Sony S312 with TrackID Music Recognition

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Another unique feature is its phonebook entry where the user can easily store 1000entries at a time. There is no need to delete data to log-in other data. Users can make photo-call to the desired person. It has been introduced quite recently in June in different colors, matching to users nature.

Sony handsets are smarter with many unique features, in its price range. This handset is with TrackID music recognition facility, where the system can easily recognize the track to provide its details.

Another unique feature is its phonebook entry where the user can easily store 1000entries at a time. There is no need to delete data to log-in other data. Users can make photo-call to the desired person.

Third unique feature is its scratch-resistant surface. It is very difficult to keep the phone absolutely scratch-free. Therefore, it is better to go for this handset to talk through a scratch-free screen.

Sony S312 has 2G networking with GSM 900/1800MHz. Users have the facility to use this mobile at few destinations only. It has been introduced quite recently in June in different colors, matching to users nature.

As per the dimensions, Sony S312 is 100x46x12.5mm and 80.1g by weight. Sony handset is versatile in functioning. The display is in TFT 256 colors with a size of 176x220pixels. Its screen is in 2.0″ with a facility to set wall-papers and screen-savers.

Who wants to put-up the mobile to his/her ears, all the time? Speaker phone facility is ultra-useful in case user has to use the mobile frequently for long period of time. Speaker phone makes the mobile less harmful and enhances usability.

Vibration facility is also present in this handset. Downloadable polyphonic ringtones in MP3, AAC ringtones along with composer facility is available in this handset. Consumers can use any ringtone of their choice and compose their own music as well.

Call record facility is for 30 missed, dialed, and received calls. Users can check their list daily to scrutinize and analyze all calls for a day. In case the users miss-out a call due to some important work, then log on to call-record facility and trace all important calls immediately.

2MP camera facility lets user click quality pictures through 1600x1200pixels and LED Flash. Videos can also be made through Sony S312.

Send sms, mms, and emails through Browser WAP2.0/xHTML. FM Radio is indispensable now days. So connect your mobiles through FM with RDS and start entertaining. Play games on your handset and relax with them whenever you are tense.

Salsa Music – Cuba’s Musical Legacy

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Salsa music is sometimes referred to as Latin jazz, Afro-Cuban or Afro-Carribean music. Played in dance clubs or performed in concerts, this is the sound of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela and New York. This is Cuba’s musical legacy that rose from its street culture, which shaped the country’s popular music throughout the past several decades.

Literally meaning “sauce” in the Spanish language, salsa is the type of music requiring the perfect amount of essential ingredients. To its enthusiasts, the spicier, the better.

The music starts with a clave rhythm, which commonly is eight beats long and has a 2-3 or 3-2 pattern. This serves as the heartbeat of this genre. The clave should be learned, applied and felt in order to play or dance this colorful and spicy music. Other ingredients in the salsa music recipe are montuno, tumbao and guaganco, among others. These are ostinattos, or patterns, played by the piano, bass, strings and horns all throughout or in certain parts of the song.

This Cuban original music has landed in different parts of the world years ago. Later on, its powerful tunes influenced its various destinations and vice-versa. This Latin music has evolved as it toured several countries. While it is one of the most famous genres today, it is, at the same time, one of the most specialized, since a certain level of musicality and skills is needed for it to be played, sung or danced. Once it is learned and owned, endless jamming and dancing fill the place with the distinctive energy that characterizes Latin culture.

Dance clubs around the world use salsa music frequently. The ballroom dancing boom worldwide only added to the demand for this Latin beat. Salsa clubs and Latin dance federations have grown in number internationally. Schools and universities in all continents of the world started to have dance and music organizations dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of the genre to the extent of flying in bands and instrumentalists from Cuba and Puerto Rico.

The heat of salsa became unstoppable like wildfire and influenced other genres, even classic jazz. Jazz performers and composers started to utilize Latin music in their pieces, either in a certain part of a song or for a featured solo section. The great Dizzy Gillespie, for example, did this in “A Night in Tunisia,” an ingenious mix of Latin and jazz standard.

Other genres influenced by its contagious rhythm are disco, funk, pop and even one of its roots, African music.

Salsa bands use a smorgasbord of percussion instruments including the clave, guiro, maracas, bongos, timbales, conga drums and many others. Their rhythm section is usually a party of bass, piano, guitar, strings or horns, a chorus and a lead vocalist. In some groups, they use a special type of guitar, either a tres or a quarto, a guitar that has three or four strings only.

