There's been some great feedback recently to posts over on my sister site needforkeys.com. Here's a summary of some of the latest:

• Check out The 100 Silly Things That All Drummers Do - they really are a funny bunch. Some of my personal favourites include: 

1. Click / grind their teeth to create rhythms (I'm not a drummer and I have seriously seen a dentist about this myself...!)
   
2. Practice far too fast for their own good
   
3. Sneeze mid-song and try their best not to lose time
   

• Did you know that last week Apple Trademarked The Mac's Bootup Sound? 
• Lastly, and this one's getting a lot of feedback on various LinkedIn groups at the moment (I'll past a follow up shortly), what's your answer to the question Do You Listen To Albums Any More? Feedback to this one is pretty divided!

-
Paul Doolan provides online keyboard recording sessions for bands and solo artists. 
Want to add keyboards to your track? Learn more now. 

Weird and wonderful blog posts from the musical world this week:

• More on the sad decline of the piano, after additional reports that pianos are being burned, dumped and abandoned. Is this a result of the mass production of pianos in the 1920s, when they were made made to sell, not made to last? 
  
• Is Bandcamp a good way to sell music? In this post I examine whether a better question would be "Is Bandcamp a good way to distribute music?" (which it most certainly is!).
• Take a look at the Stuart & Sons piano, the stunning piano with 102 keys.  
• If you've ever been in a band, you'll be familiar with at least some of these challenges: The Top 10 Reasons Why It's Hard To Keep The Band Together
  
• And from the weird and whacky files, these Portuguese sandwiches are served in a box which plays you music custom-selected by the chef (!)

-
Paul Doolan provides online keyboard session recordings for bands and solo artists. 
Want to add keyboards to your track? Learn more now. 

There have been a number of interesting things in the news this week in the keyboard world. 

Firstly, there's been a noticeable increase in the release and coverage of apps - especially iOS (e.g. iPhone, iPad) apps - enabling users to play, record and/or learn keyboard on screen. Playing piano on a flat screen really is a big industry now!

Next, as a piano player nearly all my life, this one came as a bit of a surprise to me - there is actually such a thing as a left-handed piano! Yes, a piano which is a complete mirror image of a standard piano, specially designed for left-handed players by a left-handed player. The piano has all the highest pitch notes as the far left of the keyboard and all the bass notes towards the top / far right. Strange but true. 

Finally, I was amazed by this very cool online music player from Japan called Songle. It enables you to upload a link to any URL containing an mp3 file (or a link to a song on SoundCloud) and it will analyse and provide a visual representation of what it finds in the song. Structures, chords, beat analysis, interpretation of where the chorus starts... pretty amazing stuff. 

There's never a dull moment in the world of music...

Today I read about a new app called Condition One, which promises to revolutionise the way online media is consumed. 

Essentially the app enables the user to view a video on screen, but becomes immersive in that when you turn the screen in any direction, the moving image on screen will pan in that direction. 

It is best to see a demo of the video (below) or download the app to test free to see what it can do. 

It left me thinking how great it would be to have the app change the stereo panning of the audio - as well as the vision - based on where in the "image" you were "looking". The experience at the moment, while somewhat immersive, is still quite one-dimensional - something that stereo panning could assist with overcoming. 

Maybe I've been hiding under a rock for too long, or maybe it's because I'm a keyboard player who's never had a strong desire to play Beatles covers. Either way, I had never heard of what I now realise is often described as the most mysterious chord in music - the opening chord in the Beatles' "Hard Days Night". 

The first chord of this song is renowned for its difficulty to be replicated. Earlier this week though it has been claimed that a British mathematician has solved the mystery and figured out the notes actually being played at the start of the track. 

Though a little further digging on YouTube indicates that he may not have been the first... check out the video below. What do you think?

This song I wrote in around 1996 - it has evolved very little since then. I composed this back then on a 61-key Ensoniq SQ-1+ synth.

There have been a few iterations of this track over the years, with the somewhat undecided track title originating from my high school nickname of Wombler (long story) and the fact that I played in a metal band with some friends in which we wrote lyrics to this song and fully "orchestrated" it, titling it "The Sweetest Lullaby" in that incarnation. 

I love that this is a very "linear" song, there are no repeating sections, but an adventure from start to finish through various tempos and time signatures. Enjoy...

This is a cool video I just stumbled upon summarising the impact of eight milestones in recorded sound, courtesy of CDZA. It goes through:

1. The phonograph
   
2. The gramophone
3. Stereophonic sound
4. Audio manipulation
5. Multitrack recording
6. The cassette tape
7. Digital audio
8. Audio manipulation exposion

Entertaining and clever as always from these guys. Enjoy!

I recently came across this fantastic list of "The Most Influential Music Marketing Professionals on Twitter", as compiled by Michael Brandvold.

Whether you're an established Twitter user, or have a fledgling account and you're wanting some quality music-centric resources to follow, this is a great list. 

I've been following Michael Brandvold for some time, recently impressed also by his securing the Social Media management for Dream Theater, a band I've supported and been immersed in for close to 20 years. 

To access the list you must be a member of Klout. If you're not already a member, don't let this step stop you. It's worth the brief effort to signup.

Access "The Most Influential Music Marketing Professionals on Twitter" list here. 

For some time now, Friday night has been "music appreciation night" in our home. 

It can be all too easy to let a television be a distraction. Some time ago my wife suggested we make Friday night a night for turning off the TV, putting on some great music, and just listening and talking. Our young son loves it also. So much to discover... 

Whenever my little guy wants to play Daddy's piano, I need to remind myself that I have also grown up with a love of music, surrounded by people who supported me, and encouraged me to stick with piano lessons as a boy even when I felt I was being "forced" to learn. With eager young ears reaching out to hear new things, it would be cruel to not indulge him.

I love the picture accompanying this post, of a young boy fascinated by the strings of a guitar. So new, so intriguing, such a source of fascination. 

This fascination is something to be indulged, and never forgotten. 

You can now download the free Flutter app for Mac or Windows and be able to control playback of your iTunes library with just a hand gesture. Really. And it's not just iTunes you can control - you can also play and pause Spotify, VLC, Quicktime and there will surely be more on the way. 

When I first read about this I thought it all sounded a bit gimmicky and geeky, but it's actually not. As the Flutter website suggests, there are times when being able to play and pause your music via a hand gesture is handy. e.g. when you have many windows open. With just a wave of the hand in the air you can pause or start playback, regardless of what you're working with on-screen at the time. Truly handier in practise than it may sound. 

Before checking the app out myself I wanted to read more about it or see a quick demo on YouTube. Then I realised the app is free and very quick to download. Within a minute I was using it and posting this!

One thing I'm sure will be on the developers' minds already - it brings a "touchscreen" like experience to controlling your audio and you naturally want to be able to swipe your hand left or right to skip tracks, maybe even shake your hand to shuffle tracks. Perhaps in future you could just throw up a maloik and immediate hear a metal track... the sky's the limit with this one. 

I'm enjoying it and look forward to seeing it developed further. Hope you enjoy too.