Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Encore 4.5.6 for Mac released...
GVOX recently announced the arrival of Encore 4.5.6 for Mac. The upgrade is available on their website for immediate download for all Mac users at who own Encore 4.5 or higher.
The new upgrade is "a substantial bug fix and optimization" for Encore users on the Apple platform. Encore 4.5.6 boasts improved performance, ranging from changes to onscreen look and feel to a vast improvement in overall speed.
If you don't own Encore 4.5, you can purchase the upgrade if you have an older version, or download a demo if you've never worked with this popular notation program. We also offer a competitive upgrade, if you already own Sibelius or Finale.
- Kelly.
Posted at 5:22 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Sibelius Groovy Shapes - music education software
Sibelius continues to offer software titles designed with educator's in mind. Their newest offering, the "Groovy" series, starts with Groovy Shapes and is targeted at 5-11 year olds. Organized into two main sections, Groovy offers guided instruction in the "Explore" module and then encourages students to apply what they've learned in the "Create" section.
In the Explore section, children are guided aurally through a series of progressive musical exercises and games, which teaches them how music works. In the Create section, children can put into practice what they've learned by creating their own music.
"Shapes" is the first of three in the "Groovy" series, and the shapes represent elements of music like rhythm, melody and chords. Children simply drag these onto the screen to build up their creation. Then they can play back their piece, edit it, or even see the elements displayed as musical notation.
For traditional music teachers, it can be a bit disconcerting at first, but once you realize that you have the option of working with standard notation, I think you will be won over to the program's fun and creativity oriented learning architecture - having students create music is one of the more motivating ways of engaging students in learning music.
- Kelly.
Posted at 6:21 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Sunday, February 12, 2006
ProKeys 88 SX
M-Audio's ProKeys 88 digital stage piano sounds great, has excellent action and has set a new standard for affordability. I highly recommend this keyboard to schools, churches and musicians that need a good controller keyboard that has realistic action and some decent sounds. Even if you don't plan on using it as a stage piano, it is very handy to have on board sounds so that you don't have to fire up your computer and deal with latency just to play the thing!
The only problem with the ProKeys 88 is that it is heavy. To address this, M-Audio is releasing the ProKeys 88SX, which at under 20lbs they claim you could carry under one arm. To achieve this, they've used "semi-weighted" keyboard action instead of the fully-weighted action found on the ProKeys 88. A very reasonable compromise, not only has this made the keyboard lighter, but also a couple hundred dollars cheaper!
For under $400 US, you can have a semi-weighted, full sized keyboard with some amazing on-board sounds - an outstanding value. Thinking of getting a MIDI keyboard? This is definitely one you should consider.
- Kelly
Posted at 10:28 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Saturday, February 11, 2006
CAKEWALK POWER STUDIO 660, CAKEWALK POWER STUDIO 250
Is it a clever marketing ploy, or a way to make life easier for consumers and save them a few bucks? Cakewalk announced two new "all in one" packages that include Sonar Studio Edition, Roland V-Vocal technology and a USB or Firewire soundcard. The Cakewalk Power Studio 250 includes the USB soundcard, which is surprisingly similar to the Edirol UA-25 (actually, it isn't a surprise when you consider that Edirol/Roland has an ownership stake in Cakewalk.) The Cakewalk Power Studio 660 will include a Firewire audio interface (although it lacks the Edirol branding, it is essentially a rebadged FA-66.
Cakewalk's reasoning behind the SONAR Power Studio production system is to offer users a integration between Cakewalk hardware and software. This should offer a number of benefits, such as the ease of the installation process, and the speed of starting a recording project. It also ships with an easy to understand 4-panel Getting Started Guide with clearly illustrated instructions. You may laugh, but how many times have you actually sat down and read the manual before you started with some new software or hardware? If you are new to audio recording, the Getting Started Guide with pictures will be a big bonus - believe me, you'll be glad they thought of this.
Also included will me one User's Guide covering both the hardware and software (again, very clever, Cakewalk we love this idea!), and there is one installer for complete setup of all software and hardware drivers and components. (Isn't that great - no more install this, then restart that and hold this cable while turning the system on, but before putting the CD, while standing on one foot and humming. One install package - nice.)
