them introducing movies and such recently that their sales could possibly be falling. I could understand that songs-sold-per-user as an average could be dropping. That might even make a sort of sense, but overall sales? I don’t know about this. It also seems to be counter to my own direct experience where my label revenues from digital downloads (mostly driven by iTunes) are increasing month-to-month, not decreasing.

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NELS CLINE – Tech Talk

NELS CLINE – Tech Talk

A great page from an interesting sound sculptor talking about the tools he uses live and in the studio.

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Finally iPod as portable field recorder?

[via Gizmodo]

Griffin Technology: iTalk Pro – Stereo Mic for iPod

As I wrote earlier, the new iPods can finally record in CD Quality audio without having to put Linux on them. Finally, there is something that lets you take advantage of it! With an external mic-in to boot. I’ve been waiting for the widescreen iPods to update my 4G, but this might push me over the edge…

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Happy Birthday Arnie!

Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg born today in 1874.

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An important (if obvious) location recording tip

Always check your recordings…

I’m reviewing some of the location recordings that I did in Europe last month. Since the recordings were more for documentation than for release, I brought a very simple and compact setup: A Sony MZ-R55 MiniDisc and a Sony ECM-909A Stereo powered microphone. As we traveled, I would periodically whip it out and record. In order not to attract attention, I would usually stick the mic head out a pocket of my bag and have the recorder inside the bag. This let me be unobtrusive and also let me very simply get the sound as I travelled. I had done this previously in Italy to great success. I was busy having a good time, so I wasn’t checking my recordings as I went. This was a big mistake. I would have learned something obvious and important. In Italy I had a backpack, but in France I had a messenger bag. The differences are subtle but essential. All my French recordings, where I’m moving, contain the sounds of the bag shifting as I walk (the bag bouncing off my back) and the metal on metal sounds of the strap where it connects to the bag. So no matter where I was, it sounds like I was on a ship! Luckily I realized this halfway through the trip (when I actually checked my recordings) and made some adjustments, but it was too late for a lot of the sound. Either I will need to do an insane amount of editing or just chalk this one up to experience.
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Soundtrack Pro needs some work

What kind of audio program doesn’t recognize external audio hardware?

Soundtrack Pro is pretty much a rip-off of Adobe Audition, including its single-track edit/multi-track record interface. One benefit would be its integration with Final Cut Pro, if there was any integration with FCP. I’m doing a soundtrack for a video project right now and I’d like to just product some tracks in Soundtrack Pro’s multitrack UI and them bring them directly back into FCP, but of course that is impossible in a direct way (like opening a FCP project in Soundtrack Pro). In the end, I had to export the video out of FCP and import it into Soundtrack Pro. Then I found my next problem, Soundtrack Pro doesn’t recognize my Firewire Audio interface, it just recognizes the built-in audio interfaces. That is just ridiculous. Even FCP recognizes my Firewire interface. Finally, I just gave up and imported the video file into a Cubase project. I’ll have to generate full-length stem mixes I guess and import them manually back into FCP, which will give me about the same level of integration that I was gonna get from Soundtrack Pro anyway, I guess.

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Novation almost gets it right

http://www.novationmusic.com/news.asp?id=134

Novation just announced the ZeRO SL, which is essentially their ReMOTE SL without they KeYBOARD (see, I can play the capital letter game too, Novation). I’ve been lusting after Novation Controllers since the X-Station (which I still think looks awesome), but they have been too expensive for me to kick my Oxygen 8 to the curb. The ReMOTE SL definitely made me think about it again, but it was still kind of expensive and I don’t use a 25-key controller that often. The ZeRO SL is almost perfect in this department. It will fit above my computer keyboard, it will fit on top of my Keystation 88, it is small enough that I can bring it along for a gig, I could maybe even replace my trusty Peavey PC1600x.

EXCEPT

WHERE IS THE X-Y PAD?!? It is one of the coolest things about the Novation controllers and they drop it? That is just plain stupid. Faders, buttons and knobs are great and all, but every controller has them. They are not hard to find. I would rather have a controller with 4 XY pads and 2 D-Beams that spit out midi. That would be worth the 229 pounds they want to charge for this. Honestly, for 229 GBP, you could buy a couple faderfox controllers (excluding VAT) and be happier.

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cool crummy guitars

Via Music Thing it’s Krappy Guitars!

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NAMM Redux

Since my last post, I’ve found some more interesting items that fell through the cracks of the major music sites.

Looks like IK and SVG have re-announced their partnership. They are claiming it will be out this quarter, but we’ll just have to see. Wonder if there will be cheap upgrades for those of us who already own amplitube. http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAMM06/Content/IKMultimedia/PR/Ampeg-SVX.html

Edirol has announced a competitor to the MicroTrack, the R-09, which I find very interesting. The more competitors in this market, the better. http://createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1130

Barry Wood has his Oddities ’06 page up, which is awesome as usual. http://www.otheroom.com/namm/index.html

Create Digital Music blog has some nice coverage and analysis. http://createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1125

Create Digital Music has also managed to explain the Kore system from NI that I didn’t understand before. http://createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1119

Finally, Create Digital Music has nice coverage of the weird controllers at NAMM http://createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1118

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