Products of Interest

Song Sheets to Software: A Guide to Print Music, Software, and Web Sites for Musicans by Elizabeth C. Axford

Scarecrow Press has released a reference book for modern musicians, music business people, and educators. Song Sheets to Software: A Guide to Print Music, Software, and Web Sites has been compiled and written by Elizabeth C. Axford, a musicologist based at San Diego State University (see Figure 1). The book is organized into five sections, each treating a different area of the topics listed in the title.

Chapter 1 presents "A Brief History of Printed Music," including discussions of Early American religious, folk, and popular music in print; Vaudeville; Tin Pan Alley; popular song sheets; a profile of Stephen Foster, and more; leading to a brief summary of the print music business today. Chapter 2 examines issues pertaining to royalties, copyright, formats, and related terms. The remaining three chapters provide relatively comprehensive lists of software for musicians, web sites for musicians, and Internet-related terms of interest to musicians.

Figure 1.

Song Sheets to Software: A Guide to Print Music, Software, and Web Sites for Musicians by Elizabeth C. Axford.

Song Sheets to Software (ISBN 0-8108-4072-3) is 287 pages, and sells for US$ 36.95. Contact: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA; telephone (+1) 800-462-6420 or (+1) 301-459-3366; fax (+1) 717-794 3803; World Wide Web www.scarecrowpress.com.

Virtos Noise Wizard Audio Restoration DirectX-Based Software

Virtos, the German audio software developer, has released Noise Wizard, a set of noise reduction and audio enhancement tools. The five processors run on Windows-platform computers (including MEand XP), hosted by any DirectX-based audio software allowing soundfile playback (Virtos has announced the release of its own DirectX Player).

The Denoiser plug-in works as many other noise reduction utilities do, by analyzing a "noise finger-print" of the audio from a portion of the file where there is no other content. The Virtos tool goes beyond this, however, by enabling the user to choose from three different analysis paradigms: automatic noise analysis, whereby the algorithm makes its own estimate of the noise distribution from the audio source; noise print, which analyzes a small sample of the soundfile for the noise profile; and user-defined noise profile, where the distribution can be graphically designed.

The Declicker plug-in contains four parameters which are adjusted to optimize the removal of clicks, pops, or crackles. The Filter Toolbox contains three adjustable filters, designed to have short transition bands and a linear phase response. The Stereo Processor corrects phase differences, allows for adjustment of the stereo field, and enhances stereo perception. The Band Extrapolation utility enables the user to brighten the audio or fill out the low end through harmonic and sub-harmonic synthesis.

The complete Noise Wizard set is available for US$ 119.00; individual plug-ins are also sold separately. Contact: Virtos GmbH, Kaiserstrasse 51, D-76131 Karlsruhe, Germany; telephone (+49) 721-384-21-24; fax (+49) 721-384-21-15; electronic mail info@virtos.de; World Wide Web www.virtos-audio.com/.

Starkland Immersion DVD-Audio

Starkland has released a DVD-Audio containing specially commissioned works designed specifically for surround-sound presentation (see Figure 2). The composers represented on the disc include: Paul Dolden, Paul Dresher, Ellen Fullman, Phil Kline, Lukas Ligeti, Ingram Marshall, Merzbow, Meredith Monk, Bruce Odland, Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne, and Pamela Z.

Immersion can be played on both DVD-Video and DVD-Audio machines. Composer-supervised stereo mixes are also included. There are numerous images added to the disc, and there is a 32-page booklet included as well. The audio was mastered by Bob Ludwig.

Figure 2.

Starkland Immersion Surround-Sound DVD-Audio.

The Immersion DVD is listed for US$ 19.90. Contact: Starkland, P.O. Box 2190, Department PC1, Boulder, Colorado 80306, USA; telephone (+1) 303-449-6510; fax (+1) 303-447 8762; electronic mail info@starkland.com; World Wide Web www.starkland.com/S-2010/.

Ableton Live Audio Sequencer Software

Ableton, a Berlin-based software...