The Spice Girls have announced a 25-city reunion tour.
Seen here, from left to right: Petrified Manmeat Spice, Gym Teacher Spice, Stevie Nicks Spice, Yo BabyMama Spice, Still-Scary-But-For-A-Different-Reason Spice.

If Proctor & Gamble aren't sponsoring this, they're really missing a bet.

I don’t know if it was the back pain last night which made me start thinking of quitting the band… I had this a couple of years ago and took six months off and that refreshed me last time. I don’t think this is the same issue though.

Limited set list

During the last set of the gig last night I was wondering what the hell I was doing there. Ever since we got our new bass player the gigs have been all the same. She has only learned about 1/3 of our set list and that 1/3 she only knows enough to pass through the tunes. There are still lots of notes she’s missing and she just isn’t as solid and aggressive on the bass as my old bass player and great friend. Her tone and playing is wimpy.

Same old same old

We’ve been playing the same damn gig at an “ok” club forever. We’ve been getting decent crowds and making a few bucks at this place so that’s not the problem. The problem is the gig is getting very boring. When you only have a small number of tunes to pick from, which aren’t played as well as they could be, and you combine that with playing at the same damn place for the same damn crowd of drunk smokers it gets pretty monotonous.

Right now I’m thinking if the new bass player doesn’t learn the current tunes better and learn the rest of the set list by the end of the Summer, and if we don’t find a new place or two to gig, I’m out. I may not make it that far but that’s my plan. Maybe it’s my time to go find a different gig anyway. Maybe a jazz group…

Last night was the first gig I’ve had bashing the skins for about three weeks. I played a little too much golf last week or lifted something too heavy and tweaked my bad back. Sitting on a drum stool for three hours and putting all the balance and weight of your upper body on your bad lower back isn’t the best feeling thing in the world. Now I’m hurting bad today…

It's Friday and it's time for another installment of Live Catch, Beware Of The Blog's weekly guide to live music in WFMU's New York/New Jersey broadcast area.

A bunch of great bands are playing tonight at the Silent Barn. Finnish D.I.Y. weirdos Avarus, who played live on Brian Turner's show last year, are back in town for the evening. Member Jan Anderzen also performed live on his own back in 2005. Rounding out the bill are fellow WFMU live room alums Watersports (on Acapulco Rodriguez's show last year), plus Manbeard, Vanishing Voice, and Philadelphia psych-folk titan Fursaxa. Her deep vocals and chord organ call to mind Nico's darkest solo recordings.

Listen: Fursaxa - Freedom (8.5 MB MP3)

Psychic Ills play on Saturday night at the Bowery Ballroom, along with Gang Gang Dance and guitar-shredder Mick Barr aka Ocrilim.  The Ills' latest, Early Violence, collects the group's first Spacemen 3-channeling 12" EPs on the Social Registry label.

Listen: Psychic Ills - Diamond City (5.5 MB MP3)

There are lots and lots of free shows going on this week, so we'll just highlight a few of them. On Sunday afternoon in Williamsburg, Blues Control will be playing an in-store at Academy Record Annex. Monday night brings country-rock kings The Flatlanders to Castle Clinton, and on Independence Day you can check out the New Pornographers and Midlake on the Battery Park Lawn.

For comprehensive listings, check out our continually-updated Arbitrary Guide To Popular Culture.

Just as the Macworld review was going to “press” (or appearing online, anyway) Soundtrack Pro 2.01 arrived. New in this version:

Delay Designer: This effect now allows custom delay taps, with optional sync to project tempo.

Combine clips into multichannel clip: This is nice: drag up to 24 source clips to the timeline, and you automatically get a combined multichannel clip, which should be handy for surround and stereo multichannel alike.

Various fixes for performance / stability / etc.

But there’s one release note that caught my eye: Soundtrack Pro 2 does not support iTunes Plus files. Now, that’s curious, given iTunes Plus files are supposedly “DRM-free” and stored in a format Soundtrack Pro 2 does support (AAC). In fact, I’d kind of call this, well, DRM. I can even think of cases where you might want to trim a track you bought from iTunes, like removing an intro. Not a big deal by any means, mind you, but — odd.

Hmmm…

Soundtrack Pro 2 supports AAC files.

QuickTime can open iTMS Plus files. (If you do want to edit the file, by the way, you can slice out an intro of that iTMS Plus file right in QuickTime Player, making this all the odder.)

Soundtrack Pro 2 can’t. The only reason seems to be that Apple disabled the ability to do that. That sure sounds like Digital Rights Management to me (albeit in a very specific and bizarre case).

If anyone knows a reason why I might be wrong here, please do speak up. (Just tried it for myself with an ITMS Plus track, and Soundtrack Pro in fact reported that it couldn’t open the file.)

Updated: Or it could just be a bug. “DRM” as a theory still doesn’t make sense. The author of Sound Studio notes an AAC bug that’s a likely culprit. It’d be ironic that Apple’s own developers couldn’t work around an Apple API problem — but I can’t actually pretend to be surprised, either, especially as this particular functionality wouldn’t be a very high priority for support in Soundtrack Pro. Thanks, Lucius. (See comments.) And, yeah, that makes a heck of a lot more sense than selective DRM that takes effect only in a single pro app and nowhere else on the system. We’ll call it DPB: Digital Playback Bug.

