MusTech.Net!

If you consider yourself “tech” savvy and are a musician/composer/educator and haven’t heard of www.classicalarchives.com then maybe you need to re-evaluate the state of your “savvyness”.  The Classical Archives, incorporated in 2000, is the largest classical music site on the web.  It currently boasts over 40,000 full length classical music files by over 2,000 composers!

~GetDef(savvy)~

The most amazing thing about the archives is that you can access almost all of it for free (with some small limitations).  Registered Free Users may access up to 5 unrestricted files per day (over 1,000 per year!). For a meager $25.00, Subscribers may access 100 files per day!

When you get into the “nitty gritty” of the Classical Archive’s copyright policy, you will find that they freely allow you copy a certain number of files to be used for both commercial and non-commercial reasons within certain limitations. 

The copyrights (if any) of the work (the score or composition) performed in the media file. These belong to the composer, his/her publisher, estate, or other appropriate copyright holder. As a rule, the compositions represented in the CMA are now in the public domain (composed before 1923) or the contributor of a performance of a non-public domain composition must have received the express permission to make the media file from the appropriate copyright holder. Otherwise the media file is not allowed in the CMA.

That statement makes great news for arrangers!  MIDI files from almost any composer may be found on this site.  As midi files are easily read into any notational program you may easily “view” the scores of what you are listening too!  In addition, you can easily pull notation to arrange your the composition for your own ensemble requirements, etc. with programs like Sibelius and Finale.

TEN REALLY COOL THINGS YOU CAN DO FROM CLASSICALARCHIVES.COM, THAT YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT!!!

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 As you may or may not know, I have an Xbox 360. For the most part I am really impressed by it. I grew up a part of the “arcade” generation. I can remember songs like Pac-Man Fever and still catch myself humming some of the more “catchy” game tunes. We have come a long way since the graphics of the original Pitfall Harry (which were amazing at the time… you could actually see the “block” hair on Harry’s Head!) and the sound of the bleeps and bloops have been all but forgotten with the incredible compostions and orchestrations of top notch composers like game scorer Jeremy Soule (Oblivion).

With all that the Xbox 360 can do, I like to push it to the limit to see what I can make it do for me. Here are three of my latest Xbox 360 issues that I could not find much help about and that I have found a way to solve.

Issue 1: Sharing and Serving Video Files to the Xbox 360.

The promise: Watch videos streamed over your local intranet from a computer to the Xbox 360.

This is a great idea, especially given the puny size of the Xbox 360’s hard drive (a measly 20 gigabytes). Given a simple XP home environment without Windows Media Server on my network, first I had to use Windows Media Connect. This worked fine for sharing pictures and audio files but did not allow the sharing of video files.

Enter the promise of Microsoft Media Player 11. With this player upgrade and a Xbox 360 firmware (downloadable upgrade via Xbox Live) you are now able to stream video files to your Xbox 360 without having Media Center software installed…. problem was- it didn’t work for me.  Even though the previous media connect software worked fine the upgrade and migration to Windows Media Player 11 did not. None of my computers showed up on the Xbox 360’s radar when I searched for media files being shared.

The solution:

After much surfing and reading though Microsoft KB articles (always good for a headache) coupled with personal trial and error, I figured out the problem. Given all other normal issues have been addressed like firewall and connectivity issues (see here for a direct link about this: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/digitalmedia/pc.htm), the solution for me was to disable IPsec passthrough on my local router. Since I am using two routers in between my intranet and 360, I had to make sure that I disabled it on both.

By doing this the Xbox 360 was now able to find the other local computers broadcasting their contents. Granted, now I have to re-enable it to make use of my VPN now! Hopefully there will be a work around for this soon!

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Hello all and Happy New Year!!!

I Know I have been slow to post lately… With all of the Holiday events and finishing of the college year coupled with the “end of the tunnel” of my dissertational work- I haven’t given this site it’s due consideration. However, I am working on some exciting things to incorporate this year with the mustech.net site and I am going to share some of my ideas, “in the works” projects and “sandbox” initiatives for the New Year with you:

• Blogcasts and Podcasts
  I have already put together a team of local and regional technology experts that will soon begin broadcasting bi-monthly podcasts centered solely on cutting edge “useful” technologies and simple explanations of the complexities of current technologies.
• A Web 2.0 forum and Bulletin Board System
  If you haven’t noticed, I have been tinkering with a general forum here already (see the tabs above). It is my hope to have a forum held here for both experts and novices, music educators and musicians alike to discuss technologies as related to our field.
• The first major Web 2.0 directory specifically for musicians and music educators
  This has been in the “sandbox” for about 3 months now. I finally finished the “look” of it about 2 months ago and haven’t had the time to populate it before I “officially” announce it. If you want to get a preview follow this link: http://muslinks.net
• Expand the collection of musicednews.com
  This has been up for awhile now and I will pull it out of the “sandbox” by the end of January. This is an online news aggregator for music education related sites. You can preview it at http://musicednews.com

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[tag]Coda[/tag] [tag]Music[/tag] has done something wonderful for the music world and you should take full advantage of their generosity. Finale Notepad [tag]2007[/tag] has been released and once again it is totally free. Finale Notepad is an amazing tool for the price. Using it will inspire creativity, fortify musical understanding and promote music literacy.

If you are a teacher, you can easily add [tag]Finale[/tag] [tag]Notepad[/tag] into your everyday lessons and plans. Because it’s free and crosses O/S platforms ([tag]Mac[/tag] or [tag]Windows[/tag]), having any computer or [tag]computer lab[/tag] available to you is all that you will need in order to utilize this very useful program.

You do not need a music [tag]keyboard[/tag] or [tag]M.I.D.I.[/tag] device to use Finale Notepad. As a matter of fact, those things won’t help you at all, since M.I.D.I. type features are reserved for the upgraded versions of Finale. Despite this restriction, [tag]Finale Notepad[/tag] actually is quite useful and beneficial for individuals and school music programs alike.

The Top 10 things you can do (for Free) with Finale Notepad 2007:

1. Easily create “Fake Book” music

2. Easily create [tag]guitar[/tag] [tag]tab[/tag]

3. Easily perform music [tag]transposition[/tag]s

4. Quickly [tag]create[/tag] and notate music- using up to eight staves

5. View music in “C” or [tag]concert[/tag] pitch

6. Easily “jot down” musical ideas

7. Hear your “musical ideas” back

8. Listen to music at faster or slower speeds than the original

9. [tag]Print[/tag] out music for later use

10. Share your ideas with others using Finale’s Showcase

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