Jamming with SoundFonts

I have really been bogged down with my day gig spilling into my evening guitar hours. However, although I did not have time to work on composing  I did manage to experiment with the use of a soft sampler and sound fonts. The soft sampler I use I have mentioned before. Its SFZ which is free but excellent so far. What was a pleasant surprise was the performance I am getting out of SFZ and the use of SoundFonts. Now, for those that don’t know, SoundFonts come in all shape and sizes. Some are huge. Like RealFont which is a free, good but large GM sound font. Its large because its high quality but also because its a GM font which means it provides for the entire GM (General Midi) instrument set which is large. Everything from pianos to helicopter sounds. SoundFonts can be small , of high quality but specific to a certain sound or instrument. For example, one commercial sound font I’m checking out is based on the vintage Yamaha DX-7 saw wave. Since in this case the sound font is about a specific sound it can still be of very high quality yet significantly smaller than using a GM sound font. The size is important because the size impacts the memory of your system. In other words the smaller the sound font the less chance you get into a memory hungry situation which means that your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) has the space it needs to operate best. The key is to avoid latency. Latency a fancy word for a disconnect between when your fingers play a note to the point when your ears hear the note.

I was very happy with the performance. I could not hear any discernible latency at all. Soft samplers have an edge over soft synths. They just have to compute much less. After all the sound is already made, it just needs to be mapped to a note range. Synthesisers have to generate i.e. “synthesize” the sound and this takes horse power. The other benefit to the use of the soft sampler and sound fonts is the flexibility of choosing different sounds. There are tons of free sound fonts out there. Many are very good. There is also a good selection of commercial sound fonts and they are not really expensive. I have seen prices in the low teens for certain sounds. The way I see it twenty bucks is well spent if that buys me a killer lead saw sound.

The other note is how pleased I also am with my Godin LGX-SA. Specifically, the capability of driving multiple sounds from the guitar i.e. acoustic pickup, electric humbuckers and of course the synth access. Unless, I’m trying to do some special effects ,  the guitar synth to me means the combined guitar natural tones with the synth tones. As a matter of fact, in many ways I see the synth as an effect on the guitar. For example , one combination could the use of the  natural  more staccato acoustic lines of a guitar and that of a legato string synth line which is by the nature of the string patch a “delayed” sound. The synth is providing the delayed effect but instead of delaying the guitar signal you get a delayed synth which tracks the pitches of the guitar line.

The possibilities are endless and the tracking is there.

I did run into a snag getting the soft sampler’s output to Audition but I’ll talk about that on a later post.

Feedback for this post can be left on my forum.

 

DiMeola experiments with CDBaby

Yes, DiMeola has released his new album Diabolic Intentions and it is being sold at CDBaby. This is very interesting to me. Here is a mainstream fusion artist, well as mainstream as fusion can get, experimenting with an unorthodox distribution channel and which is still probably associated with unknown artists. In my opinion it makes sense. It at the very least makes sense to experiment from Al’s perspective. Two good reasons:

1. He makes more money i.e. he gets a bigger cut, a much bigger cut.
2. He has more control if not total control over his intellectual property.
3. No contractual arrangements to support the CD.

Reason # 1

CDBaby charges , last I checked, four bucks per CD. If you sell a CD for $10.00 and more , well I’ll bypass the math. Most artist get less than a couple dollars per CD from the big labels.

Reason # 2

Control. This is a big issue. There are DiMeola albums which are basically out of print. That’s just a ridiculous state of affairs. It should never happen. If Dimeola had legal rights to that material and assuming he has possession of the masters he could just re-issue and sell them on CDBaby.

Reason # 3.

Big labels usually force the artist to support the album by touring. Al DiMeola tours a lot. It has to be grueling. To have actual control over whether he tours or not , where and the whens must be fantastic.

