HOLLYWOOD - EASTWEST‘s unprecedented 20th Anniversary Promotion will be coming to a close on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008. Users visiting the EASTWEST website, www.soundsonline.com , still have time to purchase select virtual instruments at greatly reduced prices. more…

El Segundo, CA… While Mogami cables have long been a staple of the recording side of professional audio, they have now become a popular choice for touring professionals as well. Whereas touring pros have long viewed cable as a disposable commodity, the recent surge in wireless technology has actually fueled the need for high quality cable on stage, and Mogami‘s superior transmission and shielding qualities are proving immensely popular. more…

Culver City, CA - April 2008… If ever there was a studio that re-defines the term “versatility”, Groove Addicts is it. Featuring multiple divisions, this hotbed of music activity handles a wide range of projects spanning everything from sound for TV and film to radio branding, game audio, movie trailers, and record projects –all of it high-end, high-profile work! At the heart of this whirlwind of mixing and recording is Gerhard Joost (pronounced Yöst), Groove Addicts‘ Chief Engineer/Mixer/Producer in residence. Mixing audio for such a broad range of projects requires a thorough understanding of a given project‘s genre, coupled with great ears and the ability to work fast and accurately. To ensure everything he mixes translates well to a wide range of playback mediums, Joost relies heavily on his studio monitors and, for this, he depends on Equator Audio Research. more…

Nashville, TN, April 21, 2008–When it comes to providing its customers with effective storage solutions, Nashville‘s premier rental company, Rack-N-Roll, always chooses Avastor. more…

EASTWEST (www.soundsonline.com), the industry leader in soundware development and distribution, is putting its users‘ creativity to the test while offering a chance to win all seven PLAY products with its “Score This Movie” contest.

From now until June 30, 2008 users can create their own score for an original short movie created by Zennor Alexander and posted on the EASTWEST forum at (http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=12974). The concept of the piece is:

“This is a story about the circularity of life - Out of the void comes a seed which sprouts into a plant. The leaves of the plant mature which ends the growth phase. As the leaves fly off in all directions, we follow one on its journey into the unknown. The leaf meets another and the two fly around in a mating dance, eventually merging. The merged leaves become mature wings, and fly off through this new world to find the original void from which they came. The wings finally dissolve and compact to become a new seed, completing the cycle.”

The score should have a wide variety of pace, mood and style and must be composed solely with sounds from libraries distributed by EASTWEST, with an emphasis on EASTWEST PLAY-powered virtual instruments.

Entrants are free to show their creativity and originality in the selection of instruments and the juxtaposition of their composition with the film‘s imagery. Once users have completed their piece, they need to post a link to it on the EASTWEST forum here (http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=12974) for it to be considered. Compositions entered in previous EASTWEST contests, posted on EASTWEST forums, or containing third party copyrighted material or software, are not eligible. From entries posted on the forum, Zennor Alexander and the EASTWEST staff will select a winner.

“EASTWEST is always striving to develop innovative projects to challenge our users,” says EASTWEST‘s Founder and Producer Doug Rogers. “Last year‘s contest was so successful that we decided to stay with a similar format this year to gauge the usage of our PLAY products. We also feel that this contest gives our users the opportunity to showcase their work using a visual medium, something they would be required to do for any film, game or television production, in return for the chance to be well rewarded for their efforts.”

The winner, who will be announced on July 15th, 2008, will receive all seven PLAY products which include:

• Fab Four - A virtual instrument inspired by the sounds of the Beatles, using the same kind of instruments and recording equipment the Beatles used to create their signature sound.

• Quantum Leap Pianos - The most detailed collection of the world’s finest grand pianos.

• Quantum Leap Gypsy - A collection of detailed Gypsy-style virtual instruments capable of playing completely realistic performances.

• Quantum Leap Ministry Of Rock - Rock is a huge collection of rock drums, basses and guitars recorded in the world-famous EASTWEST. A modern-day rock toolkit that covers a myriad of styles, Ministry of Rock provides a true all-in-one solution for rock productions and a sound quality superior to anything else available.

• Quantum Leap Voices of Passion - Passion is a virtual instrument of ethereal, passionate, flowing, mysterious, wailing and whispering alto and soprano voices of female vocalists from Wales, Syria, India, Bulgaria and America.

• Quantum Leap SD2 - The Next Generation - The sequel to Stormdrum, SD2 is a stunning collection of exceptional acoustic percussion instruments.

• Quantum Leap Goliath - Quantum Leap Goliath, the Sequel to Colossus, includes the entire 32 Gigabytes of content from COLOSSUS, plus an additional 8 Gigabytes of new content from the latest collections. Goliath covers all musical genres, providing users with a comprehensive collection of sounds that will fit into any type of project they are working on.

