Kelly's Music & Computers Blog

Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Auralia 3 for Windows

Auralia 3 for Windows is now available. This new version contains a number of new topics, plus a new user interface. The most welcome feature for me is the use of the Sibelius fonts for all notation, along with note selection using a keypad similar to that used in Sibelius. As much as I liked the exercises in Auralia, I really hated the way it displayed notation as it was both ugly and difficult to read.

New topics include:

All topics now support custom levels, and Auralia can also be configured to support multiple syllabi. A separate level structure can be created in each topic for any particular syllabus.

The chord editor now supports multiple voicings and you can also create your own scales in Auralia!  The pitch recognition feature has also been improved to provide more accurate results.

 


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Friday, July 22, 2005
Sonar LE included free with Edirol Products...
Edirol is now bundling Sonar LE with many of their new products. This "lite" version of Sonar is still very powerful and offers the ability to record up to 8 inputs at a time while supporting 64 audio and 256 MIDI tracks. You can use up to 16 auxiliary busses as well as create up to 16 aux sends per track. Sonar LE allows the insertion of a total of 24 audio effects within a project's tracks and busses and you can use up to 8 virtual instruments simultaneously.

Based on the Sonar audio engine, LE supports 24-bit/192kHz resolutions and 32-bit floating point internal mixing. Although it lacks many of the effects and instruments found in the full Sonar, it does include the DreamStation DXi, a polyphonic analog-style synth and the Cyclone DXi, which allows you to stack up to 16 ACIDized loop tracks side-by-side for editing with automatic tempo synchronization.

Fortunately, you can upgrade Sonar LE to the full Sonar Studio at a discount - not bad for a free program!

- Kelly

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Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Edirol's new USB powered speakers
I'm always on the look out for some decent portable speakers for my laptop. If I will have a power supply and don't need to travel light, I'll usually bring a pair or MA-10Ds or MA-20Ds along. There are times when I don't want to lug speakers around and wish I had something small that was self-powered. Edirol may have the answer for me with their new MA-1EX.

The specs have just been announced, and they won't be available for me to try for a few more months. Judging from the specs, these might do the trick!

The MA-1EX's will completely by-pass my laptop's internal sound card (all internal laptop soundcards suck, BTW. I usually travel with a Firewire or USB soundcard, but this will be handy for when I just want to playback.) The MA-1EX can even act as a simple S/PDIF optical output and headphone amp for your computer. A headphone amp can be a handy thing for noisy environments and quiet laptops! It even includes integrated cord storage.

- Kelly
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Saturday, July 09, 2005
Finale 2006
Each summer, MakeMusic rolls out a new version of Finale, and this summer is no exception. Finale 2006 will be shipping soon, with a number of new features focused on improving playback. Finale 2006 now includes more than 100 sounds from the popular Garritan Personal Orchestra library to provide authentic playback to your scores.  Advanced reverb is also included, and the Human Playback capabilities now respond to legato and instrumental techniques. 

The "Studio View" mixer has also be added to allow you to solo, mute and adjust each instrument's level on playback. Unlike the Garritan Personal Orchestra library and the Human Playback capabilities, the "Studio View" mixer is over hyped for what it does. Claiming sequencer-like power, in the end, it really is just a mixer and isn't that exciting (especially consider that Sibelius has already had this feature for a while.) However, it is a great feature to add, it just isn't quite as exciting as the marketing material claims!

In addition to support for Kontakt Player included with the Garritan library, Finale will now support virtually any Native Instruments product, including Kontakt, Kompakt and Reaktor.  We really would have liked to have seen any VST instrument work with Finale, but with access to any NI based soft synth or sampler player, the majority of the products we would want to use will now integrate directly into Finale.  Not only can we use the affordable but great sounding Kompakt, the full Kontakt, Reaktor and other NI products, but many of the current synths and samplers on the market use Kontakt Player so those will work as well, including East West's Symphonic Orchestra series.


Tempo Tap is also a new feature for playback that allows you to "conduct" the performance.  Much like the "NTEMPO" feature in Notion, you can enter a rhythm track into Finale and then tap the rhythm during playback - Finale will follow your tempo so you can control rit, accelerando and any other tempo changes. This is a handy feature for improving playback as you can actually make your playback musical by adding phrasing and other slight tempo adjustments.

Other helpful new features include a chord analysis tool, "handbells used" chart, Orff Instruments, along with split-measures, including mid-measure repeats. (Some of which, many Finale users would agree, are well past due!)

