Why not try something different this summer, have fun, raise some cash for charity and increase the profile of you band or music group.
In support of the Rambling Brass Coast to Coast March, Normans ‘Extreme Bandstand’ Challenge has been designed to give you an excuse for some summer fun and raise money for a worthwhile cause.
The competition challenges musicians to play in the most unusual locations across the UK and raise some cash for the NSPCC. All you need to do is decide on the location, arrange a time to play during August or September, and take a photograph of your group in action.
A £50.00 Normans voucher will be given to the band judged to have performed in the most unusual location and another £50.00 voucher for the group that raises the most money for the NSPCC. (Enter Here)
The Walk
In 2008 a group of Brass players under the name of Rambling Brass carried their instruments up Mount Snowdon and performed a concert at the top raising over £1000 for the NSPCC. Well this summer they are off again and this time it’s even more extreme.
On August 21st this year 9 members of the group will set off from St Bees on the west coast of England and walk 192 miles finishing 2 weeks later on the east coast at Robin Hoods Bay. Throughout the walk each member will carry their instrument in search of “natural bandstands” where they will stop and play to an unsuspecting audience and a few sheep. There will also be some scheduled performances in towns and villages en route and the band members hope to make contact with a few local bands along the way.
The Competition
In support of the efforts of Rambling Brass, Normans Musical Instruments have launched a competition which gives music groups across the country the opportunity to play in an unusual location in their locality to raise extra funds for the NSPCC.
Click Here to download the entry form and you could win £50 in Normans Vouchers. There is a prize for the group that raises the most money for the NSPCC and a prize for most unusual bandstand. Perhaps in the bread aisle at your local supermarket or with your toes in the sand at the beach. Remember originality is the key here so get thinking!!
For more information or to request an entry form by e-mail, please contact heidi.bradley@yahoo.com
So why not do something different this summer, have fun, raise some cash for charity and increase the profile of you music group.
Instruments such as digital pianos are becoming increasingly popular among young people, experts have revealed.
According to researchers at the Institute of Education, part of the University of London, technological advances are having a profound influence on the type of instruments children are learning to play.
Professor Sue Hallam and Dr Andrea Creech stated that fewer youngsters are learning instruments such as clarinets, flutes and violins, partly because they have had limited exposure to classical music.
As a result, many are choosing to concentrate on powered instruments they see in genres such as pop, rock and hip hop, including electronic keyboards.
Professor Hallam and Dr Creech said the number of requests among youngsters to learn instruments along these lines has “increased dramatically” in recent years.
This comes after scientists at Northwestern University in the US discovered learning a musical instrument can positively influence the brain’s ability to interpret and respond to various sounds.
The upgraded Dr. Octo Rex loop player loads eight REX loops into one player and lets you switch between them on the fly. This makes arranging a breeze – load the drum loops into one player, the guitars into another and use the sequencer to select what loop to play in a pattern-like fashion.
With eight loops to switch between, the new loop player also comes ready for the experimental minded. Set the player to retrig the loops on the beat, on the bar or on the 16th note. Or program the loops manually like in the original rex player.
For each of the eight loops, the new rex player also comes with an expanded set of per-slice settings. Set pan, pitch, filter frequency and level, reverse slices, use multiple outputs, create alternating groups of slices and much more.
Blocks
Many musicians tend to think of music in terms like intro, verse, chorus, breakdown, buildup and so on. With the new Blocks mode in Reason 5 and Record 1.5, your sequencer does too.
Blocks lets you sequence your songs using a more pattern-based approach, with the segments of your song as individual building blocks to be laid out in your arrangement.
Start by creating the discrete parts of your song in blocks mode. When you are ready to start building your song, just switch back to song mode and draw in what blocks should play in the dedicated pattern lane. Use one block for the verse and one for the chorus — or build your song around a single 8-bar loop.
Blocks provide a very fast way of creating a musical structure for your song. But the options don’t end there. With the basic arrangement laid out, you can see the contents of the blocks and create variations and mute individual parts, or add further musical elements in song mode.
A typical use for Blocks is to create your backing track in blocks and then use the song mode sequencer to record vocals or instrumental performances. For music based around a single looped section, one repeated block with automation and mutes of individual tracks added in song mode makes arranging a breeze.
You never have to commit to using either mode – you are free to move back and forth between Blocks and Song mode, and any changes you make in your Blocks will instantly be manifested in all instances of that Block. Need some tambourine on that chorus? Add it, and there will be tambourine whenever the chorus block is playing.
