Anyone who has been around digital music for any part of the last 20 years knows the name Novation. They hit the scene first as a maker of inexpensive and portable MIDI keyboard controllers, but over the years have grown to be SO much more. Now they are out with their latest cool product – LaunchPad. Let’s take a quick look!

Here is a snippit from the press release:

The Novation Launchpad is an easy-to-use audio controller that plugs into your computer and comes complete with Ableton Live performance software. Launchpad couldn’t be easier to use. It consists of an 8-by-8 panel of simple buttons, each of which can be used to launch an audio event – a sound sample, a rhythm, melody loop, and more. Start a rhythm from the library of provided samples, then layer additional sounds on top, edit to taste and, voila! You’ve created a song. You can even use your computer’s microphone input to add live vocals or other sound sources.

Launchpad is a powerful tool designed for real musicians doing live performance of computer-based music. But it’s so reasonably priced and easy to use, Launchpad’s biggest audience will likely come from outside the music industry – in dorm rooms, living rooms and basements. Multiple Launchpads can be connected at the same time, so people can create Launchpad bands where one person launches rhythms, another bass lines, and a third melody samples; it is the ultimate in improvisational performance. Getting started is easy: Just load the Ableton Live8 program into your computer, plug Launchpad into the USB port, and you’re ready to go. The color-coded buttons tell you what’s happening in real time. When a button is yellow, it means a sound clip is loaded. Press the button; it turns green to show the sound is playing. A red light indicates the clip is recording.

Continue Reading

If you are a fan of modern classical composition, you are likely aware of the minimalist movement and composers such as Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Adams,and Philip Glass. Glass gained fame in the 70’s for his operatic work ‘Einstein on the Beach’, and has been heard in many films with Academy Award nominations for Kundun, The Hours, and Notes on a Scandal. His work is not nearly as avant-garde as Riley, nor as rhythmically challenging as Reich, nor as epic as Adams, instead offering a combination of stark soundscapes, touching melodies, and passionate movements.

This week I got a notice that Amazon had the Philip Glass “The Orange Mountain Music Philip Glass Sampler Vol.I” for FREE, and being a fan of his work but only having a small collection of his recordings, I immediately grabbed the MP3 download and loaded it on my iPod. For nearly a week I have been thrilled with the nice variety of textures, styles and tones in the 21 song collection.

If you are interested in checking out modern classical music that offers a deep listening experience without veering too far into the ‘out there’ world of the avant-garde, I strongly recommend checking this out – it IS free, after all!

Another interesting tidbit: while driving around this weekend, my older son commented that the Etude No. 2 sounded very much like something my younger son had been writing on my MIDI system, and during his weekly piano lesson my younger son actually reproduced the opening segments from memory and mentioned it to his teacher. Cool stuff!

Source: Amazon.com
Image courtesy of PhilipGlass.com

Before the release of BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Macs, one of the best ways to sync your music, videos, and photos between a Mac and BlackBerry was doubleTwist.   In fact, using doubleTwist, you could easily sync media to a wide variety of mobile devices — including Sony PSP, G1, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile (5.0/6.0), and even iPhone (2.0 firmware).  What was great about this solution is that if you are in a household that utilizes multiple devices — you would have a single resource to transfer your media.

Now doubleTwist has added what could possibly be the best feature (and the one feature that can keep the application relevant) — an integrated Amazon MP3 music store letting you purchase and sync music to hundreds of mobile devices.

Continue Reading

Do you like to crank up the tunes and jam to the sound of your favorite band?  Do you sometimes do it so loud your ears end up ringing?

Legislation, currently under discussion in the EU, seeks to force Mp3 manufacturers to limit the volume level of their players.  It’s been widely documented that listening to music at extremely high levels can harm your hearing and this law is aimed at curbing it.

The proposed law seeks to mandate a maximum 80 decibel volume limit for Mp3 players.  Currently most Mp3 players can go up to 115 decibels and when you factor in the use of in ear headphones, even higher.

The exact law is expected to be finalized over the next year.

What do you think?  Does the government have a right to say how loud you can listen to your own music?

Source: NY Daily News

iLuv has announced that their new i1166 PMP will be available for shipping in mid-October. The unit features a 9″ TFT screen and can play DVD and CD media (including CD-R/RW, and DVD±R/RW and VCD/SVCD) as well as access media on MMC/SD cards and even USB flash drives.  It will play a wide variety of media formats including DivX, MP3, and WMA.  It doesn’t specify AAC, but one would hope that with iPod compatibility would also come AAC support.

Continue Reading

Until version 9 of iTunes I was a wonderfully satisfied user. My library of 2,800+ songs rarely slowed when I’d select a song or playlist. My iPhone synchronized in the background without any slowdowns. I used to wonder about this Apple icon people called a “beach ball” because I rarely saw it. Then along came iTunes 9 and everything changed. Continue Reading

As Larry just posted, Apple actually approved the Rhapsody app for streaming music if you have a RhapsodyTo Go account. So now we have RhapsodyToGo available in the US and Spotify available in much of Europe. That’s awesome, and a bit of a surprise but still… I don’t quite get it.

