For several years now I’ve been accumulating music on hard drives and have constantly struggled with having certain songs when and where I need them. It seems that struggle may be coming to an end!
I will freely admit that I love all things Apple. Their products work well for what I do and I use them for everything from communication (phone, etc) to word processing (Pages) to music production (reason, garage band) etc…
But, I also love Google. It seems that most everything they do works well.
So I am excited to try Google Music and iCloud. Since iCloud is not yet available for music, I’m starting with the Beta of GoogleMusic.
So far – I LOVE IT!!! Finally, I have all my music accessible wherever I am. My music library is rather large, I’m upwards of 20,000 songs, which happens to be the limit of GoogleMusic right now, so we’ll see what happens when I hit that limit…
Just in case you were like me and not sure how to access GoogleMusic from the iPhone or iPad because they are not releasing an app for it on the iOS yet, the solution is pretty simple, although a bit clunky. You can simply point Safari to google.com/music, log into your account, select your music and enjoy!
I’ve had my iPad (version 1 just in case you were wondering) for a while now and I have been testing it out as a digital music stand. Well, it works. It just plain works. I don’t have to print out charts any more and I feel good about that. Plus, on songs with multiple pages, it couldn’t be simpler than a swipe or tap instead of trying to arrange the charts just right on a music stand and then scrambling to change to the next song, etc….
I’ve tried several apps, pdf readers and websites to see which is the best and I still feel that the perfect one is yet to be found. That said, however there is one that stands out above the rest. I use OnSong because of it’s ability to load songs from Dropbox and to create Setlists as well as some cool annotation features. It also includes the ability to link the chart to the mp3 so you can listen as you practice and get that guitar lick right.
Of course you also need a stand so you don’t accidentally swipe your iPad onto the ground. I choose the X Clip. It’s easy and it works.
Anyway, hope this helps anyone who was thinking about either grabbing up the old model now that the new one is coming out or in fact diving into the new iPad 2. Either way, I think it is a great solution for a digital music reader.
I was watching the CMA’s this week and I like Rascal Flatts, and even though I didn’t love this song I was AMAZED by the lead guitar players guitar!!! The top is completely covered with LED lights. And not only that, but they were programmed as part of the light show!
Ok, I know this probably doesn’t apply to anyone but me, but if there are any worship leaders out there using Reason or GarageBand and then mixing down to mp3 with iTunes I have discovered a sneaky little feature that iTunes has which caused me literally DAYS and DAYS of headaches so I thought I’d post on it.
I make loops with Reason and GarageBand to use in services under the other instruments. All of these include a click track panned hard left and the backing track panned hard right. Well, as soon as I imported the song into iTunes, the click track bled (and vice versa) into the backing track. While this may not seem a problem, when you are playing in front of a large crowd, you probably don’t want them hearing the click…
SOLUTION:
So TODAY I discovered this little check box in iTunes called ‘Sound Enhancer.’
This little checkbox actually CAUSES crossfade inbetween the left and right channels! ARRGGGHH! Why iTunes, Why?
SO, if you are doing split track recordings and bouncing them to iTunes, I would suggest that you UNCHECK the ‘sound enhancer’ box.
B. I don’t know why, but lately I have been truly amazed at the brilliance of the art of stop motion photography/filmography/cinematography and probably several other ‘ography’s.
3) To continue this trend here is the Coldplay video for Strawberry Swing.
Discovery has a new show called Time Warp where they take high speed cameras and film stuff and then show what it looks like in super slow mo. One of the segments of particular interest to me was a piece on Drumming. Check out this drummer, Mike Mangini, and the high speed footage they captured. I was especially blown away by the cymbal hit.
Ok so the iPhone is a VERY cool gadget, but for me it goes far beyond that. Today alone I Used the Google Search App and Safari Browser to check out some places to take my kids this morning Used the GPS combined with Google Maps to get me and my family to our destination Used the iPod for some Disney tunes to calm my screaming kids Used the Calculator to figure out some crazy calculation (because I am no good at math) Used the TwitterFon app to send updates to Twitter and Facebook and a couple other random apps, But my favorite app for today was iTalk I used it to record a song idea and then used my wifi connection to transfer it to my macbook and play/store it there. I really like this app combined with the iPhone as a great songwriting tool to catch ideas before they fade away into the night….
Wow, that was a long title.
Anyway, if you haven’t already heard and you have an iPhone you need to send in your original power adapter because it can electrocute you. (sad times)
So I finally got around to swapping it out today.
The good news is I didn’t get electrocuted, yet.
By the way – the iPhone is still an amazing piece of technology in my book and the apps that go with it really increase it’s functionality.
Some of my favs are:
Shazam (I still haven’t stumped it) Twitterfon (though yesterday it stopped working on my phone and started crashing?)
so I’m back to Twitterific GuitarToolkit (absolutley the best guitar software I have ever used on any platform) WordPress (mobile blog posts with pics – awesome!) Jott (even though they are now a pay service, the ‘to do’ section is still free and convenient)
and of course Bible (youversion.com’s mobile browser)
