Category Archives: music

General Music

Feeling Music With your Whole Body

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Amazing Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie (who lost her hearing in her early teens) gave a TED Talk about “Listening To Music With Your Whole Body” – it’s 32 minutes well worth your time.

If someone asks me: “Oh well, how do you hear that?” Then I simply say: “I really don’t know, but I just basically hear that through my body, through opening myself up. How do you hear that?” “Oh well, I hear it through the ears…” …you know…” Well, what do you mean, ‘through the ears’, what are you actually hearing?” So, when you try to bounce the question back to a socalled hearing person, then, they simply do not know how to answer these questions…

There’s also a longer documentary about this, Touch the Sound.

Korg Monthly Giveaway Until December 2012

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Korg makes all sorts of keyboards, synths, effects, etc. To celebrate their 10th anniversary, every month through December 2012 they will be giving away one of their Micro-series products. You may enter once per day for each month’s prize drawing, at this  page:

Korg Mega-Micro Giveaway

What Should That Used Instrument/Gear Cost?

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You want a piece of music gear, but can’t/won’t pay for it new. You can look for it used on eBay, CraigsList, etc. – but how do you know what a fair price is for it?

  • First, price it NEW online – I’ve seen used items advertised at a price for which you could get a new one!
  • Check www.prepal.com, which lists the current going price for many brands of band gear (guitars/keyboards.amps/etc), and whether the price is trending up (as it may for something rare that folks desire) or down.
  • Search for the item in completed listings on Ebay – to do this you must be logged in, then next to the Search button click “advanced”. On the Advanced Search page check the box for “completed listings” under Search including, then enter your search terms. This will show you both successful and failed auctions, whcih helps you to judge what price people consider to be too high.
  • Use the knowledge gained above to bargain with a CraigsList seller (e.g., “these are going for $$$ less than your price on eBay”).

Web Classes for Sibelius 7 and Finale 2012

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I’ve been using the music notation software Sibelius for 4+ years (after initially using an inexpensive app, Noteworthy Composer, which surprisingly is still available!), with occasional forays into Finale since my bandmate uses that. All this time I’ve been “winging it” with Sib… which if you know me means I intuit a lot of it, and Google for info on more arcane functions if I can’t find it in the 500-page not always well indexed pdf manual.

I’ve felt that there are probably more efficient methods to accomplish time-consuming tasks (e.g., inputting notes) than how I do it. But the only accessible source I found for that was Berklee’s online courses, which cost $1,200 (non-credit; more if credit) for a 12-week session. So I was excited to see the Sibelius Blog mention another online course, which costs $199 for a 10-week session!

Granted, it will cost me a bit more than that, because the course specifically covers Sibelius 7, and I only finally upgraded to version 6 in January (while I’m on the cutting edge of a lot of things, I avoid software upgrades like the plague as long as my current version does what I need, since there’s always some “gotcha” requiring hours of tweaking to remediate). But thankfully my educational discount from B&H comes through again, pricing the upgrade at $45 less than retail.

AND… here’s another way to discount that you can use: the course’s website platform WizIQ.com offers new users a 20% discount coupon. Just go to their course listing page and fill out your contact info in offer box to be emailed a code for 20% off one course. NOTE: don’t do this until you find a course you want to take, as the coupon expires in 15 days.

The Sibelius 7 course, and also a Finale 2012 course from the same instructor, start June 18th. But they will apparently be run again in the fall. Also FYI this is not a “live” class – all the materials are presented in view-on-demand videos, so you can view and do the exercises on your own schedule.

Check out the other music courses presented though this site, too – besides standard stuff like music theory and guitar lessons, there are some interesting non-Western courses, such as lessons in Indian classical music and  Carnatic violin and vocals!