Rhapsody to Go is $15 a month. That comes down to $180 a year or $360 over the contract-life of the iPhone. (As if iPhone ownership weren’t costly enough already.) Worst of all at the end of that year you own NOTHING!

Contrast that to the Simplify Music app at $5.99 and the whole “rent your music” concept kind of falls apart. Here’s why…

Continue Reading

What’s going on at Apple?

First they release Home Sharing in iTunes 9.0 which allows you to share your music, videos, apps etc. with 5 other computers in your household and now this morning Rhapsody gets approved in the iTunes App Store.

With a Rhapsody subscription you can listen to any song in their catalogue via your iPhone as well as access your playlists and library.  Plans start at around $12 per month and give way to millions of songs.

The app itself is free and if you’re not a subscriber to the service you can try the whole thing out for a week for free.

Check it all out in the App Store.

I’m really enjoying the technology reporting in the NYTimes these days. It is often edgy or sarcastic, it is certainly timely and, as is the case today, it is spot-on.

As the article in their Bits section points out, today’s Apple announcements are important for more than the usual reasons. Sure it will let us see the next generation’s of Apple’s offerings. More than that however, since

Many presumptive iPod buyers are turning instead to the iPhone, a considerably more expensive device with higher margins. [since] The iPhone is the ultimate converged device, packing digital music, video games, navigation and much more into a single cellular handset.

Apple’s attempt to spark iPod sale by expanding their capabilities is more important to the company than ever since the changes we will likely see in the iPod in a few hours are a direct response to pressure Apple has put on itself thanks to the iPhone. Continue Reading

I can’t image listening to music on my iMac or MacBook Pro without having iWOW’s plug-in for iTunes installed. It adds a degree of depth and customization to the sound pumped out by the computer to an amazingly noticeable degree. The plugins are available for Mac and Windows and offer a number of nice presets along with the ability to create a totally custom sounds depending on the music or movie,  the room you are in and your personal preferences.

Right now you can grab any of srs’ products for $10 off when you use the code SRS10051. But Hurry, the sale lasts just 3 day and the clock is already ticking.

For product details visit the SRS site.

The first 45 rpm record was introduced by RCA in 1949.  The small, 7″ vinyl records were a way for artists to introduce their singles.

Since iTunes wasn’t around back then you couldn’t easily download one song from your favorite artist, you’d have to buy the whole LP album.

The 45 allowed you to purchase a smaller amount of music for a lower price.

The 45 would contain the single on the A side and usually a lessor known track on the B side.

iTunes recently added a new section for digital 45s bringing the concept back.

The section contains a small sampling of 45s, which include two songs for a low price.

Check out the new digital 45 section of iTunes here.

Via thisiphoneguy.

The single biggest problem my wife and other family members have is making sure that their data is backed up.  The HP Mediasmart LX195 will help you make sure that data is safe and a while lot more.

This server is based on Microsoft’s Windows Home Server.  It’s not my normal operating system of choice, but I think that Microsoft and HP have done a good thing here.  They have done something that is difficult with Linux.  They have made it extremely easy to setup a media server and a backup server all in the same tidy package.  Try as I might, I could not find much to NOT like about this little server. Continue Reading

The Zii technology demoed at CES has been in hibernation for a while, but the official deets have finally come out today about what they planned to do with their Zii stem cell computing platform.  That devices is called the Zii Egg.

The Egg is the device for Creative’s new developer platform called Plaszma.  Plaszma is based on the Android OS. Continue Reading

For those with Palm Pre’s, you’ll remember that Apple recently released iTunes 8.2.1 that disabled the Pre’s abiltiy to sync with your iTunes library.  This latest update appears to be a direct response to last week’s iTunes 8.2.1 Update.

Apple Insider is reporting that Palm’s Blog announced the update yesterday. The update should appear as an OTA (over the air) update, expected to hit Pre’s around the country over the next few days.

Palm declined to detail how they worked around Apple’s latest update, and for now, Pre users can again enjoy iTunes content on the go.  However, I’m not certain how Apple will (and you KNOW they will) respond; but I would anticipate downloading & installing iTunes 8.2.37 some time within the next few weeks as the two companies play app and OS ping pong.

Want to pump up the volume?

Check out the new vertical Hi-Fi system iLuv has just shown off.

The iMM9400 is being touted as a modern looking audio system and supports playing music from the  iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPhone and iPod via the universal iPhone/iPod dock adapters or it’ll play MP3 and WMA file via the built in SD card slot and USB port.

Some of the iMM9400’s other features include:  AM/Radio with 40 programable presets, 4 CD player, iPhone friendly remote control, wall mounting kit and many more.

The iMM9400 will be available in August 2009 at the iLuv web site  for the MSRP of$249.99.