As well, SONAR Studio Edition will have all audio and MIDI device settings pre-configured for the included Cakewalk hardware, so all the user has to do is enable a track and click "record."
Finally, and don't underestimate this - you will have one phone number to call in the unlikely event that you need tech support, rather than get bounced back and forth between separate hardware and software companies. (Or, for the pessimist, now you just have to deal with company that is ignoring your tech support requests!)
- Kelly
Posted at 2:55 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Friday, February 10, 2006
Edirol's R-09 SD Digital Recorder
Edirol had a run-away hit with their R-1 portable digital recorder. It took almost a year for them to fill all of the back-orders for this CompactFlash based digital recorder. I predict that the R-09 will be just as successful. A bit smaller, and a bit cheaper, the R-09 uses SD cards instead of CompactFlash for recording. In order to achieve the lower price point, the digital effects and limiter that are found in the R-1 haven't been included in the R-09. The use of SD cards means that you won't be able to use MicroDrives, but it does mean you will have a cheap and easy to obtain recording medium - your digital camera, MP3 player and PDA probably already use SD cards.
Like the R-1, Edirol has included built in mics. (Teachers - remember that this is one thing less to go missing when students use it to record practice tests, auditions, ensembles, concerts, etc!) A cool little tripod and carry case will also be available for the R-09, making it a very nifty device - I guess I better start thinking of excuses to buy one now!
- Kelly.
Posted at 11:38 AM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Edirol's UA-4FX
Edirol has released a replacement for their UA-3FX audio capture device. The new UA-4FX maintains the high quality, built-in effects, including the COSMŽ tube MIC preamp simulator for fattening up your tracks. It also contains the important loop-back capability of recording any audio sent to the unit for playback - ideal for recording streaming audio, etc. In addition to maintaining the important features of the UA-3FX, the new UA-4FX makes some major improvements by adding a MIDI interface and a phantom-powered XLR mic input.
The UA-4FX is the perfect "all in one" audio capture device. With 24-bit/96kHz resolution, 14 types onboard effects, an XLR input with phantom power, along with a Hi-Z guitar/dynamic mic input and MIDI I/O, you can record pretty much anything. It also supports Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround compatibility via the S/PDIF output, so it can also do a great job of playing back your music.
Edirol has also included Cakewalk SONAR LE to make the UA-4FX an excellent value. As a Cakewalk dealer, we have mixed feelings about the Sonar LE package. For our Windows customers, it is an incredibly powerful recording package that comes free with most Edirol products. Our Mac customers are left out, however, and because Sonar LE is so powerful, not that many customers actually upgrade to the full version of Sonar. (There are a lot of great reasons to upgrade, but if you are on a limited budget, Sonar LE will probably get you by.)
- Kelly.
Posted at 9:58 AM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
M-Audio Oxygen Keyboards
M-Audio announced a number of new products at NAMM, including a new line of keyboards (the Axiom line, details to follow) and an update and extension to an existing line - the Oxygen series.
The popular Oxygen 8 has been updated to the Oxygen 8 V2 and two new keyboards have been added, the Oxygen 49 and Oxygen 61. The updated series supports up to 10 different set-ups using on-board, non-volatile memory. The addition of transport controls make the Oxygen series ideal for working with any recording software, and since they are USB bus powered, they are perfect for users who don't want to worry about yet another wall wart power adapter!
- Kelly
Posted at 11:37 AM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
MuseBook Single Note
As usual, there were a lot of great new products on show at NAMM this year. AMuseTek, a Korean company, was showing the latest version of their MuseBook software. The new MuseBook Single Note is digital sheet music software that allows you to scan (or open any image file) and store music on your hard drive. It includes a very cool USB finger-switch and wireless foot-pedal that will turn pages. If you have a Tablet PC, you can annotate the music as you would do on paper scores by using your pen. If you don't have a Tablet PC, you can still use your mouse to mark up the music if you wish.
Being a Tablet PC user (there are a lot of benefits for musicians), I love this software. The fact that it includes a finger switch and wireless foot pedal makes it a great deal.
What makes this package even more interesting is that the footswitch essentially acts like the space bar key. In other words, any program that relies on the space bar to turn pages (such as Acrobat Reader in "full screen" mode) can benefit from the wireless footswitch!
- Kelly
Posted at 7:51 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::