I suspect that there other reasons why this was a good album to give CDBaby a shot. For one, his bandmate Gumbi Ortiz has at least a couple of his albums on CDBaby. Secondly, its my guess that this last album was cheaper to produce. My understanding is that is a solo guitar album. The cost would have been significantly cheaper to record, mix/master and obviously the musician fees were kept low . Other albums i.e. with full bands can get expensive, they take longer to record and usually would bring in more talent to assist i.e. the right engineers, producers etc. In this case depending on the scope the artist may want for the record label to foot the bill.

I hope this works out for Al because it may make it easier to get another twenty years of music from him. The way technology is going he could pretty much record his stuff in the comfort of his home studio .

 

BTW, feedback for this article can be left on my forum.

 

 

Here She Is

A late announcement but here she is in all her glory. The Godin LGX SA. Great acoustic tone, Seymour Duncan humbuckers on a 5 position switch, nice ebony action, controls the synth perfectly and you can run all three sound sources at the same time. If you need a synth capable guitar , I just don’t think that there any other good choices.

You can read my previous blog about the LGX-SA here.

Music Patterns

Revised: Jan. 12th, 2007.

As some may know I’m a software engineer by day. I have come to believe that there are certain ideas in software engineering that are applicable to delivering product in the music world i.e. to compose and publish your music CD. One of those ideas is that of patterns ala Design Patterns. Simplistically, a pattern is a label on a repeatable strategy to do something. The label serves as a way of communicating an idea to somebody(s) , a collaborator or perhaps oneself . In the case of software its your team. In the case of music its your team as well. Your bandmates, your composition partner , even a teacher or student.

Often, you hear “well, there are a thousand ways to do that” and with art that goes up to a million ways. However, the case is that there is actually a limited number of commonly used and effective strategies. Often, the creativity comes in the extension or slight departure from a pattern. Of course, somebody can invent something entirely new. That’s okay, its great but often people don’t appreciate stuff that is too “new”.

From my perspective the main value of “music” patterns would be to foster communication between collaborators at all levels of expertise. To better allow one to get a grip on effective strategies and therefore enhance productivity. 

All of the above to introduce:

The Layered Riff Intro

A riff is at first introduced over for example a 4 bar phrase. Every four bars another part is added e.g. percussion, bass, piano etc,. thereby “thickening” the sound until by the end of the fourth pass one enters the top of the A section. A twist to this pattern, which I like and I’m currently using on a tune, is to repeat the riff over your A section and to finally end the tune with the riff.

Note, the riff is not the melody but something that the melody plays against. The melody can contain parts of the riff, it can contain inversions of the riff, be rhythmically symmetrical to the riff, etc. I find it very cool to do that.

Let me emphasize in case there is any confusion, I have not “invented” anything. I’m just going through a process of labelling these patterns , strategies that I hear in the music I listen to for the purposes that it may help my personal composition process. If this perhaps helps others , great. I do doubt that a seasoned composer will find much value in these, such already know them may have even coined their own terms or not for these.

——

 

Now, some heavy composer types may call this “motif development” or something else, well fine. But this pattern is more specific. It is easy to grasp and more direct to implement. Try it out. The next time YOU, and I’m now talking to those that may not have heavy music education under their belts, set out to write a tune, just try it. Come up with a riff , layer in the rest of the parts, come up with a melody that is a play off the riff, come up with some chords that work and end the tune with the riff.

You may be surprised to find a decent initial cut of an “entire” tune. Often, at least with me, having a notion of what the “entire” structure of the tune is has been difficult and a roadblock to finishing a tune. I have a lot of unfinished tunes . This pattern or if it is preferred “recipe” has been helpful.

 

 

 

The Best 100% Free Windows Plugins

Just when I thought I had exhausted the possible list of resources for Windows music plugins I bump into this site. A great site in its own right for the articles it puts up on “creating digital” music. They also maintain a column on the “best” free music plugins. Of course, “best” can be a matter of likes and dislikes but they seem to know what they are talking about. I found that one needs to take a chance into trusting some source on this issue. The fact of the matter is that if you Google for “free vst” etc that you will bump into an almost endless list. Availability is not the problem but rather the issue is one of screening. This list also includes a number of soft synths and many analog emulation i.e. like the synths of old such as the Moog.

