This article from 9to5Mac might be helpful for someone who is looking to get started with a Launchpad controller and the new Live Loops feature of Logic Pro.
I used to do a lot of this non-linear beat triggering in Ableton Live when I had a church job it was relevant to. Since then, I don't do a ton of this kind of work in my DAW anymore (except for fun) but I am excited to try it in my workstation of choice, Logic Pro. Now to go find my Launchpad...
It’s time to take full control of Apple’s latest production technologies with Novation’s Live Loops and Logic Pro Launchpad grid controllers. The Live Loops grid-based environment is a wonderful experience with a connected iPad, allowing for a more immersive approach to your cells via the Logic Remote app. But Live Loops also brings with it official support for a wide range of those colorful and affordable grid controllers from Novation. For compatible models, functionality details, and more, hit the jump.
Although notation is always of paramount importance to MuseScore, we want to expand our capabilities to include other areas of modern composition: experimentation, sharing & collaboration, working with mixed media, sophisticated organisation and being able to produce high-quality audio. MuseScore 4 is the first step in achieving this expanded focus.
However, this does not mean that we are going to start adding new features at the expense of existing ones. In order to achieve our goals, we need to look ‘inwards’ first. Armed with two years of user feedback on MuseScore 3, we have begun the process of making significant improvements to almost all aspects of the application: improved engraving defaults, simplification of the interface, more powerful functionality and an overhaul of its appearance, to name a few.
I don’t use MuseScore often, but I know it is widely respected as a lightweight and accessible notation editor. It really resonates with a lot of the teachers in my district, particularly those who are comfortable with using apps over web browsers to compose, and who don’t want something over the top and expensive like Sibelius or Finale.
This is exciting news for MuseScore and I am curious to see where their development goes.
At WWDC, Apple’s software developer conference last month, they announced that the Mac will be moving to the same chip architecture as iOS devices. One of the many benefits of this move will be that iOS apps will run on the Mac natively.
CDM had an interesting immediate reaction to this news.
Apple’s announcement of moving the Mac from Intel to ARM is no surprise. But here are the details most relevant to your tools – and why we’re in a new era on both the PC and the Mac.
And TL:DR – the change on the Mac platform has a lot to do with Apple’s App Store ecosystem and blending the iPad and Mac platforms. But looking at the big picture, we aren’t so much post-PC as post-Intel. All vendors, not just Apple, are starting to eye chips other than Intel’s even on the x64 architecture.
I am really excited about this possibility for a number of reasons. There are a ton of iOS apps I would love to use the Mac (I am looking at you Tonal Energy and forScore). But then I got thinking about how big and diverse the iOS App Store is, and what some of the edge-case effects of iOS apps on the Mac could be.
Let’s think about audio plugins for a moment. iOS doesn’t have a robust architecture for integrating third party audio apps into larger ones like GarageBand. But it does has a lot of these audio apps. My understanding is that iOS plugins are Audio Units with the .AU extension, just like ones you would install in a DAW on MacOS.
So my assumption is that that an audio app for iOS like Brusfri could run inside of Logic alongside all of your other plugins. This may be a bad example considering Brusfri has a Mac version already but you get the idea.
I think this will only help the Mac. It could be mildly disruptive to the audio plugin market because iOS plugins are so much cheaper than things like, for example, Waves but ultimately, people who want Waves will still buy Waves. I am optimistic that this change will simply mean more apps for everyone, more variety of apps, and more variety of price.
The Pages app now supports importing books from iBooks Author, which Apple discontinued and removed from the App Store on July 1. The update app also allows videos from YouTube and Vimeo to be played right in documents, with release notes below.
Play YouTube and Vimeo videos right in your documents.
I have been wishing for this feature for years. Embedding web videos is so useful in the classroom, where adding something like a YouTube video to your class presentation is as easy as pasting a URL to it in a slide.
I have been jealous of Google Slides for this feature (and pretty much only for this feature) and had just assumed that it was easier for Google to implement because both services are web-based. Apple doesn’t have a strong history of going out of their way to cooperate with the web, or Google services for that matter. So I am happy to see this feature here.
I have worked around this problem in the past by using two apps that are incredible utilities. Downie, on the Mac, which strips videos from the web and downloads them to your hard drive, and iCab Mobile, which is a web browser for the iPad that can download web videos to the Files app.
Both these apps, on their respective operating systems, have allowed me the control to download web videos and put them in slides. But this new iWork feature will eliminate several steps and make my files much lighter.
Web based music notation editor, Noteflight, recently launched a new feature called SoundCheck. It works with Noteflight Learn to add the same pitch and rhythm analysis to your assignments that services like Smartmusic and PracticeFirst are capable of.
My understanding is that it works like this: Noteflight is still a standalone service for writing notation, publishing it, and sharing it within the Noteflight community. Noteflight Learn is the service that can be added to your Noteflight subscription which gives you access to content libraries and some LMS features like managing students and assigning work. SoundCheck is a third offering that can be added to your existing Noteflight Learn subscription, that adds the practice and analysis tools to your assignments.
It seems like it should be very easy to make assignments out of your Noteflight scores, which can be imported via the XML format.
John Mlynczak, Managing Director of Noteflight, is coming on the podcast this week to discuss more. Stay tuned.
We are so excited to announce our partnership with MatchMySound™ technology to bring SoundCheck™ to Noteflight! This proven solution for performance assessment will be available for use with any Noteflight score, and provide ratings and feedback for pitch, rhythm, and intonation – which can be used for assessment.
All Noteflight scores will be available in SoundCheck with just the click of a button. All current Noteflight Learn integrations with Google Classroom and LTI tools such as Canvas, Schoology, Moodle, etc, will still be supported for creating and turning in SoundCheck assignments. We are actively integrating this feature now and are committed to having the first version available for use in June.
Old news now but I just wanted to give a shout-out to StaffPad for winning an Apple Design Award this year. It is so completely deserved in every way. If you want to hear more of my thoughts on StaffPad, try one of the following posts:
StaffPad, from StaffPad Ltd., brilliantly converts handwritten musical notations into digital sheet music. Designed for composers who want an easy solution for writing and composing music digitally, the app uses Apple technologies such as Apple Pencil, drag and drop, and Core ML to transform each bar into beautifully typeset music notation that can be edited using intuitive touch or Apple Pencil tools.
Meredith Allen, Sales Enablement Manager at Soundtrap, joins the show to talk about using Soundtrap in the music classroom to create music and podcasts, getting acquired by Spotify, and wearing hard pants.
The school year is finally over, as is my first ever quarter of online teaching.
I wanted my students to end the year seeing themselves represented together, playing the same music, at the same time. So I sharpened my Final Cut skills and dove into the process of making a virtual ensemble.
The video in this post gives an overview of my process for making these videos, all the way from making a play along track, to advanced editing such as pitch and rhythm correction. The video includes a couple of my favorite Mac utilities for manipulating audio and video files. Scroll to the bottom to see all of the final videos of my students.
A swift return to the show from Craig McClellan to talk about all of the things Apple announced at their developer conference this past week and how we see it influencing our work.
Here is the first of a few "virtual band" videos I have been editing over the past few weeks. I am proud of my students for their hard work in unfamiliar conditions. I enjoyed making this a lot, but for different reasons than I enjoy teaching band.
I really refined my audio and video editing workflow for this. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a video post on how I made this using Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and handful of other indie Mac apps.
