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Posted by on Apr 4, 2015 in Music |

Clarinet Practice, Despair, Vade Mecum, and You

Despite considering myself a serious musician for most of my adult life, I’ve had a difficult relationship with practice. Most musicians are less than thrilled with practice, so this is not unique to me. I don’t know what motivates (or should I say de-motivates) most people not to practice, but for me it’s been a heady mixture of overwork in the day job, some technical and sometimes even orthopedic difficulties brought on by the overwork (I work with a keyboard on the day job), and 99% good old-fashioned despair.

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Posted by on Jul 9, 2011 in Music |

And have I mentioned my guitar habit?

And have I mentioned my guitar habit?

A little over a year ago, Nathan decided to start playing guitar. I’d played guitar a little several years ago, so I decided to buy an inexpensive Yamaha guitar and work on playing guitar with him.

I’ve continued to practice and work with a friend of mine on guitar (Nathan’s taking lessons as well). Somewhere along the way I picked up a Epiphone SG electric. About a month ago I bought an Epiphone Masterbilt acoustic/electric. Mostly I’ve worked on rhythm guitar fingerpicking.

It’s a lot different than playing a horn. For one thing, knowing how to read music is only marginally useful. The old joke goes “How do you make a guitarist play quieter?” “Put music in front of him.”

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Posted by on Jun 21, 2011 in Gadgetry, Internet Geekdom, Music |

So how’s it going adding every CD you own?

Fine, thank you. I’ve been steadily popping one in provided I’m awake, my computer is awake, and I’m where I can feed the thing. I’ve got a stack at home and at work. As of this writing, the collection in iTunes stands at 2092 items. It would take over 6 days to listen to it all.

Searchability – what a concept. In the early ’90s I had a friend with some kind of software that had all his CDs indexed. I was never that organized. But now I can type in a composer, performer, etc.

Speaking of searchability – it’s amazing how Gracenote can find all the track info, even on obscure CDs (only had one misfire in a commercial CD), but album art is generally a google search…

Also, sweet heavens it’s annoying how the system splits up albums. There’s a way to edit the info and pull them together. That’ll be another phase of the project.

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Posted by on Jun 20, 2011 in Gadgetry, Internet Geekdom, Music |

Wherein I add all my CDs to my iTunes library

Wherein I add all my CDs to my iTunes library

because I just bought a iPod Classic 160 GB. In black. iPod classic

I’m adding all my CDs. Every single one I own. Well, maybe not the homebrewed ones that are made from live recordings, all too often of me playing. And I’m drawing the line at my wife’s Olivia Newton John collection from the ’80s, because technically those aren’t mine. But if Grace Notes can find the track info, it’s going on.

Even the bad ones. Even “Night & Day” by Chicago.

Speaking of which, why can’t iTunes find the album artwork for Chicago 19?

More as this develops.

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Posted by on Feb 26, 2011 in Music |

2011 clarinet day info

2011 clarinet day info

Troy University Clarinet Day is once again coming soon, and they have a great lineup of guest artists. I attended this last year with my colleague Curtis Hollinger of the MSO and a student. Timothy Phillips and the rest of the faculty and staff do a fantastic job. Don’t miss it! Tell any of your high school students to get to Troy!

2011clarinetday (PDF copy of the application – requires an Adobe Acrobat viewer)

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Posted by on Jul 20, 2010 in Gadgetry, Music |

Music recording, past and present

Music recording, past and present

Tascam DR-07 digital recorderUntil recently, I had a minidisc recorder which I had used to record live music – mainly my own practices and performances – and which I had occasionally used to make digital recordings of public speaking. The latter were mainly sermons at church which I recorded off the sound board so that I, as the resident A/V boy, could transfer them to CD or mp3 recordings for their web site. I’d long since switched the church to other solutions, however, my music recording had fallen by the wayside because of the minidisc’s shortcomings.  This post is mainly about the Tascam DR-07 digital recorder which replaced it, but a very brief trip down minidisc memory lane will help put my excitement about this new unit in perspective.

There were two main problems with the minidisc format.

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