An awesome and free Sampling Synth

 

I was turned on to this free VSTi instrument i.e. virtual instrument which accommodates to the VST specs by my friends at Audio Masters Forum. This little jewel packs the same sampling engine that rgc: audio uses in their hardcore top of the line synths. sfz only functions as a sampler but with very impressive performance specs. Furthermore, it can load SoundFonts which are very high quality and very widely available sound libraries. Actually, there is quite a bit of free SoundFonts which may carry one quite a ways. I loaded a Grand Piano SoundFont and it sounded quite good. I would have t say as good to my ears as the Grand Piano sound in my Roland XV2020. sfz can be tuned depending on the performance constraints of the PC and what one is trying to do. In English this just means that one with a modern PC can use sfz on a live gig at an acceptable quality level. At the home studio the highest quality settings can be brought out to render to wav file i.e. where on to use sfz in the recording studio.

As mentioned sfz is a VSTi instrument. This means that one requires a host. In my studio I use a combination of an inexpensive audio recording package , namely Sony’s ACID Music Studio and Adobe Audition. Unfortunately, as great as Audition is it does not support VSTi. Audition is very much multi-track recording focused. Music Studio although not by a long shot as powerful as Audition in the multi-track recording area it does support VSTi and midi sequencing better, so its a good compliment. Music Studio is only $70.00 so its well worth it.

Having said that there may be times when I will want to use sfz outside of Music Studio i.e. I may indeed want to record into Audition directly. In that case we need a VST host and one can be found here:

http://www.toptensoftware.com/cantabile

once hosted sfz can be triggered via midi and its audio output properly re-routed so that it can be recorded into Audition or whatever. Yes, I could just host with Music Studio. Well, I’m guessing , honestly have not tried hosting with Music Studio and recording sfz into Audition but it does technically follow that one can do that. The reason though to use something like Cantabile is that it is a lightweight no frills, and of minor impact to the host system.

To conclude , again , a great time to be a recording music enthusiast. Another set of tools to add to one’s arsenal. sfz will certainly help make your music sound great.

Its Okay if your Dad is a Music Exec

This is too funny. Warner Music CEO admits his kids are music pirates. Apparently, they somehow missed the arm of the RIAA. Wonder how?

Found this on my lawyer’s blog. Great blog well worth subscribing to it.

 

The Land of Free VSTs

Things have changed quite a bit since the last time I really tried my hand at audio recording and production. Not only are the tools better, PCs cheaper and hardware more affordable on the software side I to my delight find that there is a tremendous amount of “goodies” , to be exact VST and DirectX plugins which can be loaded into my Adobe Audition recording system. Not only are these plugins free but many of them are actually quite good, if not excellent. I primarily have interest in plugins for signal processing i.e. your reverbs, eq , compression etc but one can also find VST instruments i.e. software sound modules. Its a great time to be alive and working in audio and trying to produce your own music. The tools are there to really produce wonderful and professional quality level music. I already use these on a regular basis. I put down my ideas on track and apply a quick mix. It sounds great. What I find most exciting is that it feeds the “inspiration” . To be able to hear stuff that sounds good , that sounds like it has promise inspires one to continue working and tweaking the tune.

I plan to blog about the particular plugins I use as I use them and have develop some solid understanding of their use. In the meanwhile check out this thread where I asked about VST resources.

http://www.audiomastersforum.net/amforum/index.php?topic=5833.0

Most of these developers have taken the “open source” philosophy. Many ask for donations and a few ask that if their plugins help one make money i.e. CDBaby sales that in turn the user should reciprocate by making a donation. Sounds very reasonable to me and I’ll gladly do that.

Podcasting with Audition

Fig. Omni-directional powered stereo pair from Giant Squid Audio Lab.

