Invention 1 in C major, BWV 772

Prelude in C Major, WTC Book 1, BWV 846

Goldberg Variations BWV 988, Variation 10

Goldberg Variations BWV 988, Variation 25

Pinnacle studio 12 vs 24-bit audio

When editing my piano videos, I found out the hard way that WAV files recorded in 24 bit could not be added to the videos. Only those recorded in 16 bit worked. I hope that helps someone else trying to do music videos with Pinnacle, since the limit doesn't appear to be documented anywhere.

Bach's Goldberg Variations BWV 988, Variation 5, piano

Bach's Goldberg Variations BWV 988, Variation 1, piano

Bach's Goldberg Variations BWV 988, Variation 18, piano

Bach's Goldberg Variations BWV 988, Variation 7, piano

Bach's Goldberg Variations BWV 988, Aria, piano

I played this on thursday, practicing for an upcoming recital.

Google is still not indexing new sites without external links

In March and April of 2008, I acted as recording engineer in the production of a new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. In January of 2009, I put up a web site making the recording available to everyone. Nearly 3 months later, this web site still does not appear in the Google index, despite my having added it manually as a suggested link. Apparently, that suggestion was ignored. The site just cannot be found. This blog entry will be the first external link to that web site. I hope that it will succeed in getting the site indexed.

Why I have not an bought an iPod yet

Way back in 2007, Apple used to have a 160 GB iPod . At that time, my music collection, in Apple Lossless Encoder, made from all legally purchased CDs, was about 180 GB . I thought for sure that by waiting another year, they would come up with a unit sporting a bigger hard drive that could fit all my songs.

Instead, Apple's next lineup of iPods had a smaller unit with only a 120 GB hard drive, 40 GB smaller than before.

Now it's 2009, any the size of my music collection has grown to 15,592 files in 2648 folders, totalling 264,905,499,571 bytes. There doesn't appear to be any single music player on the market that can fit it.

Here is hoping that somebody will fill that gap.

iTunes R.F.E. : simultaneous drive support

For those who aren't software engineers, and heavy TLA abusers , an RFE is a "request for enhancement".

Here my request of the day. I have several computers with 4 optical drives. With their SATA interface, they are plenty past enough to be all used simultaneously. Why would anyone want to do that ? Well, let's say for example that you just received a box set of 34 CDs that you want to import to itunes, as I did last week. The bottleneck is not the computer. My Core 2 Quad 6600 CPU can compress lossless music at a very high rate, probably in excess of 30x, ie., 30 hours of music per hour of CPU. And the Seagate 750 GB SATA hard drives are capable of at least 60 MB/s.

Instead, with iTunes, the bottleneck becomes the speed at which you can insert and remove into the drive. And the fact that you have to do so every 3 minutes again. And edit the track name each time before import, while nothing else is going.

So, Apple developers, learn to make the best use of threads already. We have had multiple core CPUs on desktops for a very long time. The UI change is simple - just allow the "Import CD" button to be clicked for each drive, rather than just for one at a time.

I would also suggest you do the same for "Burn disc", since I also backup all my CDs to CD-Rs after I import them, only with CD-Text information added.

The many unfullfilled promises of online music downloads

Once upon a time, there were CDs. Then, there was the Internet. Later came broadband access.

It seemed logical that the Internet would become the medium of choice for purchasing music. Downloads promised to be much less expensive than pressing CDs, producing cases, and physically shipping them. The Internet should lead to cutting intermediaries that stand between artists and their listeners and reducing unnecessary costs. One could instantly get access to the music of their choice, in a much more ecologic way, without taking a trip to a music store.

But rather than embrace the new medium, the record companies felt threatened. They lived desperately in the past. They stuck with consumer-unfriendly DRM schemes for far too long. Now, a select few Internet companies own the commercial online distribution channel, such as Apple with iTunes and Amazon.

These companies have redefined the medium for music. In many ways it's good. In others, not so much. Technically, the new medium is no longer what was originally recorded. Digital music downloads are typically done in MP3 format or similar, compressed with lossy algorithms. Most certainly, this reduces download times, but it also comes at a price - what you hear is no longer the original. This may not matter for those who listen to music on a cheap pair of speakers on their computer, or their portable music player. But for those listening on high-fidelity systems, particularly for classical music, it matters. And the fact is that to my knowledge today, nobody offers commercial digital downloads of lossless music. That is despite the fact that many connections are fast enough already for lossless music. Typically Apple lossless will compress about 2:1 - vs 6:1 for a 256 kbps MP3. We are only talking about a factor of 3. This is one of the reasons that I haven't purchased any online music, and that I still exclusively buy CDs. I have purchased hundreds of CDs, about 800, and would very gladly download instead, but a prerequisite is that the music has to be in lossless format.

My latest music purchase was a box set of 34 CDs of Scott Ross playing all of Scarlatti's sonatas for harpsichord . This set was not available for download anywhere, lossy or lossless. I ended up purchasing it for $145 shipped from Berkshire Record Outlet - about $100 less than the Amazon price. It took a full two weeks to be delivered to my door. It came with a nice 200 page booklet, and a box. I would have gladly have sacrificed it for an e-book. It took about 3 hours to feed all the music into iTunes, and the 35.5 hours of music compressed to 13.72 GB with the Apple lossless encoder. My "6 Mbits" DSL connection has a sustained download speed of about 625 KB/S, so this could have been a 6.5 hours download. I would have liked that a whole lot better than a 2 week wait. And I bet Amazon or Apple could provide this download for less than $145, and have a lot of money left over to pay the record company, and still make a profit.

So, why aren't we here already today in 2009 ?

Please, Apple and Amazon, give your customers an option to get lossless music. Even if this option costs more than 256 kbps MP3 downloads !