Looking forward to catching up on my podcast queue this weekend with this oneā¦
Why Remix āSgt. Pepperāsā? Giles Martin, The Man Behind The Project, Explains
I have not had enough time to dig into the new Sgt. Peppperās remaster but when I do, I am sure I will listen to the original multiple times through before digging into the new version.
John Colpittsās āDrumset = Youā is a fun read. Having grown up with so many of these drum set method books, I admire his dedication to the small amounts of written text contained within them. Growing up, of course, I rarely read this material, having been in middle school and being very anxious to get to the playing music part.
Drumset = You by John Colpitts:
Iām a mostly untrained drummer. Iāve taken lessons for brief periods, but until recently Iād missed out on that most essential component of drum pedagogy: the method book. In my efforts to improve, Iāve been drawn to the introductions of these books, which feature efficient, often dull languageāand in which, occasionally, the eccentricities of the authors shine through in remarkable ways. In the last few months, Iāve become obsessed with gleaning hints about drummersā personalities from these books, far too many of which, perhaps unsurprisingly, have been written by men. Lost in the hinterland between art and technique, their introductions tend to exhibit grouchiness, pretension, narcissism, penury, New Age quirkiness, and sometimes even wisdom. What follows is a survey of some of the more striking entries.
New update to Dorico. Read about it at Scoring Notes here. See a preview video about it below.
I have been using Dorico since the fall and I love it more and more every day. I still need to boot up Sibelius every now and then, but I have mostly phased out of it.
Ethan Hein back at it again with a great post deciphering the idea that it doesnāt take musical ability to be a popular singer these daysā¦
You kids like the wrong music, part two:
Itās true, we donāt expect unamplified and unedited singing at Carusoās level anymore. But we expect a lot of other things. For one thing, we expect singers to write their own material, which Caruso didnāt do. For another, we demand a lot of studio technique that Caruso would have found unbearably alien. To say that āeditedā recordings are of intrinsically lower musical value than live recordings makes no sense. By that standard, we should require that all movies be plays that are filmed in real time. Film acting isnāt the same craft as stage acting, and unamplified stage singing isnāt the same craft as studio singing. Some people manage to master both crafts, but not many.
So much great stuff here. Read the whole thing.
I love how passionate Joe Steel is about the Apple TV. Read his WWDC 2017 tvOS wish list here.
The ATV is my go to device at home. Despite its many flaws, I really enjoy mine. Steel echoes many of the features I included on my own WWDC 2017 wish list.
If you tether your PC to the cellular connection of your phone or tablet while traveling, you might want to check out this app.
From David Sparks at Macsparky.com...
Thereās a new version of TripMode out. Iāve written about TripMode before. Itās a Mac app that will monitor your internet traffic and selectively turn off apps. This can be a lifesaver when tethering. As a quick war story, I once had a very large podcast file come in over Dropbox while I was tethering my Mac and burned through a monthās wireless data in about an hour. With TripMode, when I tether, I turn off Dropbox so that doesnāt happen.
I have been looking for an app like this for a while. The idea of tethering my Mac to my iPadās data connection while I am away from a reliable wireless network is appealing. I always worry about the data that my computer is hogging throughout the various processes that run in the background (things like Dropbox and photo app syncing). With TripMode, that is no longer a concern. You can download TripMode 2 here.
You may have caught this headline last week:
The MP3 Is Officially Dead According To Its Creators
It is worth a read, but make sure you read Marco Armentās followup:
āMP3 is deadā missed the real, much better story
In summary:
MP3 is supported by everything, everywhere, and is now patent-free. There has never been another audio format as widely supported as MP3, itās good enough for almost anything, and now, over twenty years since it took the world by storm, itās finally free.
A timely followup to MacStoriesā iOS 11 Wish List Videoā¦
One of my favorite productivity app developers, Readdle, has added drag and drop support to all of their iOS apps. This means that you can actually drag an email attachment from Spark Mail on one half of your iPad's screen onto the Documents app on the other half of your screen and drop it in a folder. It works the other way too, allowing you to drag files from Documents into mail messages in Spark as email attachments.
For those of you who donāt know, Documents is a fantastic app and pretty much serves the role that a Finder app would if Apple ever chose to release one on iPad. Readdleās apps are featured prominently throughout my book. PDF Expert, Documents, and Scanner Pro are especially useful in my daily teaching workflow.
Readdle has a great blog post demoing this feature and explaining how they were able to pull it off. It really is black magic! Read the post here.
Watch the video below.
As an advocate for both high quality speakers and home automation, the relationship between the Amazon Echo and the Sonos home stereo is exciting to me. Ever since the announcement of their future integration, I have wondered: how specifically will I be able to command my Sonos speakers? Will the Amazon Echo speaker itself be able to play music from my Sonos library? Will music accessible on my Sonos (Amazon Prime for example) be able to be triggered on the Sonos? Will I be able to trigger anything from my Sonos library from the Echo, even if the Echo doesnāt have that information stored within it?
These questions plague me. In the meantime, it is great to see that Sonos is thinking about deep integration and the long term. Check out this article about it:
Another topic I intended to blog about months ago and have been sitting on throughout the spring.
The Mac Pro Lives!!!
John Gruber wrote a great post at Daring Fireball recently outlining Appleās plans for the future of their desktop computers.
Apple is currently hard at work on a ācompletely rethoughtā Mac Pro, with a modular design that can accommodate high-end CPUs and big honking hot-running GPUs, and which should make it easier for Apple to update with new components on a regular basis. Theyāre also working on Apple-branded pro displays to go with them.
This is fantastic news. No matter how late Apple is releasing this machine, or how late they are in realizing that they need to release this machine, it is good for everyone that they are releasing it. I own the 2008 Mac Pro. I love it, but I don't think I will buy another desktop Mac in the near future just because my needs have changed so much since 2008. But Apple making a modular pro level machine gives me hope for the platform. It means that creative professionals will be able to rely on Macs as their primary workstations for years to come. It also means that Apple is committed to macOS, an operating system that I have a lot of affection for and rely on to perform high level tasks and operate professional music software. This really is good news for anybody who loves the Mac, whether you need something like a Mac Pro or if the MacBook Air is enough for you.
This, in combination with Apple's recent acquisition of Workflow, lead me to believe that Apple really cares about putting powerful tools in the hands of their users, both traditional professionals who use Mac Pros, and edge case iOS power users.
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