Just click the link above. I am breaking my belief of absolutely detesting Facebook video and their agitation of the open web. I hate that this video is not available on YouTube and must be viewed on Facebook, and I hate that I cannot even embed it in this post, but I wouldn’t share it if it wasn’t so good. Just check it out! I did not take a breath until about half way through the video.
🔗 The Washington Post - Why my guitar gently weeps
This article is fascinating. It also comes at an interesting time for me since I recently, and for the first time ever, purchased a six string electric guitar.
A few quotes...
The Washington Post - Why my guitar gently weeps:
In the past decade, electric guitar sales have plummeted, from about 1.5 million sold annually to just over 1 million. The two biggest companies, Gibson and Fender, are in debt, and a third, PRS Guitars, had to cut staff and expand production of cheaper guitars. In April, Moody’s downgraded Guitar Center, the largest chain retailer, as it faces $1.6 billion in debt. And at Sweetwater.com, the online retailer, a brand-new, interest-free Fender can be had for as little as $8 a month.
What worries Gruhn is not simply that profits are down. That happens in business. He’s concerned by the “why” behind the sales decline. When he opened his store 46 years ago, everyone wanted to be a guitar god, inspired by the men who roamed the concert stage, including Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and Jimmy Page. Now those boomers are retiring, downsizing and adjusting to fixed incomes. They’re looking to shed, not add to, their collections, and the younger generation isn’t stepping in to replace them.
Gruhn knows why.
“What we need is guitar heroes,” he says.
...
But there were already hints of the change to come, of the evolutions in music technology that would eventually compete with the guitar. In 1979, Tascam’s Portastudio 144 arrived on the market, allowing anybody with a microphone and a patch cord to record with multiple tracks. (Bruce Springsteen used a Portastudio for 1982’s “Nebraska.”) In 1981, Oberheim introduced the DMX drum machine, revolutionizing hip-hop.
So instead of Hendrix or Santana, Linkin Park’s Brad Delson drew his inspiration from Run-DMC’s “Raising Hell,” the crossover smash released in 1986. Delson, whose band recently landed atop the charts with an album notably light on guitar, doesn’t look at the leap from ax men to DJs as a bad thing.
“Music is music,” he says. “These guys are all musical heroes, whatever cool instrument they play. And today, they’re gravitating toward programming beats on an Ableton. I don’t think that’s any less creative as playing bass. I’m open to the evolution as it unfolds. Musical genius is musical genius. It just takes different forms.”
🔗 Music theory, explained with Oreos
Music theory, explained with Oreos
No comments necessary, just click the link and enjoy.
🔗 Why Reach Navigation Should Replace the Navbar in iOS Design
Speaking from the perspective of a user interface nerd, I found this blog post from Brad Ellis to be very interesting.
Why Reach Navigation Should Replace the Navbar in iOS Design:
The UINavigationBar, navbar for short, has been around since the original iPhone. Historically, navbars have been convenient and clear, easy to understand and easy to build.
Then phones ballooned, enough that the iPhone 7 Plus supplanted sales of the iPad mini. Now, if you own a modern iPhone, navbars can feel unwieldy — literally out of touch.
Burgeoning screens mean the distance between the navbar and our thumbs has grown. The screen on a 7 Plus is so tall it would take a thumb-length increase of 150 percent to reach those pesky buttons with one hand. Just another knuckle or two. Nothing weird.
As devices change, our visual language changes with them. It’s time to move away from the navbar in favor of navigation within thumb-reach. For the purposes of this article, we’ll call that Reach Navigation.
🔗 Ravenscoft 275 for iOS, a Fantastic Piano App
The Ravenscoft 275 is a piano app for iOS that I just learned about. It sounds truly fantastic. I do not do any of my audio power lifting on an iPad so I am not sure the price ($35.99) is worth it.
Apps like this make me dream for a day when the iPad can run a real digital audio workstation with full plugin support. I have dumped a lot of money into Waves and Native Instruments plugins over the years and I like having them at my disposal. iOS technically does support something like audio plugins. It is called inter-app audio apps (a mouthful,I know) and it allows third party audio plugins to be run in GarageBand. The app Audiobus allows you to make third party plugin apps work with third party DAWs (and more). I did a brief video demonstrating the feature a few years back. You can watch it here.
🔗 Gvido Music E-Reader
Just this past week I was recording a forthcoming episode of my podcast with Chris Russell (which should be posted within the next few weeks) on working with digital scores. We got talking about stand alone sheet music reader devices, in particular how previous devices were made instantly irrelevant when the iPad came out.
Click the link below to read about a new device in this class, the Gvido Digital Music Score. The article goes into depth about the technical details of this device. I still cannot see how something like this is going to take off when even the top of the line iPad Pro is only hundreds of dollars cheaper and can do way more. I have a Kindle Paperwhite and I do think that E Ink is beautiful and far easier on the eyes during extended lengths of use. Still though, I think I would choose my iPad over this any day of the week.
