Music Is Not for Insects

• Audiosurf: Ride Your Music

  Audiosurf is a music-adapting puzzle racer where you use your own music to create your own experience. The shape, the speed, and the mood of each ride is determined by the song you choose.

• Harmony Central®: Martin Guitar Introduces Pat Donohue Custom Edition

  Many know Pat Donohue as the guitarist in The Guys All-Star Shoe Band on Public Radio’s popular A Prairie Home Companion, an extraordinary picker who plays jazz, blues, swing and folk with equal flair and often blends all four in his music.

• Wired News – AP News

  The same belt and pulley machines that stamped and shaped the world’s first metal kazoos circa 1900 still stamp and shape kazoos today. The machines are still in the same building, making the same ker-thwunk sound as they perforate, fold and shape.

• KORG Kaossilator

  Create music anywhere life takes you The KAOSSILATOR is a new pocket-sized sketch pad that puts a world of sounds and effects in the palm of your hand. Thanks to James Frankel for this link.

• How Audio | Video Tutorials for an Audio World – Home

  At HowAudio.com we have big passion for making music. We also have big passion for teaching and knowledge. So we have assembled music experts to train you on the gear and software you need to make music…and so much more.

• Macworld | Build your own iPod stereo system – Page 1

  iPod owners have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to choosing a speaker system for their music player. I should know—over the past few years, I’ve reviewed many of these accessories, which typically combine an iPod dock, an amplifier, speakers

• Should Music Startups Give Equity to Copyright Holders? | Listening Post from Wired.com

  Online music startups have two options in the race to profitability: They can get permission from all relevant copyright holders before uploading a single song, or they can rely on a combination of luck and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act until…

• rifflet.com

  Rifflet is a new site where musicians can gather to finish each other’s work. The concept involves the uploading of something called a “rifflet,” which is a piece

• MusicRambler

  MusicRambler is a mash-up of Google Maps, Last.Fm and Flickr. When you listen to music with Audioscrobbler, MusicRambler will collect images and events related to the artist you are listening to and will show them on a handy map.

• Free Radio Streaming Platform – iRadeo

  iRadeo is a free online radio platform that allows anyone to stream their MP3 / WAV files. Once installed, iRadeo will automatically detect and stream any supported file format that has been uploaded to the specified directory.

• Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » The Ticket Comes With The Album

  If you’re a touring act, you’ve got to stop thinking of your new music as a revenue source. Rather, it’s an investment in your career,…get it in as many hands as possible so your sphere of influence, your customer base, doesn’t shrink, but GROWS

• Negotiations Leak: Could Variable iTunes Pricing Be on the Table? | Listening Post from Wired.com

  Steve Jobs wants to extend Apple’s lead in online music sales to the mobile market, and the 3G iPhone expected next month positions them to make the iTunes store available everywhere you have signal.

• CloudTrade: Free, Legal Music Sharing on Your Smartphone | Listening Post from Wired.com

  CloudTrade has announced that music from its first two label deals is now available for trading on its mobile file-sharing network.

I saw it happen. It seemed like it was in slow motion. One of my students dropped a MacBook as he was walking to his seat today. It hit the hard tile floor with a sickening “CRACK” squarely on the edge from a height of about three feet. Aside from a “bruised” edge, it still booted up and is working fine.

Congratulations to our two Seattle high school jazz bands!

JALC’s artistic director, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who performed as guest soloist in the concert that culminated the event Saturday night, presented the first-place trophy to Scott Brown, director of the Roosevelt High School jazz band.The Garfield High School Jazz Band finished second, and Garfield clarinetist and tenor saxophonist Carl Majeau was honored as the outstanding soloist.

Seattle high school jazz bands finish on top in Essentially Ellington competition in New York

My son pointed this one out to me…and with hulu’s cool embed feature, I can select any portion of a longer video clip to create a personalized video snippet of “The Office” wackiness to share with you. This reminds me of an ed tech meeting I attended once:

It’s not unusual for our local paper to highlight our exceptional high school jazz programs here in Seattle and the greater Puget Sound area. What is unusual and refreshing is The Seattle Times’ story of an outstanding group of jazz educators with connections to a genealogy of excellence and long term commitment.

It begins with the story of two brothers and their music education journey from high school into college. Both are now established band directors in the area and for the first time they will be competing against each other at Essentially Ellington with their respective bands, along with an unprecedented five bands from the Seattle region.

Along with three others from the Puget Sound area, their bands are among 15 in the U.S. and Canada to make the Essentially Ellington finals. No region has ever sent five bands to Ellington before.

You can hear some sample mp3’s of each of the five bands from our region below:

Garfield High School (Seattle):
Director — Clarence Acox, nine Essentially Ellington finals; first place in 2003, 2004.

Garfield High School plays “Daydream”

Mountlake Terrace:
Director — Darin Faul, four-time finalist.

Mountlake Terrace High plays “Hoping for the Day”

Roosevelt (Seattle):
Director — Scott Brown, nine-time finalist; first place in 2002, 2007.

Roosevelt High School plays “War”

Shorewood (Shoreline):
Director — Paul Harshman, five-time finalist (one trip was with Kentridge).

Shorewood High School plays “Lickety Split”

South Whidbey (Langley, Whidbey Island):
Director — Chris Harshman, first trip to Ellington.

South Whidbey High School plays “Art of Darkness”

Entertainment | Region’s jazz legacy in spotlight again at Essentially Ellington | Seattle Times Newspaper

Genealogy of Jazz Education in Seattle.pdf

Conducting robots…may be a phobia of mine? How about you?

Never seen Guitar Hero? Here’s your chance to get a taste of how it works right here at the blog with this fun Guitar Hero Widget:

• DavidByrne.com – Art – Playing the BuildingPlaying the building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure…and are used to make these things produce sound.
• TapeDeck. ▸▸ The tape recorder…fast-forwarded to Mac OS X.TapeDeck is a powerful and fun new audio recorder for Mac OS X Leopard. It’s just like your old analog tape recorder, only better. A lot better.
• Scoop: The Guitar Hero Embeddable Widget | Game | Life from Wired.comThe widget, played with the keyboard, contains three different songs: “Cult of Personality” by Living Colour, “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper, and “Metal Heavy Lady” by Lions. Each is set at only one difficulty level: Easy, Medium, and Hard, respectively.

• Free Music Studio Means No More Excuses | Listening Post from Wired.com

  free online electronic music studio lets you compose with two TB-303 Bass Line generators, Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines and two banks of effects pedals including three delays, crusher, detune, flanger, reverb, a para equalizer and a compressor.

• Harmony Central®: MusicXPC Shipping The Professional M6 And M6x Notebook Computers

  “Pound for pound, the M6x is the finest music production computer…The music producer can work with projects containing over 200 tracks or load over 100 D-Verbs on a laptop that weighs just 6 pounds, costs less than $2000, and runs in near silence.

• JamsBio – The Story of Your Life Through Music

  Essentially, it’s a site where users can reminisce about songs and the memories associated with them; it’s a rundown of the soundtracks of our lives.

• TuneUp – Your Music Collection’s New Best Friend

  TuneUp works seamlessly with iTunes to automatically clean your incorrectly labeled music. It finds your missing album cover art, it lets you know when your favorite bands are performing in concert, and provides you with the best music content on the web.

• Blip

  Blip is a quick way to tell your friends what song you’re into right this minute. You also find out what your favorite people are listening to in real-time — no need to refresh the page. Twitter for music…