Alfred is pleased to release the new Kenny Loggins Easy Guitar Anthology (20 Greatest Hits).

Kenny Loggins Easy Guitar Anthology contains twenty of Kenny Loggins’ greatest hits, from Loggins & Messina through his solo career. All songs have been arranged for easy guitar, and include tablature as well as easy-to-follow guitar chord frames.

Titles are: All the Pretty Little Ponies * Angry Eyes * Back to Georgia * Celebrate Me Home * Cody’s Song * Danger Zone * Danny’s Song * Footloose * Forever * Heart to Heart * House at Pooh Corner * I Believe in Love * I’m Alright * A Love Song * My Music * Now and Then * This Is It * Watching the River Run * Whenever I Call You Friend * Your Mama Don’t Dance.

For more information, visit their web site at www.alfred.com.

Posted in Education, Guitar

Available immediately, Grooveboxmusic.com has released the first group of training videos in their new “Studio Series” collection. The Studio Series takes a completely different approach than their acclaimed software training videos and utilizes real video footage of actual engineers, producers and artists using the tools found in today’s recording studios.

The first group of videos focuses on Mic’ing and Recording Drums, and feature engineer Andy Sharp who has worked with groups such as Blue October and Sheryl Crow.

Currently the videos are only viewable online with the “G-Pass” which gives instant access to hundreds of video tutorials for one low price. Groovebox is currently working on many more titles for this exciting new series as well.

“We have decided to present the other side of recording as we have the software training aspect covered. Now it’s time to bring real life footage and content on common studio technologies and practices,” says Groovebox Corp. President Asa Doyle.

Titles and descriptions in the current Studio Series “Mic and Record Drums” category are:

• Intro and Setup - Get the lowdown on the basic setup for working with drums in the studio, and some things to remember before you start.
• Kick Drum - Learn about mic selection, placement and setting levels for the kick drum and getting the right sound for your style of music.
• Snare Drum - Discover several popular mic techniques for the snare drum and the different sounds they create. This tutorial guides you through placement, audio examples and much more.
• Hi Hat - The hi-hat can be hard to capture or very easy. This tutorial covers the basics that make the job easy and the results versatile. Mic selection, placement and audio examples are all explained.
• Toms - Get the studio engineer perspective of setting up and recording toms. Tons of great insight for capturing the tom tone you want and need.
• Overheads - The secrets of overhead mics are revealed. Learn to choose the right mics, about popular placements, phase cancellation and more.
• Room Mic - The all important “room” mic can really help capture the natural sound of the drums and create a lot of space, character and feel. This tutorial shows you how to set it up and get it.

For more information, visit their web site at www.grooveboxmusic.com.

Posted in Education, Microphones, Mixers, Recording, Studio, Technology

Alfred is pleased to expand the Classic Album Edition series to include the Rolling Stones’ Aftermath.

Their first record of all-original material, Aftermath includes the Rolling Stones’ classic hit songs “Under My Thumb” and “Paint it Black.” This authentic guitar TAB edition provides all of the guitar parts as they were recorded.

Titles are: Paint It, Black * Stupid Girl * Lady Jane * Under My Thumb * Doncha Bother Me * Think * Flight 505 * High and Dry * It’s Not Easy * I Am Waiting * Going Home.

For more information, visit their web site at www.alfred.com.

Posted in Education, Guitar

Alfred is pleased to release the album-matching folio for Lacuna Coil’s latest CD, Karmacode.

Italian gothic/metal band Lacuna Coil has steadily worked their way across Europe and the United States, sharing stages with Green Day, System Of A Down, and Incubus, as well as tours with Rob Zombie and Ozzfest. Their latest release, Karmacode, debuted at #28 and spent eight weeks on the Billboard Top 200 chart. The first single from the record, “Our Truth,” has already spent 16 weeks in the Top 50 at Active Rock Radio, 11 of which were in the Top 40.

This album-matching folio provides authentic guitar TAB for all the songs on the record. Titles are: Fragile * To the Edge * Our Truth * Within Me * Devoted * You Create * What I See * Fragments of Faith * Closer * In Visible Light * The Game * Without Fear * Enjoy the Silence.