I decided to try my hand at Podcasting the NYC Smalltalk user meetings which I basically organise and have done for a number of years now. Smalltalk is a programming language, very powerful, simple and cool and used in just about every sector of industry imaginable. Its a niche but like my music I like niches. So I have something to Podcast and I have the tools to Podcast i.e. Adobe Audition which earned some recent noteworthy mention at Podcasting conference out in the west coast. As a matter of fact I believe it won whatever the competition was. I can dig that up if somebody cares.

There were some technical logistics to conquer though. Well, I at least imagined them. A simple mono mic was not  going to do. Our meetings are somewhat chaotic with folks talking out of turn, popping questions left and right. I really needed a mic situation that would really capture the room and not just the speaker. Secondly, our presentations go for a hour plus so I needed something with a fairly large storage capacity. Of course, there was the production of the podcast. Certainly, the recording was going to need some editing. Bring the content down to a PG-13 level. A fair amount of cursing goes on. I’m told that its mostly me but I just think they are too freaking sensitive. However, never mind editing , I was going to need to bring up levels , get rid of ambient noise and possibly interject where the presentation got confusing. So to summarise I needed:

• A stereo omni-directional mic — decided on Giant Squid Audio Lab.
• A recorder — decided on my iAudio X5, stuff like this was too over the top for my purposes.
• Editing software — decided on Adobe Audition which I already use for my personal music projects.

But there was one other snag. The iAudio external mic connection is actually a line level connection and that meant I was going to need a mic preamp.

 

This unit is sold at Microphone Madness, it actually comes with a built in mic. Not sure yet what type of mic but it will itself take an external mic.. In anycase, I already have the omni mics. I don’t believe that anything else will quite do the trick, not for my application. BTW, a secondary use for all of this will be that I can also now record my collaboration sessions with my composition partner Jon Raney. Those sessions include music which this setup should be able to handle well.

 

The Three Voices of Godin

After months of agonising I finally made the commitment and purchased one of these beauties. Yes, another Godin. I am definitely a fan. Very well made guitars, unfettered synth access with a reputation for top-notch tracking and to top it off great looks. For the type of music I want to write synth access is a must. My only other must which goes for all my guitars is that it must have an ebony neck and this one does. Check out the specs .

I tried the eBay thing. I was successful in obtaining my Godin Multiac Nylon SA from eBay. An essentially brand new guitar, which I was able to verify. Owned by a guitar player and not just an eBay peddler which is pretty important to me. I saved $400.00. In the case of the LGX-SA , I tried eBay for a while. The main problem was that I needed to get something from 2004 to present due to the fact that the synth access system had been changed. According to Godin it was a significant change. I came close but got outbidded. That was a fortunate thing. The winning bid was about $250.00 off ,without including shipping , from what one could purchase the guitar brand new. Not usually enough to warrant not getting a new one. Especially since I keep my guitars. I lucked out Rudy’s Guitar on 48th from which I have already bought two guitars, a classical and my Al DiMeola Ovation gave me a good deal. Not as much as buying it used but a significant savings from what one can find on-line. I had to pay NY tax but no shipping and what is great is that the guitar is being shipped directly from the Godin factory i.e. this guitar is brand new. I get to inspect it and I know where its been. Full warranty. My new baby is coming home.

 

Oh, why Three Voices of Godin?  Well, because the guitar actually has three separate sound sources. The Seymour Duncan pickups for the electric sound, an acoustic pickup for a purely acoustic sound, and finally the synth access for the controlling of a guitar synth like the Roland GR-20. I got the one on the right.

Natural dynamic compression

Well this is the week to plug Bruce William’s podcast on Adobe Audition which in particular has an emphasis on explaining how Audition can be used for producing podcasts. Here is the link again:

http://www.audio2u.com/buildingthepod.htm

Today I just want to comment on what was both a flashback and lightbulb moment to me. I was listening to one of the podcasts on my subway ride home  and this great insight came through my ear buds. Namely, Bruce was explaining how in the old days a form of audio compression was simply achieved by the engineer riding the faders during the recording session. This is where I had that dual flashback/lightbulb moment. Of course, I remember doing that years back so many, many moons ago when I was taking two semesters of sound engineering at the local community college, that’s exactly what was done. In Audition that can be achieved via “automation lanes” and no it does not involve one actually riding faders. Its basically much more precise and tweak-able than that. Its actually quite cool. Bruce covers that in his tutorial CD. For more info see my last post on Bruce.

