This is an AUDIO POST. A character I created for the show. Click on the links for the audio.

Lead bellie Louie, The World’s One and Only Blues weatherman stops by with Michael and Susan. He’s fired up about the Rockies being in the World Series.

Lead bellie Louie, The World’s One and Only Blues weatherman stops by with Michael and Susan. His beloved Rockies lost one

Lead bellie Louie, The World’s One and Only Blues weatherman stops by with Michael and Susan. He believes he sees a strategy in the Rockies losses.

Enjoy!

Michael Stone.

Lead Bellie Louie is a character I created over 20 years ago for the show. He allows me to change up the weather forecast which we do 4 times and hour, with a little humor and fun commentarty. Here; Louie speaks on the difference between men and women. Enjoy!

I’d love to hear your comments.

Michael Stone

Sonar 7 Producer Edition is the latest upgrade from Cakewalk’s line of Sonar music production software.

I own and use Sonar 6 heavily in my personal music production for my personal cd and my jingle production for AudioPros.com.

What we’ve done, and will do is assemble some of the tutorial videos, to let you look at the various aspects that the new Sonar 7 offers and whether or not it’s for you.

If you work with MIDI a lot, take a look at this tutorial onthe Smart MIDI tools. They allow you to do many MIDI functions quickly and easily.

Speed MIDI editing with SONAR 7′s Smart MIDI Tools

Sonar 7 Producer Edition runs around $499. It’s pricey, but in my experience with Cakewalk products it’s worth it, even if the learning curve is a little steep.

I’d rather spend that kind of money knowing I have MUCH MORE to learn than thinking, “Is that it?”.

But if that price tag totally turns you off take a look at some other products from Cakewalk . I’ll have more on those more affordable products and other tutorials that I dig up around the web to help you out in your decision making process, but also in the day to day basics of running these sometimes complex programs.

All the best.
–Michael Stone–
Singer-songwriter
Radio personality
–Observer–
AudioPros.com

Sonar 7 Producer Edition is the latest upgrade from Cakewalk’s line of Sonar music production software. I own and use Sonar 6 heavily in my personal music production for my personal cd and my jingle production for AudioPros.com

What we’ve done, and will do is assemble some of the tutorial videos, to let you look at the various aspects that the new Sonar 7 offers and whether or not it’s for you.

If you’re looking to create drum parts without the drummer, then you’ll want to take a look at what we have to offer this time around.

First up is this excellent tutorial on creating program beats & lines with Sonar 7‘s Step Sequencer.

Program Beats & Lines with Sonar 7‘s Step Sequencer.

Sonar 7 Producer Edition runs around $499. It’s pricey, but in my experience with Cakewalk products it’s worth it, even if the learning curve is a little steep.

I’d rather spend that kind of money knowing I have MUCH MORE to learn than thinking, “Is that it?”.

But if that price tag totally turns you off take a look at some other products from Cakewalk . I’ll have more on those more affordable products and other tutorials that I dig up around the web to help you out in your decision making process, but also in the day to day basics of running these sometimes complex programs.

All the best.

–Michael Stone–
Singer-songwriter
Radio personality
–Observer–
AudioPros.com

Adobe Audition 3 production software is coming Oct. 29th.

Since Adobe bought Syntrillium, and with it Cool Edit, a few years back, the updates have been coming fairly regularly. With each update, Audition has improved features that bring it into serious competition with the likes of Sonar and Pro Tools.

Adobe Audition 3 is for the “sound designer, musician, recording engineer, mastering engineer, or other audiocentric professional who needs an all-in-one toolset for professional audio production.”

Adobe offers another audio product, Soundbooth 3, which has fewer bells and whistles, perhaps for the less demanding producer, and at a less demanding price, but more on that later.

Adobe Audition 3 offers 50 real-time audio effects including echo, flange, reverb and others. It also supports ASIO, VST, DirectX, and ReWire.

They improved the mixing window, quick punch in reality there are far too many features for me to discuss here. I have Audition 2.0 and after taking a look at what they have to offer, I’m seriously considering the Adobe Audition 3-Upgrade. Will this replace Sonar 6 Producer for me, probably not, but there are times I can see projects that I may want to use this software for.

In fact Adobe has a pretty nifty features page that will give you a video demonstration on many of the features available. Take a look and decide if it’s for you.

