Friday Faves 03-22-13 – Pre-Order Edition

[PSA: If you don’t want to read this all now, clicking on the Share button at the end of the post now gives you the option of sending it to your Kindle account!]

A couple of items I have pre-ordered or am in line get that might be of interest:

Automatic (I wonder how much they paid to get that domain name?!) is (pre) selling a small device that plugs into the link to your car’s computer (the one your mechanic uses to  diagnose why your Check Engine light is on) and connects to an app on your smartphone (iOS or Android) via Bluetooth. Combining the data from your car computer and GPS service on your phone it says it will

Continue reading

Quantizing A Recording To Improve Rhythm (Online Course Homework)

If you have ever performed music for a recording session, you have probably had more than your fill of “let’s try another take” and “let’s punch (replace a short part of a recording with another) that note.” However, if you are recording tracks with a software instrument that sends MIDI signals instead of audio sounds, you can edit the MIDI notes inside of the digital audio workstation (DAW) that records the tracks, thus potentially saving an almost-perfect take.

Here’s a video I made for this week’s online Production course homework teaching how to use the Quantize function in GarageBand to make notes that were not played quite on the beat line up more closely (and in a future post I will tell you how I made this screen-capture video!):