 

Jon Raney at iTunes

 My friend, composition teacher and collaborator now has his CD at iTunes.

Of course, this is strictly digital downloads. If you want a real physical CD which you can burn freely and play on your stereo then you should think of buying it directly from Jon which you can do by visiting his site. Jon makes more money when his CDs are fulfilled through his site, so if you are a fan of Jazz and also feel compelled to help out struggling independent musicians then please purchase directly from Jon. Nonetheless, being at iTunes is great. There are people that do indeed buy one tune at a time. Also, its exposure and just another very popular place to check out new music. Hopefully, we have the right keywords there so that he can be found easily. Certainly searching for Jon Raney will score a direct hit.

Anyhow, check out the link above. You will need iTunes installed on your computer but you can get that for free.

 

-Charles

Audition tutorials on Podcasts?

Yes , an Aussie from the land of down under, of course, by the name Bruce Williams has been developing a podcast series on Adobe Audition, a very powerful and complete hard disk recording system for Windows.

Check it out:

http://www.audio2u.com/buildingthepod.htm

I went through a couple podcasts and this stuff is just full with information and insight on using Audition in the recording and post production process. I can’t wait to load this stuff into my iAudio player and listen to it on the subway ride back and forth from work.

I actually bumped into this in a sort of back doors sort of way. I am ramping up working with Audition which as a matter of fact, my new “ultimate” digital audio workstation will be arriving,  hopefully by the end of the week, and I was looking for tutorial material on Audition.

I found this screencast based tutorial Audition 2.0 Essential Training , checked out a few of the sample free chapters and was impressed. This tutorial is all screencast based, no fancy production but just full of substance, unlike the Total Training Audition 1.5 DVD that I bought which although had good basic information , a lot of time was spent on making it a cool DVD as oppossed to making it a meaty tutorial. Some people may prefer that I guess. In my case I just want to see what the tool does and don’t need the rest of the fluff to keep my attention.

DiMeola in Gotham

On Friday I did what has become a tradition. I went to visit  a person that has become as a guitarist , my main inspiration. Al DiMeola had a concert in Manhattan last nite in support of his newly released album, Consequence of Chaos. This album marks a return to predominantly solid guitar body playing and is in many ways reminiscent of his earliest work. I actually have not heard the CD yet i.e. besides what I heard at the concert. I did pre-order the CD the moment it was available but I did not want to spoil the surprise. I’m glad I did not. Dimeola manages again to compose fresh music that is imaginative and achieves that balance between strong melodies, contagious grooves and “spirited playing” and I mean the guy still has all of his chops.

The Venue

The Ethical Culture Concert Hall is located at 2 West 64th Street right around the corner from the Lincoln Center and a little further down from the Shops at Columbus Circle. The place like most things New York is old and charming. It seems to have been a place of worship that was retrofitted for supporting concerts although I figure more in tune with classical type of music i.e. small ensembles etc. The ceilings are domed cathedral ceilings. I really don’t think that there was a single bad seat in the house both visually and acoustically. I was 5 rows down from the stage on the right hand side. Gumbi Ortiz was on a diagonal to me and I was able to see his articulate conga work perfectly. Al DiMeola was ten degrees down from Gumbi and I also had a perfect shot of him. The only time I was not able to see Al was when he sat down to play his Ovation during the first set. The chair was set back deeper into the stage than from where he stood when playing the electric, the result was that Gumbi was basically blocking my view. In anycase, they must have taken notice of that since in the second set the chair was brought up to the front of the stage and again everything was perfect.