For more information, visit their web site at www.alfred.com.

Posted in Education, Guitar, Tab

Alfred is pleased to release the album-matching folio for Neil Young’s latest release Prairie Wind.

Prairie Wind was written and recorded in 2005, while Neil Young was being treated for a potentially fatal brain aneurysm. He recorded eight of the songs prior to his surgery for the aneurysm, and two following his surgery, as he recovered. Prairie Wind has been described as a very personal record, stylistically similar to Neil Young’s classic records Harvest and Harvest Moon.

Titles are: Falling Off the Face of the Earth * Far from Home * He Was the King * Here for You * It’s a Dream * No Wonder * The Painter * Prairie Wind * This Old Guitar * When God Made Me.

For more information, visit their web site at www.alfred.com.

Posted in Education, Guitar, Tab

PlayJazzNow.com, a new website that launched last month, offers downloadable jazz play-along tracks that will enable every instrumentalist and vocalist to work out with a world class rhythm section.

“It was impossible to find any recordings my students could play with to help them become better accompanists and soloists - and it was very frustrating,” says PlayJazzNow “trackmeister” Bill Harrison, a professional jazz bassist who has been playing and teaching for nearly 30 years. “PlayJazzNow.com provides tracks that any musician, regardless of their level or instrument, can use to hone their musical skills,” he explains. “These tracks give musicians the support and tonal reference they need for mastering scales, rhythms and the other fundamentals of jazz improvisation.”

For example, bassists can play-along with piano and drums - allowing them to feel what it’s like to synch up with a great drummer and to hear their bass lines in the context of the chord changes. Piano, guitar and vibes players can practice with bass and drums; horn players and singers can work out with a full jazz trio. “There’s really nothing else out there like it. In fact, our tagline is “The World’s Only Source for Downloadable Play-Along Tracks,” says Harrison.

Until the last decade or so, players would learn a lot ‘on the job’ and at jam sessions, but now there are a lot more players - and a lot fewer sessions. Harrison feels that budding jazz musicians need a way to practice regularly with a real rhythm section.

PlayJazzNow.com addresses this need. The website offers jazz play-alongs that are quite different from the CD/book sets of play-along tunes sold by Jamey Aebersold. PlayJazzNow.com tracks consist of chord progressions - turnarounds and forms that occur in all types of standards and jazz compositions. Harrison states, “PlayJazzNow’s play-alongs are available for immediate download, come in all 12 keys and you can find the precise tracks you need for your level and your instrument.”

PlayJazzNow.com play-along tracks are much more affordable than other CD-based play-alongs on the market. A track set, comprised of 12 identical tracks - one in each key - runs a little over a dollar per track. Since the tracks are made up of chord changes and not “songs” per se, they provide the jazz musician with the freedom and flexibility needed to practice whatever they choose.

PlayJazzNow.com offers several progressions to choose from, including simple two-fives, blues, and turnarounds in major and minor. Future tracks will deal with “rhythm” changes, more complicated forms of major and minor blues and other common harmonic formulas. Tracks will feature a variety of rhythmic feels including swing, Latin and African grooves. There are also plans to create a series of play-alongs for drummers and percussionists, something that will be unique to PlayJazzNow.com.

Bill Harrison is an accomplished jazz bassist who has performed with many jazz masters including; Clark Terry, James Moody, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Kenny Burrell, Bunky Green and Joe Daley. He has been a faculty member of Chicago State University and the American Conservatory of Music, and has taught at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Clark Terry’s Great Plains Jazz Camp and the Saskatchewan Summer School for the Arts. Harrison currently plays jazz, commercial and theatre gigs in Chicago and maintains two teaching studios.

For more information, visit their web site at www.playjazznow.com.

Posted in Bass, Education

Do you have a band instrument just sitting in your closet collecting dust? Have you ever wanted to learn how to play an instrument but couldn’t find a beginning band? If so, the North Coast New Horizons Band would like to invite you to an informational orientation meeting on Wednesday, August 16 at 7:00 PM at the Museum of Making Music, 5790 Armada Drive in Carlsbad.