I should also note that Felt Tip Software’s Sound Studio is an excellent, eminently affordable wave editor for Mac. I used it in the early days of OS X when nothing else ran. Since then, it’s become a very mature piece of software — well worth the cash over, say, suffering through Audacity for free. (Sorry, Audacity.) So if you feel left out by the fact that Soundtrack Pro is only available within Final Cut Studio, you should add Sound Studio to your list of tools to consider as an alternative, as well.

Apple, audio editors, compatbility, DRM, fixes, iTunes, Mac, soundtrack pro, upgrades

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Speaking of audio post, last year, a mention of the use of Virtual Katy 2 on the new Doctor Who TV program (and King Kong, and Lord of the Rings stirred up some naysayers of this popular audio conforming tool. The folks involved on these projects have since spoken up. First, a Foley Editor from King Kong jumped in to say Foley work for the big ape worked well in VK2. This week, we hear from the man behind sound on the Doctor:

Hi, I’m Paul McFadden Supervising Sound Editor on Doctor Who and I have to say that VK2 saved our lives on numerous occasions.The show is a complete nightmare for recuts. Way to much for a TV show, VK gives us a workflow that allows us to complete[sic] the audio post on schedule. It’s a lifesaver.

I much prefer hearing from the people in question to hearing from press releases (all due respect to the people doing the press releases), so worth sharing that.

Virtual Katy

It’s interesting that Apple would be getting into the conforming game with Soundtrack Pro 2 and Final Cut Studio. I look forward to hearing how this works on for people doing Final Cut production; I expect it’ll take some months of work out in the field before we know. (Of course, even better is not having to make major cuts in the first place, but we know how that can go… “Final Cut”? Good luck!)

conforming, post production, Pro Tools, production, sci fi, software, TV, video

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The Boodie has transformed into a Buddha Sheik: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [01] DAZE MAXIM: Spunaround, [02] POLDER: Strange Ways, [03] 2020 SOUNDSYSTEM: Can’t Stop The Crew - Jesse Rose Marimba Dub, [04] COBBLESTONE JAZZ: W, [05] EFDEMIN: Le Ratafia, [06] DAPAYK SOLO: Woo (Does The Glitch Bother You?) - Butane Remix, [07] CONTENT: No Refunds, [08] MICHAL HO, LIL DIRTY: Break Free, [09] LUCIANO, THOMAS MELCHIOR: Father, [10] TELEPOPMUSIK: Love Can Damage Your Health feat. Angela Mcluskey - Abicah Soul & Dennis Ferrer Remix, [11] TRENTEMOLLER: Moan - Trentemoller Remix, [12] BAREM: Link, [13] MIA: Swoon - Shonky Remix, [14] BRENDON MOELLER: Jazz ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - Source Site:http://swindle.net/wp/2007/06/23/bitter-sweet-sinner-saint/

Soundtrack Pro 2 from Apple offers some major new improvements over the first release of the “Pro” audio editor from Apple. Multichannel editing now works properly, with the ability to nudge by frames and move clip envelopes together with clips, and there are some brilliant new features for conforming audio projects to video and a “Lift and Stamp” tool for applying audio attributes from one clip (including matching EQ and copying effects) to another.

Macworld.com has just published my complete review of the software:

Pros: Vastly improved multichannel editing and file import and export; Conform feature makes Final Cut integration more elegant; efficient surround panning; improved recording; convenient Lift and Stamp audio.

Cons: Automation requires AppleScript; rigid and sometimes sluggish interface; available only as part of the Final Cut Studio suite.

Soundtrack Pro 2: Improved editing and new features help you sync audio with video

Soundtrack vs. Final Cut Studio vs. Logic

The bad news, of course, is that the only way to get Soundtrack Pro 2 is to either buy Final Cut Studio or upgrade to the whole Final Cut Studio.

(...)
Read the rest of Soundtrack Pro 2: My Macworld Review (450 words)

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With some software tools, less is more. When it comes to the complexity and breadth of music notation tools, though, more is often more, because everyone’s needs are different. If the “pro”, “high-end” tool happens to do exactly what you need to do efficiently and quickly, that’s the tool you’re most likely to use — even if your notation needs are “modest” in your own eyes. In other words, if you use only 10% of the capabilities of the tool, but everyone’s different 10% is included, you’ve got a winner. And that’s probably part of why two major rivals continue to dominate mindshare in notation, Finale and Sibelius. Finale is on an annual release schedule, compared to Sibelius’ semiannual appearances. 2007 is one of the years the two coincide, with releases shipping almost exactly simultaneously next month.

We took a first peek at what’s new in Sibelius 5: massive plug-in support, an ideas hub, and other enhancements. Here’s what’s doing in Finale 2008 (keeping in mind Finale spreads new features out across annual releases):

(...)
Read the rest of Notation Software Upgrades; Finale 2008 Adds Audio Recording, Single Selection Tool, Styles (506 words)

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