Reuters - The use of Canadian singer-songwriter Feist's song "1, 2, 3, 4" in an iPod Nano TV spot is generating major attention -- online and on the Billboard charts.
Reuters - The enduring importance of Bob Marley's music was underscored when Fifty Six Hope Road Music, the Marley family-owned company that holds the rights to his music, recently announced an impending lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) and Verizon Wireless.
Reuters - Kicked back comfortably in a meeting room at the Sony BMG Nashville offices, Ronnie Dunn and Kix Brooks exude the same easygoing charm and mischievous sense of camaraderie that characterizes their high-octane stage shows and consistently propels their music up the charts.
Love it or hate it, there simply is no graphical development environment for musical and multimedia anywhere near as deep as Max. Max remains the most powerful “blank slate”, custom creative software around, and it’s allowed two decades of artists to create their own tools without coding.
Today, David Zicarelli, the Big Kahuna at Cycling ‘74 and a driving force behind Max as we now know it, talked publicly for the first time about Max 5. This version looks like the biggest ground-up overhaul of Max, MSP, and Jitter since their creation. It’s a huge article, well worth reading, but here are some highlights. (I get to sit down with C74 Director of Engineering Darwin Grosse next week at AES; not sure how much of that meeting I’ll be able to share right away but will definitely find out.)
Max 5 is a complete overhaul that’s all about making patching more pleasurable, with an entirely new, 21st-Century user interface and code base. It’s not about adding a zillion new objects. The idea is to be easier to learn for beginners, and more fun to use for experts. (Interestingly, this is similar to the more modest but philosophically parallel reworking of Logic Studio, another app born in the late 80s.)
It’s not just skin deep, because doing things like building workable UIs for performance and debugging promises to be easier.
Keep in mind, this is all basically hearsay on Max 5 because I haven’t seen it yet; I’m just condensing what I can based on my knowledge of Max and David’s introduction. But I don’t want to make you wait for details, since I know we have plenty of die-hard Max users collected here (and the odd Cycling ‘74 employee, so I hope I’m not too far off.) That said, here’s an overview of what to look for from the new version, with more details to follow:
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© Peter Kirn for , 2007. | |
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Last night, a reasonably-sized mob squeezed between workbenches at Etsy Labs to enjoy the latest Handmade Music night, organized by myself and CDM, Etsy.com, and Make Magazine. At this point, I’d normally try to explain what the concept behind Handmade Music is, but, like so many things, it sounds way cooler in Spanish. Mangas Verdes writes (responding to the latest video from Etsy):
Son músicos, son artesanos y son modernos. ¿Quién quiere pagar miles de euros por un sampler o un sintetizador? ¿Quién dijo que en en el campo de los instrumentos musicales tampoco hay nada nuevo bajo el sol? Handmade Musical Creations: interesante, irreverente y divertido. Luthiers, pero en versión tecno.
And yes, luthier exactly what it means in English. I love it.
In a night filled with handmade circuits driving tape players, webcam MIDI controllers, a giant wall of switches, and a din of bleeps and bloops, one could well say “this sounds like chaos” or “aren’t these all just gimmicks?” I wouldn’t argue — quite the contrary. “Weird device that makes noise” is, after all, the first stage of any musical instrument. Already, people were practicing with these instruments as you would a cello. A cello takes years to master. So I’m eager to see where all this leads.
Last night’s highlights: an extended ambient-esque set from Richard Lainhart, a hand-wired cassette Mellotron from the good folks at Make (more on that coming later today), the public debut of the Monome 256, a great 40h performance (very different from Brian’s last time, showing the versatility of the instrument), Eric making the world’s least-practical yet most-fantastic controller in the form of a giant wall of household switches, and all sorts of unusual sound-making boxes.
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© Peter Kirn for , 2007. | |
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If any of you keep up with all things mac you probably know all the exciting things that are coming up in the fall. But I also know that most people dont have the time (or desire) to spend time checking blogs and rumor sites so I'm going to break it down for you.
Leopard- The newest upgrade to the Mac OS X system. Pushed back because of the iPhone, it is set to release on October 7th and comes with a ton of new applications like Spaces and Time Machine as well as new features on some favorite apps like iChat and Safari. Check out all the new stuff here
Office 08-The new version of microsoft office is coming out for Macs this January with some new features that are alot like office 07 for microsoft. The new pricing is out and the student bundle is at 150 and the full out package is 400 dollars. Check out the new features
Macbooks-Rumor has it that apple is going to release some new Macbooks, your guess is as good as mine as to when they do it. Alot of people are saying it will coincide with the release of Leopard while others think it may not be till January. has a run down of whats to come including a slimmer and lighter aluminum body and a keyboard that is alot like the new thin keyboards.
Itunes gets some competition -Amazon launched a new music store online where you can purchase unprotected mp3 files that will work on pretty much any portable music player. They are priced around the same as Itunes depending on the artist and you can import the files into Itunes after downloading. They do have Radioheads full catalog, but they dont have quite the catalog that Itunes has....yet. I'm still boycotting amazon until they bring a mac version of their digital video download software so I can get the Office back on my laptop. But thats another debate.
All in all, these are a few of the new things from mac to look out for but for sure not all of them. But dont worry, I'll try and do my best to filter through the information out there to bring you the best information. If you stumble upon anything you find important that I havent mentioned yet feel free to let me know.
Now I had heard about this initiative a few months ago during a lecture given at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSE&IS) by , who passed one of the spiffy little green machines around the room. I thought it was very cool then, and I thought it was equally cool when I opened the New York Times technology section and saw this article as the top headline a few days ago. It's great that the program is giving spiffy little laptops to poor kids around the world, only one problem, I want one! I'm not too selfish to admit that with this new buy one, get one program getting underway starting November, I am itching for a cool little laptop, and may just hanker out 399 dollars for one, oh wait! and while getting a cool gadget to play with I'm also being a do-gooder! How about that?