Neptune Pitch Adjuster
Getting a vocal performance right means so much more than hitting the right notes at the right time. Sometimes you get that almost perfect performance with perfect feel and presence, but the singer might have missed a few notes. That’s when Neptune can save the day. Neptune is an advanced pitch adjuster, audio transposer and voice synth for Record 1.5.
As a pitch adjuster, Neptune will fine tune the pitch of an audio track to help getting your vocal performances just right. Neptune will fix the flat notes with an unbelievable audio quality . You can select a root key and a scale that you want the adjuster to use, or create a scale that fits your song. And, yes. By cranking the pitch adjustment settings to the max, you can get that effect sound too.
Neptune is also a natural sounding audio transposer. This is a great help if you ever needed to change the key of a song that’s already been recorded.
Perhaps the most creative-sparking function in Neptune is the voice synth. Play your MIDI keyboard and Neptune will create new harmonies from your vocal tracks in real time, or use it without the original voice to completely change the melody of the song. Endless creative options!
Live Sampling
Remember the time when samples were something you sampled and not loaded from your hard drive? When a sampler was a machine that could record samples, not just play them back.
As samplers became software instead of machines, they came to rely on external sample editing software for recording and editing the samples and the art of spur-of-the-moment creative sampling was pretty much lost. Now we are bringing it back to Reason 5 with its live sampling input.
All sample players in Reason are now samplers. Just hook up a sound source to the rack’s sampling input and you are ready to start sampling. Use a mic, a turntable, an instrument or the entire Reason mix.
Kong Drum Designer
Analog synthesis, physical modeling, sampling, REX loops, support sound generators, effects, flexible routing, multiple hit types and more. The Kong Drum Designer is not your regular drum module. It’s the drum module focused on letting you get exactly that drum sound you’re after.
Kong has 16 pads and 16 drums. Build your drum sounds based on any of the nine different drum modules. Flavor the sound with 11 support generators and effects. Program automation, create alternating groups and let Reason’s powerful sequencer control the beat.
Reason 5 ships with a sound bank with a generous supply of kits for Kong across a wide variety of styles.
We have some really cool guys out there showing their love for the Novation Launchpad. Please check out the below link and see how easy it is to use a Launchpad with Live to compose Music.
We currently have some Launchpads in stock at £85 EX VAT!!
This deal is not available online so please call Chris Nicol in our sales department for more details!
Novation’s Automap has been updated. Version 3.5 of the software — which enables Novation’s keyboards and controllers to take instant control of DAWs and plug-ins — has a number of new features that make it even more powerful.NEW FEATURES• Support for VST3 software (including Cubase & Nuendo plug-ins)
Automap v3.5 can instantly assign compatible Novation controllers (SL MkIIs and the Nocturn range) to VST3 plug-ins. These include the built-in instruments and effects in Cubase and Nuendo.
• Nocturn device support for Ableton Live
Novation Nocturn and Nocturn Keyboards can now instantly control Ableton Live’s instrument and effects devices, with no assignment necessary. (Ableton Live v8.1.3 or later is required.)
Note: the Novation SL MkII range already has very tight integration with Ableton Live.
• 64-bit Logic support
Automap now includes 64-bit support for Logic.
The new update also includes various bug fixes that improves Automap’s stability. It is compatible with Macs running Leopard (v10.5.8) and Snow Leopard (v10.6.3), and Windows PCs running XP (SP3 32-bit), Vista (32-bit) and Windows 7 (32-bit & 64-bit).
The update to Automap v3.5 is free to download from the support pages of the Novation website:
Lets be honest with ourselves, we looked shaky from the start and were way too pessimistic. Let’s put that behind us and look forward to the good things to come.
Somehow we are already in July. Every year we seem to be stunned at how fast the year has passed but this year I am truly surprised. It has been quite an eventful one for us this time round. Normans have decided to take on the ever expanding Music Technology world with great success. We are now able to satisfy our existing, traditional customers who went elsewhere for the “hi-tech” side of things as well as opening the door to a whole new breed of client!
It has been difficult, yet very satisfying training all the staff up on the new products but we are getting there. At the moment we get a lot of people saying to us “oh, I didn’t realise Normans were doing music tech now”. I hope that when I am blogging this time next year, people would have made the association and Normans will be recognised for music tech.
You can keep up today with the latest Normans News by following us on Twitter! www.twitter.com/normansmusic This is updated with the latest goings on everyday
