Gibson Announces Digital Guitar...
Gibson Guitar has announced The Gibson Digital Guitar—a guitar based upon a technology called MaGIC, which delievers the digital signal across standard ethernet. Ethernet can delivery at speeds 30 to 30,000 times faster than MIDI—the standard most digital-based guitars have been based upon the past.
Celtic-amenco!!!
On another blog, I found a link to a band called Skelkin. They seem to be a cross between an traditional Celtic band and a Flamenco band. Check out some of their music, especially Morisca (Flamenco-based) and Whisky Before Breakfast - Nine Point Of Roguery (Celtic-based.) Interesting blend of music, but they're both genre's I like.
Got my settlement check...
Well, I got my check for $13.86 today from the "Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement" class action lawsuit that was filed. There's more information on the actual lawsuit at the official site. Apparently over 120,000 Ohioans are recieving settlements. I signed up for the lawsuit via official site some time ago—I can't remember exactly when. I really hate the state of music right now. It's all about how to make as much money as quickly as possible—I get the feeling very few record company execs care about the music anymore. Just look at Britney Spears—she's nothing more than an image, she certainly can't sing. They process her vocals more than fruit that goes in a Hostess Fruit Pie.
Michael Kamen Dies At 55...
I was very sad to learn today that composer/conductor Michael Kamen passed away suddenly from an apparent heart attack. I really respected Kamen's work, as he was never afraid to merge traditional orchestra work w/modern music. If you've seen/heard any rock bands do any work with an orchestra in the past 20 years, it's most likely that Kamen was behind the orchestra. My condolences go out to his friends and family—he'll be sorely missed, but his contribution to modern music won't be forgotten.
Dream Theater "As I Am" Official Download
Dream Theater has released the full version of the single "As I Am" for download on their site! The full version is way better than the radio edit. I didn't care much for the song on the first couple of listens, but then I realized I kept singing the song to myself afterwards. The song has really grown on me.
Dream Theater: Train of Thought Preview...
The German version of Warner Brother's site has posted some audio samples of Dream Theater's new album, Train of Thought. I think this album is going to be pretty controversial amongst die hard Dream Theater fans. The preview sound quite a bit different from any studio work I've heard from them in the past.
A radio mix of "As I Am" is also been released to radio station (and subsequentially has made it's way on the 'net.) I didn't like the radio edit of "As I Am" much, but I did get to hear a sneak peak of the unedited album version and the full version of the song rocks. I can't wait to hear the rest of the album. The preview of "This Dying Soul" soul reminds me a bit of old Iron Maiden—especially the opening riff of the clip. I love hearing new music from my favorite bands...
Dream Theater's "Train of Thought"
Here's the album cover for Dream Theater's Train of Thought CD—which is going to be released in November.
News on new Dream Theater album!
I was reading an article on Dream Theater over the weekend and I found this quote by James LaBrie on the new album:
...definitely after the tour, a week off and then into the studio to lay vocals. Um, right now we are slated for a release near the beginning of October and that's pretty much has been written in stone as I speak to you now. Give or take a week, you know? We really don't have much time to play with. I have to get back and get the vocals done and then we have to allow time for the mix and packaging and everything else you tend to do with every release. It's going to be a very busy time for us. But it's do-able. We can certainly do everything and have it completed exactly the way we want it. That's the plan at this point. An October release and then we start with a world tour in January. I believe we start January 15th in Manchester, England.
Hopefully this means I'm listening to a new Dream Theater album by at least November. I'm really curious to see how this album turns out. Seems the inspiration for this album came in big part from their recent concerts where they played The Number of the Beast and Master of Puppets from start to finish. This has really peaked my interest!
Steve Stevens' Flamenco A Go-Go
I picked up Steve Steven's album Flamenco A Go-Go. I'm really impressed with this album. It's definitely not a Flamenco album in the traditional sense, but it's definitely got heavy influences in there. It's really hard to label this album as any one type of genre. There's a bit of dance, new age, progressive, rock and lots of world music in there. If you like his work on the Bozzio, Levin, Stevens stuff, then you should definitely dig this.
