At the very least, it looks like Apple is working on significant new music software features, as you might expect. But depending on how you read their patents, new music hardware — even touchscreen hardware — could be in store. Apple is a big company with a lot of intellectual property, so teasing out patents can [...]

While not as well known as some bigger-name DJ apps, PCDJ has some loyal fans in the Create Digital Music community, with good reason. The app has long had an agnostic approach to vinyl control formats, supporting everything from Final Scratch to Ms. Pinky. And it gains popularity points with lovers of custom effects by [...]

One of the original Aussie volume dealers, an inspiration to AC/DC (and the odd Endless Boogie member or two), passed away yesterday in Sydney after suffering a heart attack. Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs' 1972 live blowout at Sunbury is remembered with much reverence Down Under, and was recently reissued on the Aztec label along with some studio albums. In the Aztecs' poppy early days, they kicked the Beatles off the Australian charts while Fab Four were touring their country; they split in 1967 and reemerged with Thorpe taking on lead guitar by default, dropped acid, cranked the stacks, made side-long burners and floored Festival audiences shortly thereafter. The band also provided springboard for Lobby Loyde of Coloured Balls fame and they continued to vibe from each other. Thorpe's final gig was Sunday night. I actually just posted a link to some live Billy a couple weeks ago, but here it is again (You Tube, thanks to Jesper Eklow for the original pass-on), as well as Real Audio of "CC Rider" from the Sunbury show just played on FMU last week.

MP3:
01 Riding On A Sunbeam (1:51)
02 Where Are You Darling (1:02)
03 When The Moonbeams Veil Las Vegas (1:29)
04 How Many Hearts (1:14)
05 The Longest Road (1:16)
06 My Believing Heart (1:20)
07 What's Love (1:05)
08 Just A Pilgrim (1:10)
09 Goodnight My Love (1:09)
10 Down By The Bayou (1:43)
11 Where Breezes Whisper (1:26)
12 Let's Go, Santa Is Here (1:34)
13 In My Heart There's A Garden (1:22)
14 Give A Guy A Minute (1:20)
15 You Lovable Imp (1:05)
16 Going Thru This World Of Sorrow (2:19)
17 Let Me Hold You (1:09)
18 What Makes The World Go 'Round (1:00)
19 Because You Love Me (1:11)
20 Lonesome Girl (1:39)
21 Blondie (1:27)
22 Patience (1:33)
23 Love Unfurled (1:41)
24 A Bit Of Sky (1:37)
25 Just 'Cause You're You (1:26)
26 Precious Loved One (1:24)
27 I Wish I Never Had Known Love (1:14)

I'm always on the lookout for song-poem singles and albums, and while I really love Rodd Keith and the whole Preview/MSR sound, I tend to be drawn to the more obscure labels and performers (Even with Rodd Keith, I generally prefer his Film City "Rod Rogers" tracks). With some exceptions, I'm not one to usually enjoy song-poems from an ironic "so bad it's great" point of view. Instead, I usually like a song-poem because something about it, musically, vocally or lyrically, grabs me in some way. Some have not found there to be much difference - plenty of people have found my most beloved song-poems to be just shy of unlistenable.

But here we have something that may be just a few steps beyond unlistenable. Having found a most enjoyable, if completely bizarre, song-poem album by Tony Rogers, on the Star-Crest label, several years ago, I was excited to find a second Star-Crest album, "New Favorites of Robert Ravis", a few months ago. It turned out to be perhaps the most god-awful album I've ever heard.

First, these are nothing more than demos, 27 songs in under 40 minutes. Pick any two songs, and you're likely to find that they are virtually the same song, musically speaking. The way the pianist plays, the piano parts sound a little like rejected Tom Lehrer accompaniments, upbeat marches and melancholy waltzes.

Best (or worst) of all, the singer appears to have very little ability to sight-read. It's a song-poem truism that songs were recorded 20 or 30 at a time, with one, sight-read run through of each. This album bears that truth out. Despite the fact that the pianist is almost always playing the melody over those waltz and march settings, Robert Ravis is frequently unable to find the melody, or even anything close to a note in the same key as the tune. Repeatedly, he slides around aiming for the note he's just missed.

The first time I listened to this album, I kept waiting to see if there could be something even more jaw-droppingly incompetent, and I was never disappointed. I hope you find it just as amazing as I have.

- Contributed by: Bob Purse

Images: Front Cover, Back Cover

Media: 12" LP
Album: New Favorites of Robert Ravis
Label: Starcrest Publicity Series, Star-Crest Recording Co., Hollywood, California
Catalog: NFR-7

And as the shortest month comes to a close, reminding us that the shortest month is indeed, coming to a close, so does the picture of the day february project.  All photos guaranteed shot in the loveliest  and smallest month.  I hope you enjoyed it, except of course for the haters, who did what they do best...

Let's take a trip down DJ Premium past.

