Music

Customize the iOS Music app

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Did you know you can customize the tab bar at the bottom of the iOS Music app? By default, it offers tabs labeled Radio, Playlists, Artists, Songs, and More. Want to replace the Radio tab with a Genre tab? Easy. Follow the link and Kirkville will show you how.

BIAS amps for iPad

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BIAS starts with stunning replications of 36 of the most sought-after vintage and modern amps in rock ‘n’ roll history and then lets you customize them to respond perfectly to your unique touch and feel. Swap out the tubes, preamp, transformer, tone stacks, cab and mic—even change the tube’s bias—to create your dream amp and distinctive signature sound. Tap once to open your BIAS amp in JamUp and add awesome multi-effects.

A number of people have mentioned this to me in the last couple of days. It looks really nice, so I downloaded it. I’ll get back with my thoughts in a few days.

Rare Jerry Garcia guitar goes to auction

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Jerry Garcia’s Travis Bean TB500 electric guitar, serial number 12. The guitar, designed and built by Travis Bean Inc., was played by Garcia on stage and in recording sessions. Featuring an aluminum neck – a design pioneered by Travis Bean, three single coil pick up configuration and Garcia’s Onboard Effects Loop. This guitar was the first to employ the Onboard Effects Loop, which was then incorporated into all of Garcia’s electric guitars.

The opening bid is $75,000—the guitar is expected to fetch between 100k-200k.

PPG WaveGenerator for Mac

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The PPG WaveGenerator comes with a multitude of wavetables. The sound material contains the typical sounds from the original PPG wave models, as well as many new sounds generated by versatile analysis tools and also hand edited waves. This plugin enables the user, to create his own wavetables in a playful way, and to hear the result immediately. Also you can construct the waves by adding harmonics very precise.

Interesting that this started out as an iOS app.

iTunes Store downloads no longer contain composer names

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Kirk McElhearn:

I had noticed that, in an album I bought, Hilary Hahn’s In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores, there were no Composer tags. This is a bit irksome, because there are 28 different composers on the album, and manually tagging takes some time.

I thought for sure Kirk must have been wrong, so I downloaded Beethoven’s 5th conducted by Herbert von Karajan (my personal favorite) and sure enough, there was no composer information. It doesn’t make any sense that Apple would do this on purpose, but they need to fix it.

Incredible Academy Award winning short film from 1959

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Not sure if it’s the imagery, the music, or just the rhythm of the whole piece, but this is ten minutes well spent. I love the faces of the glass-blowers as they puff out their cheeks, sometimes smoking a pipe at the same time. Lovely.

Glas won master film maker Bert Haanstra a well-deserved Academy Award® for Best Short Documentary in 1959. The film contrasts the production of hand made crystal from the Royal Leerdam Glass Factory with automated bottle making machines in the Netherlands. An industrial film with a bebop heart, its lyrical use of light and sound still looks and sounds fabulous, nearly 60 years after it was made.

New PBS Jimi Hendrix documentary

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Love the American Masters series.

Hear My Train A Comin’ traces the legendary guitarist’s remarkable journey from his hardscrabble beginnings in Seattle, through his stint as a US Army paratrooper and as an unknown sideman to R&B stars until his discovery and ultimate international stardom. With previously unseen footage of the 1968 Miami Pop Festival, home movies, and interviews with those closest to Jimi Hendrix.

Review: IK Multimedia’s iLoud

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IK Multimedia added to its arsenal of music equipment on Thursday with the release of iLoud, a product the company bills as “the first studio-quality portable speaker designed for musicians and audiophiles.” That’s a lot to live up to with one product—luckily, I got one of the early units, so I had some time to try it out. […]

Warren DeMartini and Jake E. Lee

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Speaking of Warren DeMartini, Charvel has a Q&A with him posted on their site. I especially like the part about Warren and Jake E. Lee:

Imagine this: We’re both hanging out in the middle of the night watching a crappy TV with bad reception, sitting on the floor with our backs against the couch. I’m chipping away at the chords to “Round and Round,” and he’s chipping away at the chords to “Bark at the Moon.” We had no idea where those songs would take us.

Indeed.

Mic techniques for guitar

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Jimmy Page:

“You shouldn’t really have to use EQ in the studio if the instruments sound good. It should all be done with microphones and microphone placement. The instruments that bleed into each other are what create the ambience.”

Great advice.

Trigger 2 drum replacement

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I use Trigger in my songs all the time, but I have tried Trigger 2 yet. The description looks pretty amazing.

iTunes Radio and Sound Check

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Great article by Kirk McElhearn, although I don’t agree with his conclusion:

On the other hand, Apple is clearly saying that overly loud music doesn’t have a place on iTunes Radio.

I don’t mind Apple using Sound Check for iTunes Radio and I don’t see it as a statement by Apple about loud music. It’s just a way to normalize the volume of many different songs to give the user a more enjoyable listening experience.

I do wish music producers would lower the volume on their music—give it some room to breathe.

Fender’s “Beggars Banquet” guitar package

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For more than four decades, “Beggars Banquet” has remained one of the most acclaimed and popular Rolling Stones albums. Released in 1968, it marked a return to swaggering rock ‘n’ roll, and gave the world enduring classics such as “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man.”

Wow, nice!

Fender’s folding acoustic guitars

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With their revolutionary Voyage-Air patented hinged necks, each guitar folds in half at the neck heel and fits comfortably into a specially designed gig bag.

Cool.

Great Neil Young story

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Graham Nash tells the story of how, back in 1972, Neil Young played him his brand new album Harvest. Fantastic way to demo your music. More barn!