Ailing teen gets her dream: Meeting Queensryche singer
I thought this was a good story. It's amazing what this girl must go through every day. It really makes me appreciate the things I take for granted. Anyway, the band talked about in this article, Queensryche, I saw live the other night. As a matter of fact, this is from the same tour, but obviously a different night.
Wishing on a star... Ailing teen gets her dream
James Patten's Audiopad/Physical UI Models
Audiopad was invented by two Media Lab graduate students at MIT, James Patten and Ben Recht. To quote James' website:
Audiopad has a matrix of antenna elements which track the positions of electronically tagged objects on a tabletop surface. Software translates the position information into music and graphical feedback on the tabletop. Each object represents either a musical track or a microphone.
The demo is pretty cool. Make sure to watch the second part of it, that's the part where they really show off how it works. It's an interesting user interface (UI) that they've developed as well. Make sure to check out the videos on both the Audiopad and as well as the generic video which shows off some of the different implementations of the physical model UI elements he's working on.
Pictures from Dream Theater's concert...
Wayne Dennon posted pictures from the Dream Theater concert this past Friday night in Cincinnati, OH. I was at the show (as you can see from my last blog entry.) Anyone, great show and here's the pictures to prove it. (Well, ok, maybe the picture don't prove it was a great show, you'll just have to take my word on it.)
Dream Theater: Cincinnati, OH @ Annies Outdoor 7/18/2003
FW/QR/DT concert was amazing..
Well, Aaron (a co-worker of mine) and I went to the Dream Theater, Queensryche and Fates Warning concert last night. We ran into some heavy rush hour traffic when we got down to Cincy. It took us 40 minutes to move 5 miles on I71.
We ended up getting to Annie's a little before 7pm and Fates Warning was already on stage—which sucks cause the ticket said they go on at 7pm. By the time we got in to the the stage area, we only go to see about 2 minutes of their last song. They were off the stage by 7:20 or so. Although I got to hear a number of there songs while waiting in line to get in, I was disappointed not to see them. One of the main reasons I really wanted to see this show was to see Frank Aresti back with the band and to see Nick Di'Virgio (of Spock's Beard) playing Mark Zonder's drum parts. Anyway, they sounded really good—Ray's voice was as strong as ever. (Although I'm didn't like the dyed green hair...)
Queensryche came on next and they were a pleasant surprise. They only played one song from the post "Empire" area, which is what they opened up with—it's a tune on the new album. They sounded pretty decent, but Mike Stone can't even hold DeGarmo's jock strap. He really massacred Chris' guitar solos. With DeGarmo back in the band, I was hoping he was on tour with them. Stone didn't play any of DeGarmo's solos correctly. When you've listen to the album Mindcrime as much as I have (and most QR fans have,) it's like blasphemy not to stick to playing the solos note for note.
Winamp 3, Good Riddance...
In a setback to Nullsoft's plans, Winamp3 in March gave way to the earlier Winamp 2.x version, pending a broader overhaul that will incorporate aspects of both in Winamp 5. In the meantime, AOL has discontinued supporting plug-ins developed using Wasabi and will instead fold Winamp3 graphical interface designs, or "skins," into Winamp 2.x.
I just ran across this in the news. Good to see the Nullsoft developers are smart enough to listen to the community. I know they spent a lot of time working on WA3—and it's always hard to turn your back on code you've spent a lot of time developing—but let's face it, WA3 blew. I upgraded for like a day, but quickly went back to WA2.
I don't want lots of gimmicks with my mp3 player. I want a small thin visual interface and it should use as little system resources as possible. In my opinion, no other mp3 player has even tempted to switch from WA2—except for WA3 of course, which I had high hopes for.
"Radio Station"-In-A-Box!
Travelmedia is about ready to unveil a new product called World Vibrations—which they label as a "radio station-in-a-box.".
There's almost nothing on Travelmedia's website about this product—and at the moment the World Vibrations website just contains a page with the domain name on it. However, there's a good video on ZDNet's site about the product.
For about $2200 dollars, you're going to get everything you need to run a private radio station. If you can get an FCC license, they say you can buy a transmitter for it, but by default it comes with everything you need to stream the audio over the 'net. The playlist features look pretty cool—it'll allow you to do anything a regular radio station would: program playlist in advance, play things at a certain time, pre-record announcements, do live broadcasts etc.