The Sound

The Ethical Culture Concert Hall is a venue that has natural great acoustics . On the other hand I think that it is probably a hard venue to manage for music that is amplified. The reason is that it has very decent reverberation due to the high ceilings but it is also a shallow venue and so the sound engineer really needs to be on top of it. Unfortunately, the mixing console was actually offset basically to the immediate right of the stage and I just don’t think that the sound engineer was hearings things well. The venue did not seem to be setup to support housing the sound engineering console in the center of the venue. The top of the set the guitar was a bit too muddy although not enough to not be identifiable. There were clearly some problems with the monitor mix on stage. Al had to cry out some directions a few times. They were certainly aware that they were in for some choppy waters since they actually had setup isolation partitions around the drummer. Don’t get me wrong. None of this detracted from the fun and excitement of the performance. As a matter of fact to me this can make it more fun. To be fair I may be a bit more sensitive than the average audience member just because I have had a decent exposure to sound engineering. It also got better and better as the night went along. At the second set, classical guitar solo piece rang out as crisp as morning air. By the time we got to the encores the sound of the electric guitar sounded just like the CD. Which reminds me that I should have tried to peek at what amp Al was using.  As far as guitars he was using the PRS for his main electric, his Ovation series and a classical with a cutaway for which I did not recognize the brand. I’m sure a custom job. It also had this funny gizmo on top of it. I need to find out what that is. Maybe one of the guys at the forum will know. He did not play on a Godin Multiac Nylon SA which he has used on some of his Piazolla influenced albums, instead he used his PRS for some of the tunes such as those of the Grande Passion CD. One interesting note is that Al had a Les Paul with double horns and sort of a root beer finish propped in the back of the stage but for some he did not play it.

The Performance

There was a good balance of new material with old which I appreciated. There was also a good balance between electric guitar playing and acoustic. That suits me fine as well. Some fans prefer one Dimeola “genre” over the other i.e. acoustic work over electric. I like them both. One thing though, is that when I go to a concert I prefer to listen to the familiar more. Then again , I heard a couple of new tunes which I liked quite a bit which I assume are from the new album. Not that I need any convincing, at this point I buy DiMeola albums without pre-screening them.

Gumbi was as always at the top of his game and having so much fun. As far Al , after something like twenty albums he is as good as he ever was . What I admire about Dimeola is not just his chops but how he uses his chops. DiMeola does not use technique just for the sake of technique. He makes it work with the tune. Granted his music is about “spirited playing” , about the energy but it is about music, and he grooves. That’s hard to find. He also is not afraid to experiment with his compositions. I think that one of the advantages of that is that an artist is bound to find a wider audience. For example, I think that the move to acoustic work i,.e. the World Sinfonia and Piazolla influenced albums brought in a set of different fans.

I guess when I think back on the show last nite that there are a couple of things that linger with me. One is that Al thanked his fans for following him for the last eighteen years. He did that twice. I remember thinking, wow, that really feels like he meant it from his heart. People often say many things but its not often that one totally believes. The other thing he said was that “fusion lives”. I believe that its true and a lot of that has to do because you Al keep cranking out albums. I also hope that fusion will live because you inspire others to compose and express themselves.

Conclusion, great show. I’m re-charged with inspiration. Right on time too, because I have to get off my ass and get back on track with my stuff. By Monday of the following week the “ultimate” digital audio workstation I ordered should be delivered. That’s just a necessary part of getting my project together. I’ll blog about my research in the quest of the ultimate DAW soon.

Shrink wrapping , a necessary pain ?