This whole thing makes me wonder why something like this has not been created for mass distribution here in the United States. I know that there are tablet PCs, PDAs, and now iPhones which serve as little computers, but the tablet PC seems like the only thing equal to these children's laptops and they're way more expensive. What's stifling the creativity of the big boys up in the technology development labs? Am I missing something?
This paragraph from an also from the NY Times published on November 30th 2006 pretty much says it all:
"The laptop does not come with a Microsoft Windows operating system or even a hard drive, and the screen is small. And the cost is now closer to $150 than $100. But the price tag, even compared with low-end $500 laptops now widely available, transforms the economic equation for developing countries."
My question: Why shouldn't it transform the economic equation for developed countries? Why? Because the public is being robbed here in a significant way, hundreds of dollars a pop, and there is little we can do about it (that I know of, any ideas anyone?). I bought my Dell computer for almost $1300 dollars, and it's not a high end machine, and it has had it's issues (for example: Whose idea was it to make the screen so shiny that I can barely see the screen outside, even with the brightness all the way up)...This little computer doesn't have that problem, why does mine? Much more can be said on the topic of price gouging in our economic environment, but that is a topic for another day.
A few people have commented on the post about this program, about how we should take care of our own first, about how the children in developing countries need food first, then laptops. I left a comment myself. But what I didn't cover were some other thoughts I had about the survival of these laptops in developing countries. First, how can we be sure that the kids will retain possession of these computers; them thangs pretty valuable, I'd want one; how can we be sure they won't be sold, or stolen? Second, who will teach the kids to use them? I know they aren't very complicated to use, but someone who doesn't know a anything about computers may find it hard to figure it out. Third, is the text in the computers in English?
I'm sure there will be more hullabaloo about the little green laptops, and I know that I'm signed up on the site to receive notification in November when the Give One Get One project gets underway. I have till then to consider whether I want to drop $400 dollars to fund a half-wise gesture to the third-world. But then again, I'm already dreaming about loading an e-book on there and reading it like a real book.
For your enjoyment, check out a labeled picture of the XO laptop:
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In other tech news:
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Finally someone steps to the plate to compete with that damned iTunes. I'll tell ya, I have never downloaded anything from iTunes because I am vehemently opposed to Digital Rights Management they put on their music and the prices of the songs are exorbitant; Yes, I think $0.99 cents a song is a ridiculous price for music file. My reasoning may be wrong but how can the price of a digital download be the same as the price of a CD? The only overhead is server maintenance/space cost; that can't be nearly as much as pressing a CD and distributing it, so why is the price the same? Everyone know that the artist barely makes anything off of the royalties per song, so can someone explain how that $0.99 is broken down so it makes sense for the consumer?
Now it's good that Amazon is allowing their music to be downloaded as .mp3's, I see that as a win for everyone. But what gives? The cost per song is still $0.89-99 cents. It's nice that they keep the cost of albums down to $9.99 and below, though that still doesn't give us much savings for a CD with 10 solid songs an intro and an outro. Even with a CD that has sixteen songs, at 9.99, each song costs us $0.62 cents. Not terribly expensive, but I think more competition can lead to better results. Still, "The Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, which is owned by Sony and Bertelsmann, have not agreed to sell music on Amazon MP3, and Mr. Card pointed out that Universal and EMI have made only parts of their catalogs available without copy protection." Wassup with that? They're only fighting the future. While they lose profits by preventing .mp3 song downloads of their music, I'm over at downloading .mp3s for a quarter-a-piece.
Point: Get a clue people (and by people I mean the record companies), offering DRMed files does not prevent piracy, it takes 15 minutes to reconvert files downloaded from iTunes to .mp3s, it takes 10-15 minutes to rip a CD to the computer. I have been happily paying Mp3 Sugar for your product for the past year. I may download some CDs from Amazon now because 6-10 dollars isn't "too much" to ask for a digital CD, but hey, if I can easily save 75 cents per song, why wouldn't I? Stop fighting what can't be stopped and profit off of it.
p.s. - Personally, I would rather bypass the record companies completely and pay the artist through his/her website for .mp3 downloads of a CD, plus whatever extras are on there. The internet makes this easy. The purpose of the record companies these days is to promote artists and their music. This is the only place where signed artists have the edge over ind pendent artists; the internet has opened up distribution model. It is now a matter of time before CD stores become rare like LP shops. I see it happening already with the independents dying out, Blockbuster Music closing, Tower closing, etc. The future cannot be stopped, only planned for and made advantageous.
Finally, as if this post isn't long enough already, I'd like to leave you with this link to a video called "Hacking the iPhone" created by super tech columnist David Pogue: . It promotes the point that big companies need to stop fighting open source development. Embrace improvements to your product made and distributed free of charge to the company, but likely to boost profits.
A seguir, algumas de minha experiências com "músicas" eletrônicas. Usei o programa Sony ACID Music Studio com vários samples e ficou uma mistureba interessante.
After more than a year of relatively trusty service and a country-spanning , my has finally become too flaky for performances. I’ve been looking at the various DJ-style midi controller options, and was down to about 5 options when I was asked to play a set on short notice at a relatively big . So I made a snap decision and picked up a , choosing this over the because it has a couple of extra sliders and knobs.
This is a NuVJ, my second choice MIDI controller from Numark
As a class-compliant USB MIDI device it installed fine. I loaded my VJ software of choice, , mapped the jog wheels to scratch video, and scratched.
The video went bonkers.
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© Jaymis Loveday for , 2007. | |
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