The next time you listen to these bands, listen very well and you will hear them infuse other music styles into their salsa tunes. Other genres you may hear within a salsa piece are cha-cha-cha, bolero, guaganco, Cuban son montuno, Puerto Rican bomba and plena, and Dominican merengue.

If you are a fan of salsa or Latin music, you would love favorites like “Che Che Cole” (Willie Colon and Hector Lavoe), “Hechicera” (Oscar D’ Leon), “Congo bongo” (Larry Harlow) and “El rey del mambo” (Tito Puente), among others. If you would like to try listening to this genre for the first time, some recommended tunes for you would be “No Sabes Como Duele” (Marc Anthony), “Campina” (Afro Cuban All Stars), “Juliana” (Coco Valoy) and “Melao de Cana” (Oscar D’Leon).

How To Improve Your Sight-reading (organ, Piano And Keyboard)

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As an organist, I have been working in club land in the North of England for the past 30 years or so and one of the crucial qualifications in this environment is the ability to sight read music on demand.
When I say music this can be anything from a beer matt to a ripped piece of paper repaired with selotape and stained with beer.

To be fair most of the music is written by professionals and is nice to read but not always easy.
As a club organist, you do not get a band call. In fact, you are lucky to get five minutes to scan through between 10 and 15 pieces of music. Some written in different keys, and every organist will tell you they hate it when they get the dreaded 6 sharps or 6 flats or even 7 sharp keys in a piece of music that just happens to contain a solo especially written for you.

So how do you improve your sight-reading? Well I asked my music teacher this very question as I embarked on my club land career. His answer was to practice sight-reading. He went on to tell me that session musicians practice by picking up any music book start playing on page one and continue until they have finished the book.

Does it work? Yes it does. Try it for yourself, pick up any piece of music you can find, preferably one that you are not that familiar with, then start to play, but do not stop. If you make a mistake it does not matter, you are not practising how to play this piece of music you are practising sight-reading this piece of music.

If you really want to test yourself. Get yourself an audience. I practice my sight-reading every week in front of a 200 plus audience. Its surprising how your concentration improves.

How Much Does A Music Producer Make

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Learning how to make money as a music producer is difficult at first, it is possible though. Producers can typically start off recording artists for free, and working with different bands and artists.When you get really good at your craft, people, artists, and businesses will hire you to producer their albums. On the low side a working producer can make around $15 grand a year, for the top music producers they can make upwards of $10,000,000.00 a year.

Two main variable determine your salary, your location and your quality of work.Nashville, Los Angeles and New York offer the most work, money, and available work to music producers than any other city. This is because the music businesses that will hire you are located in these cities. These cities are known cities that high end music producers work in or live in, music producers make more money in these cities.

Here are what some of the top producers make a year:

– P. Diddy over $27 million
– Timbaland rakes in a healthy $21 million each year
– Dr. Dre approximately $20 million
– Pharrell Williams of (N.E.R.D) rakes in 17 million

Experience and quality of work matters! The better service you can offer, the more artists and labels will want you working on those albums. Word of mouth is the name of the game in being a successful music producer.As your skills develop, you will get more work and make a name for yourself. At some point you will begin to start working on major albums.

One benefit of being a music producer is that you get to make your own schedule. Producers are typically paid on a project by project basis.They are typically hired by a record label to aide an artist in producing a album that will produc high sales. The album is the component that the music producer typically works on and focuses on the arrangement, sound, recording, and album quality.

With a little time, hard work, networking, and patience you can become a successful music producer yourself. You have to pay your dues as a music producer, all millionaires in any field have to start somewhere.