Early impressions of the Gvido music e-reader from the 2017 MOLA conference
🔗 OpenScore: Liberating Sheet Music
OpenScore: Liberating sheet music:
Launched just a few weeks ago, OpenScore is a new crowdsourcing initiative to digitize sheet music by the likes of Mozart and Beethoven, and make them freely available for everyone to use for any purpose. We have come a long way since we announced the project back in February, and I would like to share the developments with you now.
This is an incredibly ambitious initiative and will have a tremendously positive impact on the music community. I admire their method of creating incentive for users to contribute to the catalogue:
The lesson we took from other projects is that if you sit around and wait for people to transcribe the pieces they like, you’ll end up with ten transcriptions of the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, and none of the other movements. We will overcome this by placing a bounty on works that have not yet been transcribed. The bounty comes in the form of free membership of MuseScore’s score sharing website.
I might consider transcribing something. I am also going to be contributing to their Kickstarter, which you can view by clicking here.
🔗 Improved Apple Pencil accuracy in the new iPad Pro and its use with music apps
I am trying to be careful not to post too much about iOS 11 and the new iPad Pro on this blog, but a post from David Sparks last week struck me as quite relevant for musicians and educators. David Sparks is an Apple productivity guru, and co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, Mac Power Users.
Sparks is also a jazz enthusiast and plays the saxophone in his spare time (although I am not sure how he has any). In my opinion, he is a primary authority on using iPads for work, and he has been using the new 10.5 inch pro for over a week now. He highlights a few uses of the Apple Pencil with music apps in a recent blog post of his. I have quoted it below...
David Sparks: One Week with the New iPad Pro:
In addition to a faster screen render, the new iPad also provides a faster scan for the pencil at 240 times per second. You won't notice any difference when drawing quickly. The first time I tried it, I made broad fast strokes on prior generation iPad right next to this 10.5 inch iPad and couldn't notice a difference. Then I got thinking about the times I try to use the pencil with precision and I started doing some tests. I use the pencil to make very small and detailed annotations on PDFs. I also use the pencil to write music in NotateMe. It was with that second test that I really got religion. NotateMe allows me to write music on my iPad with my pencil. It transcribes the music as I write it and even gives me a little preview. I like using the application to sketch of ideas for songs and solos. This task gets a lot easier with a higher scan rate on pencil. The application gets a better reading and, as a result, gives me better response. No longer do my eighth notes turn into quarter rests. One remarkable part about all this is the fact that I did not have to buy a new Apple Pencil. The iPad improvements were all that were needed in order to give my existing Apple Pencil these new powers.
🔗 Dorico 1.1 is released
The Scoring Notes Blog has the scoop. I haven’t played with the chord symbols yet but from the screenshots, they appear very well implemented.
Today Steinberg released Dorico 1.1, the most comprehensive update to the scoring program since the software’s initial October 2016 release.
I am aware that this update has been highly anticipated and that you probably have a lot of urgent questions.
So, what would you like to read about first? The addition of all the ornaments from Bach’s Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann? How slurs can automatically be placed on the first or last note of a tie chain, Mahler-style? That rests can now be nudged by any arbitrary distance, not just whole spaces? Chord symbols? The slight overhaul of the commands to control beaming? The implications of Dorico‘s polymetric features on bar numbering in multiplayer Layouts? How to notate…
Ah… Chord symbols it is, yes? Are you sure? Because, I’m telling you, that bar numbering stuff is fascinating.
Yeah, yeah, okay. Chord symbols.
...keep reading the article to get all of the fine details.
🔗 iOS 11: The MacStories Overview
The best news from WWDC 2017 (in my opinion) was improvements to iOS 11, particularly the iPad productivity features. MacStories has a really good overview of all the primary features that are coming with iOS 11 in the fall.
iOS 11: The MacStories Overview:
Alongside the storm of iPad-specific features, the next version of iOS will also bring advancements to the Lock screen and Control Center interfaces. Built-in apps and services such as Maps, App Store, Notes, Messages, Podcasts, Music, Siri, and more received individual updates — some more comprehensive than others. The new ARKit and Core ML frameworks were announced as well, giving us our first tangible examples of Apple's investments in AR and developer-friendly machine learning.
Despite a decade in the wild, in many ways iOS is still a young operating system. It's good to see Apple not resting on its laurels, but instead continuing to reevaluate and redesign the areas of the OS that need it — such as iPad productivity features and the App Store. The ground-breaking potential for iPad users in iOS 11 shows just how much that aspect of the system has been neglected, but many of the other changes show how Apple's slow refinements over years are paying off.
Below you'll find a detailed look at what Apple is unabashedly calling "turning iOS up to 11."