The New Horizons Band, formed in January 2002, is welcoming new members, typically older adults with little or no musical background. The meeting is a question and answer session for enrollment in the beginning, intermediate or advanced band for adults who want to learn woodwinds, brass or percussion.

The national New Horizons Band program was developed by professor Roy Ernst of the Eastman School of Music in 1991. The program offers adults, primarily people who are over 50, the chance to learn how to play a concert band instrument and perform with other beginning musicians. The program has introduced thousands of older adults, retirees, and seniors to the joys and benefits of music making.

For more information about the local North Coast New Horizons Band, please contact Allison Hargis at 858-793-0223.

For more information, visit their web site at www.museumofmakingmusic.org.

Posted in Education, Music, News

Audio Renaissance Man to Address Live Sound: The Heart & Soul of Professional Audio

Robert Scovill, a concert sound and recording engineer and six-time TEC Award-winner, has been named Keynote Speaker for the 121st AES Convention. In making the announcement Committee Chair John Strawn remarked, “With a list of credits that includes Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Matchbox Twenty, Prince, Rush and Def Leppard, Robert Scovill’s presentation at noon on Thursday, Oct. 5th sends a clear signal that Live Sound remains a cornerstone of the AES constituency.”

Entitled Live Sound, The Heart And Soul of Professional Audio, Scovill’s AES keynote speech will address, the on-going technology evolution/revolution and other critical issues impacting today’s Live Sound community.

Robert Scovill has accrued over 3000 live event mixing credits during the course of a 27-year career. He is a highly regarded technical consultant and product endorser for many leading manufacturers, including Neumann, Audio Technica, Electrovoice, Servo Drive and Alesis. He currently holds the position of Market Manager for Live Sound Products for Digidesign where he contributes to all aspects of that company’s burgeoning presence in the live sound market. He is an accomplished producer in all facets of media production for events including large scale concerts and services for houses of worship. A respected figure on the international seminar, education and convention lecture circuit, he has emerged as a pro audio industry renaissance man.

Scovill makes his home in Scottsdale, AZ where he operates his own Eldon’s Boy Productions Inc. and MusiCanvas Recording Studio and lives with his wife, three children and a dog named Dino.

The 121st AES Convention will be held in San Francisco’s Moscone Center October 5-8, 2006.

For more information, visit their web site at www.aes.org.

Posted in Audio, Education, Recording, Technology

A free demo download of analog tape emulator Extreme Punch is now available.

Extreme Punch not only emulates the sound of analog tape but more importantly it reproduces the dynamics.

Back in the days of analog recording there was one very outstanding recording tool. It was analog tape. Analog tape had one great advantage, it was warm and fat. Part of the esthetics of analog tape is the result of tape saturation. When the magnetic partials on analog tape become saturated, they created the best compression that ever existed. The result was a fat and dense signal which was both warm and punchy.

RSO created a plugin to do just that with Extreme Punch, and made it easy to use and fool proof.

For more information, visit their web site at www.recordingschoolonline.com.

Posted in Computer, Education, Effects, Plug-Ins, Recording, Software, Technology

Alfred is pleased to release the Kenny Loggins Guitar Songbook .

With twelve platinum albums and a long list of hit songs, Kenny Loggins has had an incredibly successful career, both as a songwriter and a performer. The Kenny Loggins Guitar Songbook features twenty-one of his greatest hits, from Loggins & Messina through his solo career. All the songs included have been fully transcribed for guitar, with tablature.

Titles are: All the Pretty Little Ponies * Angry Eyes * Back to Georgia * Celebrate Me Home * Cody’s Song * Danger Zone * Danny’s Song * Footloose * Forever * Heart to Heart * House at Pooh Corner * I Believe in Love * I’m Alright * A Love Song * My Music * Now and Then * Watching the River Run * What a Fool Believes * Whenever I Call You Friend * Your Mama Don’t Dance.

For more information, visit their web site at www.alfred.com.

Posted in Education, Guitar