- Kelly

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Power Tracks Pro Audio 10
PG Music's PowerTracks Pro Audio is now at Version 10. Always an incredible value at under $50 US, the new version adds a number of new features, including ASIO support, a fully-featured Piano Roll Window, time stretch and pitch change for audio tracks, half and quarter speed audio playback, drag and drop audio editing, 3 new DirectX Plug-ins (PG Vinyl, PG RTA, PG Vocal Remover) and more.

The new ASIO support in PowerTracks Pro Audio 10 can achieve latency as low as 5 milliseconds and will echo MIDI thru notes to DXi softsynths in real-time. The addition of the Piano Roll Window allows you to precisely edit every MIDI Track. Time stretch and pitch change features give you even greater flexibility for audio tracks and the new DirectX plug-ins included with PowerTracks Pro Audio 10 can easily convert your old vinyl collection to CD or MP3, find the proper equalization settings for your project, and suppress vocal tracks in your favorite recordings.

Although it isn't as "flashy" as Cubase SE or Sonar Home Studio, it is quite amazing what PowerTracks can do for the price. If you can get past the "clunky" interface and you don't need VST support, the PowerTracks is definitely worth considering, especially if you are on a budget. Lab Pack pricing makes this an excellent value for schools.

- Kelly

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Friday, July 08, 2005
Reason 3.0.3 Update...
Free for Reason 3.0 users, the new 3.0.3 update from Reason optimizes some code for better performance and adds Remote support for the Tranport and M-Audio's Ozonic keyboard. Every Reason user will want this update as it also fixed a number of bugs. If you use the Ozonic with Reason, the Remote feature is a great addition to help you get the most out of controller Reason with your keyboard.

- Kelly.


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Thursday, July 07, 2005
Sibelius 4
The details on Sibelius 4 have been released, along with a demo. The upgrade should start shipping in North America sometime in August, and features a number of "must have" features that will be sure to inspire Sibelius users to pay the $129 - $169 US upgrade fee. (Upgrades must be ordered directly from Sibelius.)

"Dynamic Parts" is one of the most compelling new features. Previously, when you wanted to print parts from a score, you would have to extract the parts, tidy them up and print them out. If you went back and made some changes to the score, you would have to repeat the process. The Dynamic Parts feature means that Sibelius automatically creates and links your parts as soon as your score is created. Any changes on the score are immediately made in the parts. More importantly, you can change non-note objects in the parts without it appearing in the score. This is helpful for moving around markings that look fine in the score, but sometimes look awkward in the parts. However, changing notes in the parts will change the score as well (otherwise you could run into some real problems in rehearsal!)

My favorite detail in the Dynamic Parts feature is the ability to copy the layout between parts. Although you can use the new "Auto Layout" feature to intelligently set up the parts for you, you might want to still make a few "tweaks". Instead of having to apply these tweaks to each part individually, you can copy them to an entire range of parts - great for unifying the brass parts, for example. It looks like the Auto Layout feature will reduce the amount of tweaking necessary, since it will put rehearsal marks, tempo text, double barlines, key changes and long multirests at the start of systems where possible. Long multirests are drawn wider than short ones, and Sibelius 4 can also split multirests into specific lengths, for example 8-bar phrases, or every 10 bars, to aid counting. Another welcome feature for performers is that Sibelius now ends the page at the longest available rest, to allow the player more time to turn.

The Worksheet Creator will be of special interest to educators. With over 1700 worksheets, projects, exercises, songs, instrumental pieces, lyrics, posters, reference material and other resources, this will be a welcome time saver for any teacher! Many of the worksheets have random questions that are different each time. You can produce both a worksheet for the student and a completed answer sheet to save time when marking. Of course, you can also customize any of the worksheets after they are created and you can also publish them on-line at SibeliusEducation.com

The Worksheet Creator offers 6 main categories:
- Elements of music covers music theory and musicianship
- Writing and creating music includes notation, transposing, arranging, composing and improvising
- Selected repertoire has over 400 pieces for voice, piano and other instruments, including songs in 14 different languages and 50 Bach keyboard pieces, suitable for study, arranging and performance. There are also 45 poems to set to music.
- Reference includes over 200 scales and modes, ranges of different instruments, etc.
Posters, flashcards & games has nearly 200 of these, from notes and keys to pictures of instruments
- UK KS3 & GCSE Projects has UK-specific projects from African drumming to serialism.

The other major new feature is support for video, allowing you to import your video files and sync your score to the video. Very useful for anyone who wants to work with video - from students to film composers.

There are a number of other new features, but one that hasn't been given a lot of coverage is the new support from importing MusicXML files. This means that files from rival notation program Finale, or scanning software such as SharpEye can now be loaded directly into Sibelius.

If you purchase Sibelius 3 after July 1st, you will receive a free upgrade to Sibelius 4 directly from Sibelius.


- Kelly

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