Shrink wrapping was a mystery to me.  I thought you had to have specialised machinery to wrap your CDs. So either I was going to outsource it and probably substantially increase my unit cost on the CD or I was just going to have to resign myself to shipping CDs naked. As it turns out it does not take much to do shrink wrapping of at least your CDs. First of all you need one of these:

An industrial heat gun which goes for $58.00. I bought this at Uline.com which I found has an intense supply of everything related with packaging, stationary, you name it. They also have the other necessary component, of course I’m referring to the PVC shrink bags. These babies go for $18.00 for a 500 unit carton i.e. an approx 4 cents added to the unit cost of the CD. Now, we all now from the tedious accounting classes some of us took at school that cost is not just materials. Its time & materials. So here’s the rub. It will take you a couple minutes or more to do this and guess what it won’t look quite perfect. The bags come with excess material , too much I think. Some excess is needed to accommodate for “shrinkage” but this extra stuff does not quite melt so nicely. Maybe there’s a trick that I have not caught on or maybe you do need some fancy machine to make it look as nice as the CDs you purchase in traditional retailers.

Lately I have been asking myself how necessary is this really. It does protect the CD. Its sort of expected, but this again is a brave new world we independent musicians live in and there are no hard fast rules. I can’t complain about the added material cost but it sure would be a pain to have to do 500 of these by hand. CDBaby interestingly enough does not require them. Secondly, CDs are sent to customers well protected in padded bags when we fulfill the orders. My guess is that these do become necessary when one is sending decent amount of CD stock to traditional retailers but let’s face it we are not there yet. If orders are fulfilled via CDBaby or our site then I think that shrink wrapping is a pain we can do without.

The End of Guitar Tabs

Beware big music publishers are now mimicking the tactics of the RIAA. Ray Beckerman points this out in this article:

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2006/08/music-publishers-target-musicians.html

this very much includes tabs that other guitar players come up with i.e. this is not about piracy, this is just about money.

Remembering Jimmy Raney

I first came to know about the great Jimmy Raney through his son Jon Raney, a great Jazz pianist and composer in his own right. We met Jon some 4 years ago at the dog park and have since become good friends. Jon is also my composition teacher. Jimmy Raney was considered among his peers a legend. A truly great and unique Jazz bebop guitarist. Other greats such as Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery and Pat Metheny to name few consider him  a major influence.

Jon shares a memorial radio broadcast by NPR where Jim Hall talks about his late friend Jimmy Raney.

If you don’t know who Jimmy Raney is then this is the time to learn. For those that do the broadcast is a poignant snapshot of Jazz history and not to be missed.

Enjoy.

 

-Charles

 

Weird Al and the RIAA

Ray Beckerman , NYC lawyer fighting the RIAA, shares this funny link to a video by Weird Al which parodies the RIAA tactics.

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2006/08/free-song-download-weird-al-yankovic.html

 

Enjoy.

 

-Charles

Raney's idea on practise

Jon Raney put a post on his blog about practising. Good article, I added some comments of my own.

Jon's New Site

Have not blogged in a while. I have been bogged down with work and with cranking out a new site for Jon.

Some of the highlights of the site include:

• Music Excerpts.
• A Store where the new CD Waltz For Talia can be purchased.
• Reviews of Jon’s music by third parties.
• A Gallery where pictures of Jon and friends can be found but also of his famous father Jimmy Raney.

Besides the site I also went ahead and setup:

• A Forum for discussion of music composition, theory and all that Jazz.
• Well, actually Jon setup a blog for himself where he already has a very interesting and  funny article written by his Dad, Jimmy Raney.

BTW, for those that don’t know which could be quite a few Jimmy Raney is a unsung legendary guitarist of Jazz bebop. Jimmy Raney played with the likes of Stan Getz and other greats. Artist such as Wes Montgomery and even contemporary artist such as Pat Metheny cite him as a major influence. Jon plans to dedicate part of his site to his father’s memory and accomplishments. One of the projects consists of a book Jimmy Raney was working on melodic lines.

Finally, Jon’s CD is great. It has a little of everything from straightahead Jazz to fusions with Brazilian grooves to melancholic balads to blues. Its a great value at $10.00.

If consumers want great new and innovative music and great selection for that matter it is important to support independent music. If you love Jazz then supporting the “indie” Jazz/ fusion scene is a must otherwise you will get some big record label executive’s version of what Jazz is. So at the very least check out Jon’s CD.