Aug 11 2009
I you have not read Mike Saville’s blog “How to Practise”, start with this post and you will become a subscriber like me. I have also noticed a lack of books and resources on how to practice for students…thank goodness for Mike’s blog.
Dec 26 2008
I have been following Robin Good’s excellent web 2.0 blog for a quite awhile now, and while the focus of his blog is not about music, this excellent post focuses on his experiences as a beginning (adult) music student at The Timba School of Music. Here is an excerpt from his post:
I am a beginning student at the Timba school having been there less than a year. Even in this short time I have had the opportunity to realize how special this learning environment is and what makes it so damn good.
…I think it is something that touches everyone’s life as we increasingly need to learn and adapt to new and more complex environments, but also because I am very much involved, in this publishing work that I do, in actually providing some of the resources needed to help others learn what I have discovered before them.
I feel we are nearing a time where less certifications and more tangible proofs of what you are good at are going to be the norm. Understanding that learning is not stuffing one’s own head with thousands of names and formulas is the key to have better and more intelligent people around.
And this is why I have chosen to feature the Timba Latin Jazz Quintet in this article today. The music school this quintet represents is a great example of how learning, no matter what the topic is about, should really be.
In this short article, I try to capture and list what I see as being the key characteristic of the Timba music school which make it such an ideal learning place.
Oct 23 2008
Playing one of Wii Music’s songs, you can look at a chart that shows you exactly how the tune is supposed to be played. But if you diverge from the pattern, adding or skipping notes, you aren’t penalized — in fact, you’re rewarded, as the game automatically fills in harmonious, pleasing notes anywhere in the piece. At the end of each song, you give yourself a score based on how much you liked your performance.
Berklee Shares is a wonderful educational resource filled with free music lessons based on Berklee’s curriculum. The lessons are in the form of videos, interactive PDFs, Flash activities, MP3s and more.
James’ essay is about the economics of creativity, specifically how the value of any creative endeavor changes according to a society’s perception of that value. He uses the history of musical performance to demonstrate his point, specifically how the value of live virtuoso performance dropped in status once recorded music emerges, at which point society rewarded the talent of recording music
This was a really invigorating event, with lots of nice, smart and open people that were really interested in what the future holds for the Arts, i.e. the creators, the creative industries and the organizations that want to serve them. My task was to address how the broadband-enabled, always-on world of digital natives equipped with 4.5 billion mobile devices impacts on emerging cultural practice.
Use this website to create a PDF file which can be printed and folded to create a paper CD case. For folding directions, see the about section. To add more tracks, a mailing address, or graphics to the case, use the advanced form. Mix CD cases created with the advanced form can be optionally added to our public mix CD database. To create a case for an existing CD, use our CD search engine to find the CD and it will fill in this form for you. Jewel case inserts can also be created.
Oct 20 2008
Basically, you upload a song of your choice (in MP3 format) and then add either “Cowbell” or “Christopher Walken” to it by means of the provided slide bars. When this has been dealt with, you hit the “Gimme more cowbell!” button and away you go (or away go Messrs. Walken and Ferell, that depends on the vantage point of the user).
Check out some Weezer with more cowbell I created:
| Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj | ||
Tomorrow, Lala Media Inc. will announce an interesting new approach to selling digital music. It’s based on a new type of license it secured with the four major labels and 170,000 indie labels, that lets consumers pay a dime to own a song that they can listen to whenever they want so long as it’s on the Web (Actually, the first listen is free; you pay your dime if you want to listen more than that). Then, if you decide you want to download the song to your hard drive or listen to it on your iPod or any other device, you can buy it for another $.79 (or $.89 if you haven’t taken that middle step of paying the dime). That gets you a DRM-free MP3 version of the song.
There is a lot of discussion these days about free music and the decline of the power and influence of the major record labels. However, I would argue that music has always been free in one form or another, throughout history and that the relationship between the artists and their fans – the artists and their patrons is what really matters.
Jul 08 2008
George Lucas may have conjured up R2-D2 in the film Star Wars, but Ben Burtt gave him a personality. Without the chirps and beeps that made up his voice, the famous droid sidekick would have merely been a silent hunk of metal.
Despite the success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, you won’t see Led Zeppelin’s iconic tunes pop up in either game any time soon, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Scientists may finally have discovered the secret of Stradivarius violins.
Change is the only constant in the music business, and that goes double for the digital music business. Nonetheless, we’ve assembled a list of the 10 hottest digital music websites in the world.
As of today, you no longer have to use the Rhapsody application to purchase music from the company, and all of the single song downloads in its store are available as unprotected MP3s.
Bob Katz has strong opinions and is adamant in his condemnation of the “loudness race” — the continual increase in average level, and the consequent reduction of dynamic range, that has resulted from the heavy compression of CDs.
Among the maladies to which electronic musicians are especially susceptible, hearing damage caused by prolonged exposure to loud sounds…When you’re young, you normally don’t think about the consequences of cranking the amps to 11,
Jun 25 2008
The SC600 Dual Adapter Box from Switchcraft® combines many of the most commonly used audio adapters into one, easy to use device. Each side functions separately, and features a 1/8″ stereo jack, a 1/4″ stereo jack, two 1/4″ mono jacks, and two RCA jacks.
Songkick is your concert-savvy friend. We send you email tour alerts when your favorite artists come to town, and we recommend concerts based on the music you like.
…there’s more at stake as the recording industry seeks new income avenues in the wake of wanton peer-to-peer piracy and declining CD sales in part due to the iPod and satellite radio. A U.S. House subcommittee could vote as early as Thursday…
Jun 11 2008
From the folks who brought you STOMP- great interactive web-site and educator resources for what looks like a multi-ethinic STOMP film event
The kakophone is a music composition device. First you select ten numbers to create a serial number for your kakophone. Each serial number creates a different melody based on your selected numbers. The next step is to adjust your numerical sequence…
Jun 07 2008
SoundCloud is an online audio platform for music professionals. We got fed up with the crappy tools available for sending and receiving music and felt we’d do things a little different. This is our version of how things should be.
Charting the MP3 Universe! Our sources find the best MP3s so you can enjoy a steady supply of excellent music.
AudioMicro is free to join. Upload and Sell your wholly owned stock music, sound effects, music cues, production music, and production elements on AudioMicro. Research, Locate, Purchase, and Download stock music and sound effects for your projects.
ArtistData empowers musicians and music organizations to extend their reach and do less data entry.
This week, Sasha Frere-Jones writes about Auto-Tune, a pitch-correction software program used in pop music. Here Frere-Jones talks about how Auto-Tune has become a pop-music phenomenon, and demonstrates how it can transform the human voice…
Jun 06 2008
In case you haven’t heard yet – the I.T. world is changing. The rise of social computing technologies, generally branded as “Web 2.0″ and including things like wikis, blogs, social networking, RSS, and more are slowly making their way into the business education world. This new movement is called Enterprise 2.0, and it’s no small shift. They’re even having a conference about it next week. But the change encompasses more than just the introduction of new, social software into the formerly stodgy business education world – it also includes the movement of server software from in-house data centers to the cloud, the rise of a mobile workforce, the rebirth of thin client computing, a self-provisioning user base, and more.
This is a short quote from a must read post from ReadWriteWeb
but try this as you read the artcle: replace the word business with education or school (as I did above…); the word CEO with principal or administrator; and the word client or customer with student.
Take time to read the comments on the post too.