For additional rules and download instructions, please visit the contest forum on the EASTWEST website: http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=12974

Elixir® Strings, pioneer of long-life strings, is giving loyal acoustic fans a chance to plug in with electric strings. During its Electric Strings Trial promotion, players will receive one complimentary electric set with the purchase of two acoustic sets. No coupon or mail-in rebate is necessary for taking advantage of this promotion, as the three-set multi-packs are prepackaged and available in participating stores. more…

LAS VEGAS, NV–Solid State Logic, the world‘s leading manufacturer of analogue and digital audio consoles and provider of creative tools for music, broadcast and post production professionals, proudly announces the release of Matrix at NAB 2008, April 14-17, at the Las Vegas Convention Center (booth #N4031). Matrix offers a powerful combination of mixing console, signal router and workstation controller ideal for post production studios and television and radio broadcast facilities with rooms based entirely around a DAW. more…

LAS VEGAS, NV–Solid State Logic, the world‘s leading manufacturer of analogue and digital audio consoles and provider of creative tools for music, broadcast and post production professionals, proudly announces the release of Matrix at NAB 2008, April 14-17, at the Las Vegas Convention Center (booth #N4031). Matrix offers a powerful combination of mixing console, signal router and workstation controller ideal for post production studios and television and radio broadcast facilities with rooms based entirely around a DAW. more…

Petersburg, VA - Alexander University‘s Professional Orchestration™ Writing For Strings™ Level 1 online course is open for registration with an April 21 start date. To keep classes small only six students are accepted. Registration ends Sunday April 20. This six week course is taught by composer/educator Stephen Hill.

Writing For Strings is a hands-on course taught by having students write original two-minute pieces and having them played by a musician. The piece is then checked for playability with input on how to improve their writing. The student‘s work is based on a piece of literature. If a student wants to do film, TV or game composing, the piece is approached like a scene from a movie. If the student wants to do concert scoring, the piece of literature becomes the “inspiration” for the new musical composition. In Writing For Strings, the student writes four two-minute compositions, one each for solo violin, viola, cello and bass.

Using sample libraries, students are also required to do what the industry calls “MIDI mock-ups.” This is an electronic recording of their piece using sample libraries. By doing this, students also build their recording skills.

To aid students with this new skill demanded by the film and recording sectors of the music business, Alexander University has teamed with the Vienna Symphonic Library to provide students 13 solo works with MIDI files for each major orchestral instrument that was created by composer Jay Bacal using the Vienna Instruments library.

By comparison, traditional college classes have students only do exercises that are rarely performed live, if at all. Few colleges teach “MIDI mock-up” skills.

Professional Orchestration Platinum Learning Package is the required class text. Included is the Professional Orchestration book, the Professional Mentor workbook, the Strings Position booklet, MP3s of a majority of the book‘s 200+ full page/full score examples, and the 13 MIDI mock-up compositions by composer Jay Bacal. Also included is The Concert Package created exclusively for Alexander University by eClassical.com. The Concert Package contains an average 20-minute concert for each solo instrument including harp and percussion. Professional Orchestration has been endorsed by winners of the Academy, Grammy and Emmy Awards including Bruce Broughton and the late Jerry Goldsmith.

For registration information, visit:

http://www.truespec.com/professional-orchestration-writing-strings-p-922.html

New music-making concept delivers sound in the palm of your hand

ANAHEIM, Calif.–Yamaha Corporation of America is set to reveal their award-winning new music-making technology, Tenori-on, for the first time in the United States with launch events for the public and press in NEW YORK on April 16 and SAN FRANCISCO on April 18, 2008.

Recently earning PC World Magazine‘s 25 Most Innovative Products Award at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Tenori-on literally means “sound in the palm of your hand” and is a twenty-first century digital musical instrument that is part art-piece, part must-have music gadget for the iPhone generation. The brainchild of Japanese Media Artist Toshio Iwai, Tenori-on emanates from his experiments with light shows and musical boxes, resulting in a hand-held, burnished magnesium-encased matrix of 256 LED buttons that glow as you access different sounds and textures (‘Layers‘) over an infinitely repeating sequence of notes.

Sound images are literally drawn with Tenori-on using a host of internal sounds as well as samples loaded from external sources. With an interface where sight and touch are every bit as integral as sound, the Tenori-on music making possibilities are as endless as they are addictive.

Iwai has teamed with Yamaha, the world‘s largest and longest-established musical instrument company, forming an unusual partnership of old and new, art and music, light and sound, to bring Tenori-on to market. This first generation Tenori-on product will be selectively marketed as an introduction to this cutting edge technology as more products are planned over time. This will be welcome news to the nearly one million curious consumers that have viewed Yamaha‘s demo of the product on YouTube.

“The beauty of Tenori-on is that it offers a fresh approach to music creation no matter what your musical background and experience are,” said Athan Billias of Yamaha. “It’s exciting that Yamaha , a company known mostly for making traditional musical instruments is investing in cutting-edge technologies that will expand the market for music making.”

Launch events for the media and the public will take place in New York (Southpaw in Brooklyn on April 16th) and San Francisco (1015 Folsom on April 18th). The events will not only feature Toshio Iwai himself, explaining this new musical paradigm, but also a host of edgy new electronic artists such as Sutekh, Safety Scissors, Pole, and I Am Robot And Proud, who have already incorporated Tenori-on into their stage shows. The events are free to enter and will feature Demo Stations for an interactive experience.

Public registration for a launch event is free at www.tenori-on-tour.com. Press area passes can be obtained through RSVP to Brian McConnon at mtech marketing communications: brian@mtechmarketing.com or 610-480-8360.