—Michael Stone—
Singer-songwriter
Radio Personality
—Observer—
AudioPros.com

I dis-like doing covers when playing live. The bottom line is that I only want to play my originals.

Reality check here Michael.

If you want people to give your originals a listen, intersperse them with covers, especially in a bar-club scene.

So, off I go to find some covers that I like and can learn quickly for an upcoming club gig. I found several through some quick Google TAB searches and was off to learn them. That’s when I realized they were too high for my vocal range. OK, time to sit down and transpose to my range.

Then I thought, hey is there a transposition tool online. Here I go a Googling, and sure enough, here it is; a transpositon tool online. Enter the chords and lyrics, tell it what key you’d like it in and presto, chango, you’ve got a transposed version of your song. Pretty cool, huh?

It”ll save you some time. Enjoy!

Michael Stone
Singer-songwriter
Radio personality
—Observer—

Cakewalk has released Sonar 7 Producer.

I have been running with Sonar 6 Producer since it first came out. While, I’m far from expert using the program, I can highly recommend this great Cakewalk product.

Now when it come to using these powerful programs, you can be overwhelmed. Scott Garrigus’ Sonar 6 Power Guide is a great and very easy to underand step by step guide to learning these programs. I’m sure he has a new book in the works for Another source for information on SONAR is Scott Anderton’s reviews at Harmony Central. You’ll really get a good idea of what kind of creative output you can attain with these powerful programs. All the best! Michael Stone Singer-songwriter Radio personality —Observer—

I’ve been using Sonar 6 Producer mainly for my music production, for my cd, “Inspired by a true story”. Multi-track recording capabilities, a MIDI functionality and great effects possibilities allow the user to create just about any soundscape you can imagine. Here’s a quick description from Cakewalk: “Sonar 7 Producer. Edition offers a remarkable experience that excels at every step of your production-from its inspiring, open and customizable environment, to intuitive music creation and editing tools, to polished mixing, editing and delivery-with the recognized best audio quality in the industry. “

Amazon MP3 is Amazon’s entry into the digital music business.

You can now download digital tunes with Amazon MP3 .

It’s service has no DRM (digital rights management) which means the tunes can be copied and is compatible with Zune and Apple’s I-Pod.

A quick look at Amazon’s stock price this morning found it hovering around $95 a share. Five years ago you could buy Amazon stock for $15 a share.

Amazon MP3 will be a direct competitor to Apple’s I-Tunes and is started with a price war, pricing most downloads a dime cheaper than the dominant music service.

Michael Stone
Singer-songwriter
Radio personality
—Observer—

As an independent musician and proponent of others chasing the dream, I’m always looking for new ways to promote the artist and the music.

Reverbnation seems to be a site that has a great and innovative team of developers.

I already liked their music players that artists can install on their pages. Their show schedules widget with maps is outstanding, and now they’ve combined many of their features into one all encompassing widget.

Here’s how they describe it:

The widget features a customizable picture, band info, music player loaded with your songs, a video, show schedule (with tour map), “join the mailing list” Fan Collector, and more. You can also cross-promote other artists at the bottom of the widget. These artists are pulled from the list of artists you recommend, and rotated randomly. Great for helping out our artists.This is a great way for artists to spread themselves and their music across the web via blogs, other web pages and their own home page.

I highly recommend it.

Take a look at it below and click around.

All the best!

-Michael Stone-

UPDATE …. Hmmmm…… It seems that the widget has a “loading” problem. I’ve contacted Reverbnation and will leave this up for a while “as is” to see what they can tell me, I’ll let you know what they say…. I swear it’s a cool deal. As with all of these things there seem to be bugs….

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: After getting a note from Robert Hubbard (see comments) of Reverbnation (yes they actually responded. I like these guys) For whatever reason when I copy the code, it was dropping the artist ID. FIXED! Check it out…

ANOTHER UPDATE….Now I’ve found that my video isn’t showing through the widget. In fact, it says that this artists has no video. So I’ve got another note into the folks at Reverbnation. Additonally, I’ve just uncovered another bug in how the widget displays in Igoogle. In Firefox it continuously reloads the page and creates a long downward scrolling, while in Explorer it displays partially cut off on the sides..