Tech Tools Revisited:
Complete Ear Trainer
Complete Ear Trainer is an ear-training app for musicians meant to improve their aural skills and
music theory knowledge. Designed like a video game and with pedagogical concepts in mind,
the app has users master each interval, chord, scale, etc. before taking them to the next one.
There are more than 150 progressive drills arranged over four levels and 28 chapters. There are 11
drill types, 24 intervals, 36 chord types, chord inversions, 28 scale types, melodic dictations, chord
progressions, and more. In each chapter, a theory card introduces the concepts needed.
www.completeeartrainer.com.
How’s Your Coverage?
And Another Thing…
Logic Pro got an update as well. You can see Apple showing it off in
the picture of the Mac Pro we included in this article. I can only be-
gin to imagine what you could do with Logic and a fully-loaded Mac
Pro, or imagine what you will need to be doing with it every day for
years to come to pay for it all! Apple claims the new version will be
able to run up to five times as many real-time plug-ins than the last
Mac Pro. Add the ability for Logic to now handle up to 56 processing
threads and they are boasting the DAW can now handle 1,000 audio
tracks, 1,000 virtual instruments, 1,000 external MIDI tracks, 1,000
auxiliary channel strips, plus 12 sends per channel strip.
It appears the sky is the limit for this DAW! Running Logic on the
new Mac Pro should have it running pretty fast.
What tech talk article would be complete without me lecturing you
on your backup practices? None! After all, I took an oath to remind
you to be backing up regularly...
Remember there are no good excuses you can give for not
backing up, and I don’t get paid by the tears that you’ll be crying
when you lose your data. It happens to everyone eventually and only
you can prevent data loss! Large-capacity external hard drives are
very affordable these days and it takes very little time and effort to
be safe. Whether it’s Time Machine on MacOS or the hourly backup
program built into Windows 10, both are handy and easy tools you
should be using. You could also do file transfers manually if you pre-
fer, or there are many free solutions for automated backup that work
well.
If you need more storage capacity, invest in a small NAS (net-
work attached storage) device with a couple of 4TB drives in a RAID 1
(mirrored) configuration. Even better, do both!
Remember boys and girls: you can never have enough backup.
Eric Price is an I.T. consultant by day, entertainer by night. He apologizes
to any Apple fanboys who may be reading this article, but $12,000 USD
for a base-model Mac Pro? Really Apple? He can be flamed at
[email protected].
Tech Tools Revisited:
Sessionwire
Vancouver-based Sessionwire has created a live social platform to
change the way musicians and service providers around the globe pro-
duce music and get paid for their work. A monthly Sessionwire Studio
subscription uses the company’s proprietary macOS application to link
people and their software together. Sessionwire’s live communication
technology lets musicians create a global, online network for music
production. It’s compatible with all the major DAWs, including Cubase,
Ableton, Pro Tools, and Logic. Currently, Sessionwire Studio is only
available for iOS, but a Windows version is coming.
www.sessionwire.com.
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