Origins Of Music Boxes

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Origins of Music boxes

The year of 1796 is marked as origin of music boxes in history, as Antoine Favre from Geneva incorporated his first musical gadget. He was a watchmaker and developed many mechanical machines for nearly two centuries. For his contributions in mechanical devices, he is known as the Father of mechanical dreams. Antoine used watches, pendants, and perfume bottles to make the musical gadget. This gadget was known as a music comb. It was made from tampered and hardened steel. The comb had springy teeth of different lengths. Each of the springy teeth is plucked to produce a musical note. The length of the particular tooth is determines which musical note is produced. The comb can produce a different note from each tooth.
History reveals that the musical clocks and musical boxes were constructed for the entertainment and amusement of the wealthy and also for royalty during the 16th century. At that time, music was played by striking a pin on a revolving cylinder or disc.
Snuff boxes were originally produced by artisan watchmakers. Switzerland was the center for the bulk production of musical boxes during the 19th century. Samuel Junod and Jeremie Recordon were two entrepreneurs that started the first music box factory in Switzerland. There were also a few factories in Germany and Bohemia at that time. Some manufacturers in Europe also opened factories in United States by the end of the 19th century.
The first music boxes were of varying sizes that ranged from a tiny container which could fit in a pocket, to the size of a hat box, to the size of large pieces of furniture. Most were used as tabletop art pieces. The operative part of these instruments was cylinder that was fabricated from metal and powered by a spring. These cylindrical music boxes were used to provide live music only. They produced a melody of a bell choir or of harpists. However, there was a limitation since they had their own in built-in musical notes.
Manufacturers of cylindrical music boxes tried to remove this limitation by incorporating a method to shift the cylinder to change the melody in a box. The box incorporated several sets of pins, each representing one song. As one set of pins rang the musical notes of the comb, other sets of pins passed silently. When that particular song ends, the cylinder would pass by and other sets of pins would line up with the comb teeth, so, that one musical box could play different tunes. It is reported that some of them could play as many as 12 different tunes in that era of piano music.
In 1862, further improvements were made which permitted the cylinder to be removed to change the melody of a particular box. There were interchangeable cylinders and each cylinder had different tune. Any cylinder could be removed and replaced by a cylinder to provide a different tune.
Cylindrical music boxes were rapidly replaced by the Polyphone and other instruments made with interchangeable metal disks. By the end of the 19th century, instruments with metal disks were mass produced and people switched over to these from music boxes with cylinders. With the invention of disc players, the middle class was able to enjoy the enchanting melodies and popular music of that time in their own homes. Music boxes were great success not only in Europe, but also in America.
Symphonion, in Leipzig, Germany manufactured the first mass produced disc music boxs. The company made music boxes affordable and inexpensive, and it was easy to add more musical selections. Symphonion used a technique that punched holes onto a steel disk that plucked the comb teeth. Some of these were able to play 24 or 27-inch diameter disks. Another could play various song discs. More music was added so that bells would play with the music. The bells could be turned on or off with a switch. These improvements were added in a box named Musical Bell Symphonium.
Many manufacturers of disc music boxes also built masterpieces with mechanisms that were incorporated into hall clocks. Some even had dancing dolls built-in. The boxes were also used in birdcages, jewelry boxes, snowballs and many other art pieces.
In 1877, the phonograph was invented by Thomas Alva Edison. This instrument had major impact on the music industry of the time.
It wasnt long before there were new instruments introduced to the market like Polyphone, Kalliope, Sireon, Fortuna, Empress and Alder to name a few. All of these were produced in Switzerland and Germany. Polyphone took over the music market in America in 1892. Gustave Bachhausen from Germany, who was co-manufacturer of Polyphone disk boxes, established Regina Musical Box Company in New Jersey in 1892. Regina boxes were a huge success and achieved a milestone of 100,000 boxes sold before it disappeared from the market in 1921.
Disk music boxes were highly popular in the 20th century. These instruments were able to produce and arrange new music. Owners of these music boxes could purchase new discs to play in their machines.
In the 19th century, the player piano, phonograph, orchestrion and nickelodeon were invented and quickly became the primary instruments for home entertainment in and the contemporary coin-operated music industry. Coin-operated music boxes were placed in places like parks and train stations in Switzerland. These boxes were able to produce different musical tunes.
The Gramophone eventually replaced music boxes entirely. These record players were easy to use and affordable and permitted a choice of songs. They also offered the option of vocal or orchestral play back.
The Phonograph was invented during the First World War. The Great Depression of1929 crashed the music box industry and removed it from prominence in the market. Most of the manufacturers switched their focus and started producing products such as typewriters, watches and movie cameras that were in much-higher demand.
Today, Reuge of St.Croix, Switzerland is one of the few manufacturers that still produces music boxes of all shapes and sizes. Sanyo of Japan is the leading music box manufacturer with its own designs that compete successfully with the quality and sound of Swiss products.