Blackberry Music - Slacker vs. Pandora

If you have a compatible Blackberry, you're going to want to try out the free streaming music services from Slacker and BlackBerry.

Slacker's app has been out for a little while (and just got a version update), Pandora's is just out.

My take?

Slacker: the "now playing" screen has the album art for the cut that's playing, plus images in the background of the last 2 items that played, and the cover art of what's coming up:








Pandora: just the album art for what's playing:








Slacker: Shows you the name of the next artist that's coming up, Pandora does not.

Plus Slacker will show you the artist bio and an album review too (an option when you hit the button to the left of the track ball).

Both services allow you to give input on what you like and don't like, but Slacker's controls have a bit more finesse.

Pandora seems to load a touch faster.

There are graphical ads on Pandora, and audio ads every few songs on Slacker.

The audio coming from Pandora seems to play a bit louder at max volume?

Both do a great job of streaming surprisingly great sounding music on your BlackBerry. Slacker for BlackBerry just seems more polished.

Both are FREE - so how can you lose? -TT

Microsoft Songsmith - Your Digital Accompanist

The press release says: "Songsmith software automatically composes accompaniment music for whatever tune a singer belts, hums or whistles into a microphone, regardless of skill level."

Besides the singing "family" bit in the demo, this is pretty amazing.

You can use the demo download for 6 hours for free. I don't see any restrictions in the EULA on using the final musical output, do you? Update: nope, the EULA says you can't use it for commercial purposes without permission.

Dierks Bentley On A World Stage

What a GREAT job Dierks Bentley did at the recent Nobel Peace Prize concert in Norway:


A better quality video is HERE.

Beatles video game is coming

How amazing is it that 40 + years after their first hit that The Beatles are still in the center of pop culture?

"Every member of the Apple team -- Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono Lennon have been part of the conversation, have seen demonstrations of the game, understand how it's going to roll out, what you're going to see on your screen, how the interactivity and the immersive experience will unfold and they will be involved along every step of the way creatively and musically, with Giles Martin [son of Beatles producer George Martin]," said Apple Corps' Jones. "They'll be involved in the design and the implementation of the design."

Attention! And then some $$ to go with it, please

We're drowning in choices - music, tv channels, web sites. Why does so little truly excite us? And why are so few people making any real money from all that's being put forth?

I think Kevin Kelly is really on top of it, with so many nuggets here:

Where ever attention flows, money will follow.

Maintain an incoming flow of attention and money will follow.

...the fact that something does work or is helpful is no longer sufficient for success. Good, useful stuff is now the minimum standard. I might even make the argument that great stuff is the minimum.

Now anything that lasts has to also maintain our attention.

Getting a quick blitz of attention is a no-brainer. The challenge is maintaining a flow of attention in an environment where you are surrounded by millions of similar things that are good and useful.

The problem for a band is not being "discovered" but remaining interesting.

Time (does) not equal attention. I spend a lot of time in my car but I don’t give it much attention..

- all from Kevin Kelly

and

The challenge for everyone is that we are getting better and better at creating “interesting stuff” but there is a finite supply of attention. Our dynamic range of “interesting” is lessening, as everything in the technium is more perfectly designed to grab attention.

- from Stan James (www.wanderingstan.com) in the comments

Again, here's the piece.

God bless the Guitar Man, the great Jerry Reed, who passed away today at age 71.

"Amos Moses" was one of my FAVORITE songs on Top 40 radio growing up. "...knocked him in the head with a stone." BOMP. Classic.

A nice short piece on Jerry from Rolling Stone from 1999 here.

And I've always loved Jerry's take on "Patches," hear it here.

Change a single note in a recorded CHORD (!) - and much more

Wow, the creative musical possibilities shown here in Melodyne's new software are limitless. Maybe even a little scary.

Note: I first thought the narrator in the video was saying "meaty," but it's how he pronounces "Midi."

And much like how digital image editing has challenged us in how we look at any kind of visual, this shows that going forward you'll never really be able to know what the original source of an audio recording was.

Guitar Hero 3 comes to AT&T Phones

First it was Verizon, and now CNET reports that AT&T phone customers will be able to play Guitar Hero 3 on their phones. Let's just not hear of someone trying to drive while trying to keep up with the insanely fast GH3 version of "Devil Went To Georgia," 'keh!?

Podcast - Brad Paisley's Guitar Amp setup

Wow, listening to Brad here you get to know that he's a real student of guitar amps and technology. And if you don't have Brad's 5th Gear album, get it NOW and play it loud.

Piano on iPhone

You have to mess with your phone to run this - which I do not endorse doing - but wow.