If I could be said to have a vice, it would be fine, dark chocolate. Good thing too, since it is actually healthy (I happen to really enjoy red wine and coffee as well — all three are high in antioxidants). But the health benefits are beside the point. There’s nothing like breaking off a small square of 70% bittersweet goodness and savoring it.
Le Noir 71% from French makers, Valrhona has been a dependable high quality choice for years. It has enough bitterness to be sophisticated, and just a hint of fruitiness to open up the palette. Trader Joe’s is the place to get this — they are somehow able to charge less than half what most do.
For my birthday, along with a cd of music from the chocolate lands and a book about the chocolate barrons (my friends really know what I like), I received a bar of Santander 70% Columbian chocolate. This is really something different. It starts off fruity, moves into vanilla (or marshmallow) territory, slides into espresso roast, and finishes with a beautiful 50/50 mix of bitter and sweet. This one really changes if you exhale through your nose as you let it melt on your tongue. It may be a bit too sweet and candy-like to have on a regular basis, but so far I’m really enjoying it. It also happens to be an incredible value.
Garritan has started a free interactive orchestration course on the Northern Sounds forum, based on Principles of Orchestration by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. I peeked at Lesson 1, which is a review of the instruments in the standard orchestra. Very cool that there are videos of the orchestra playing (excerpts from last years’ orchestration competition winner). It’s a little odd that they replaced the audio of the real orchestra with samples, but maybe it was the easiest way to accentuate the particular section they were referring to. Nice, clear diagrams though, and the Professor Comments at the end of the lesson look interesting. I’m looking forward to delving into this.
BTW: I purchased the Garritan Personal Orchestra sample set a few months ago. I haven’t spent a lot of time with it yet, but it’s fairly good for a compact set (under 2GB). I’ll save the review for another post.
Via Harmony Central
A number of electronic music podcasts I’ve been listening to use the Mac’s built-in speech synthesizer to narrate or introduce the show (even Harry Shearer has a corny bit with one once in a while on Le Show) and indicate the song information. Even though I enjoy these shows, this cliche is incredibly irritating. Just because Radiohead got away with it in 1997, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. “Fitter Happier” is the one track on Ok Computer I always skip. Spring for a $20 mic. No matter how much you hate your own voice when it’s recorded, it’s going to be less grating than “Vicki” or “Bruce”.
That said, I think it’s very cool that Mac OS X has assistive capabilities built-in.
Scratch was one of my first experiments a couple of years ago with Apple’s GarageBand music creation software. The electric guitars were the only instruments I actually played — the rest of the tracks are built from canned loops included with the program. After recording the first guitar track I hunted around and found a suitable drum loop, and had it switch over to a more energetic version at the appropriate times. The bass loop was transposed to the guitar track. It needed something else for more character and after a while I found the tuba loop (no, not Tuvalu). About the only “tricky” thing I did was chopping the loops to fit some of the shorter transitions. It’s a bit like fridge magnet poetry, but the magnets are phrases instead of individual words. Cathartic, fun, and pleasingly odd. Despite the title, there’s no actual record scratching (wiki wiki); it’s just a “scratchpad” type sketch.
This is my first podcast as well. As soon as I figure how, I’ll post instructions for subscribing.
Edit: Aha. For iTunes, here’s a direct subscribe subscribe link. If you have a different podcast client, just subscribe to the rss feed for Banter, also shown at the bottom of the front page.
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I’ve been looking for a good 88 note MIDI keyboard controller. It’s a surprisingly challenging task given how many new choices have sprung up recently. For me, the main thing is the feel of the keys. Beyond that it’s icing.
Continue reading ‘Researching 88 Key MIDI Controllers’