1-Electrifying Mojo   2-Millie Jackson 3-Denise LaSalle 4-The Kinks
5-Hoyt Axton 6-George Jones 7-Baby Huey    8-Jimmy McCracklin 9-Roscoe And The Green Men 10-Batman  11-Marga Benitez 12-Lavice And Company 13-Joe Tex 14-Electrifying Mojo 15-Dirtbombs 16-King Coleman 

129bpm miniglitechauz: Improvised live on sampler hardware as you hear it: Cocaine hihats, opiate basslines and Miami SNAP-snares loiter with intent outside a club together trying to hook up some dope audio, and succeed. Check out my other hardware sessions at http://audio.globular.org/rightClick/ - Source Site:http://audio.globular.org

Rumors have swirled around Apple’s flagship music and audio software since the company first absorbed Emagic. In the absence of a Logic update, the rumors are back. This time, they come from an unusual source: former Emagic employee Philippe Brodu, in his blog “Le Sith de Feeleebee.”

Des collectors Emagic : ça vous intéresse ?
Logic 8 : Une nouvelle pièce au puzzle !

An excited French reader on Gearslutz.com’s message forum sums it up this way:

There will be no Logic 8!!!!!

The new app will have a new name.
They are working on it for 5 years and it will be out this year.
It will be a “Pro Tools Killer” with a Logic feel but in a new user interface and take advantage of OSX.5 (it will need it and don’t work on X.4 or prior) and new Apple hardware (touch screen display!).

More info: no more xskey and no more envirronement [sic]

Whoo, and it’ll make cappuccino! And it’ll have support for a new, high-definition replacement for MIDI that Apple will push to become an industry standard! (Not sure which of those is less likely, actually.)

Before you rule this out, though, there’s a well-reasoned argument for it at Barbarism Begins at Home:

Will There Be No Logic 8?

Fortunately, I happen to know absolutely nothing about future versions of Logic, so I think I can safely speculate, secure in the knowledge that anything I say that does happen to be true is entirely coincidental. A “Pro Tools killer” says more about the sales of the resulting product than the product itself, though I’m sure Apple would like to make some bigger inroads in Digidesign’s market the way Final Cut did with Avid. (Though there are plenty of Avid editors out there, still.)

I know enough to say this: the successor to Logic may be a huge upgrade, and may even have a new name, but it’ll still be aimed at musicians and will likely remain connected to the core of Logic and GarageBand. Beyond that, we can say anything we like and amuse the people at Apple (a number of whom read this site); they know more than we do.

Completely Uninformed Speculation Begins!

Does Apple still care about music? Apple has expressed real commitment to me to the music market — and by music market, I mean musicians, not just the nebulous “pro audio” or people doing audio post for its more lucrative video market. I do expect them to go after this audience more aggressively in an upcoming release. I also know Apple knows that its users haven’t been entirely happy with elements of Logic’s interface and design; long-time users master and love it, but some tasks are harder to perform than they should be. Logic 7 made big steps to making this app more Apple-like, but it’s obvious they’ll continue to work on that.

What about release dates? Why are Logic — and iLife ‘07 — delayed? Well, I heard from Apple developers — as from everyone else — that porting Logic to Intel Macs required some effort. It makes sense that that would have delayed the rest of the development pipeline. And it’s a safe bet to assume that Apple began looking at the big picture plans for Logic at the time of the acquisition of the software.

All of us were speculating at Macworld Expo that the absence of iLife ‘07 meant Apple would have its consumer app upgrades coincide with Leopard, to take advantage of new graphics features. That makes sense for iPhoto and iMovie, but it’s unclear what it would mean for something like Logic. I do know something about the graphics developments in OS X 10.5, and Core Animation and Quartz Composer integration look like they will impact a lot of applications from Apple and many third-party developers, as well. Anything with eye candy in it will get a huge boost. But as for music, that’s less clear.

Is Apple readying a new app? Maybe they’ll change the name; “Logic” sounds German and electronic music-related. (Doesn’t it just make you want to make some minimal techno? And Vulcans dig it.) But I seriously, seriously doubt this will be an entirely new application. Look at it this way: GarageBand is an entirely new application, but it’s also based entirely on the underpinnings of Logic, from its notation facility to looping to EXS24 sampler support, GarageBand is Logic Pro 7 with a different face. This proves two things: first, it’s possible to radically change Logic without altering its core or backwards-compatibility, and second, Apple would be unlikely to abandon that core because it would hurt both Logic and GarageBand.

Will it have a touchscreen? This seems like wishful thinking, but there’s one reason to believe it might be true. Apple’s iPhone turned out to be just a phone/iPod/browser, so I doubt you’ll be integrating it with Logic, much as we might like. But remember Apple’s multi-touch tablet patent? It specifically showed a music mixer application. This could mean one of two things: one, it was a research idea that got abandoned, but spread through the grapevine starting this rumor. Or, two, maybe we will see a multi-touch music controller from Apple. It’s an extremely unlikely possibility, but I wouldn’t rule it out entirely, especially with multi-touch tech getting used on the iPhone.

(Again, I can say this because I know nothing. If someone connected to Apple had told me something, I’d be saying nothing. Maybe there’s still time for them to add that cappuccino feature.)

Does this rumor hold weight? There’s really no way of telling. Apple has, bar none, the tightest ship in the industry as far as information leaks, so usually if you hear information from a non-official source, chances are it’s wrong. Moreover, a lot of rumors are based on real information that’s outdated or distorted. But you knew that.

There will be an upcoming pro music app from Apple — that’s for sure — and when we hear something real, we’ll pass it along. In the meantime, feel free to join the idle speculation.

Apple, DAWs, Logic, logic pro, Mac, rumors, speculation, upgrades