OK, I might as well throw in my nickel’s worth of opinion concering Audio Impressions’ DVZtechnology. After viewing the video demo on their home page, I pretty much have to say, “Wow!”

For weeks, I ‘ve been telling myself that I am going to write a CAL routine to take a string track in SONAR, and split it into multiple tracks, based on note durations. The resulting tracks, of course would be assigned to samples of various string articulations (staccato, spiccato, marcato, legato, etc) - all in an attempt to speed the process of approximating more realistic string parts. Even doing this manually, the transitions tend to sound, well, just like what they are: quick switching between samples. Granted, it can be smoothed with judicious use of reverb, but it would be way so cool to be able to just play a line and have it sound realistic from the get-go - without having to do so much manipulation afterward.

Obviously, I’ve not been alone in this desire, as Chris Stone (who’s been scoring about as long as I’ve been alive) and the team at Audio Impressions seem to have made the dream come true. Now the question is, do I have to sell a few limbs and and a kidney to afford it?

Having finally upgraded to SONAR 6.0 (ProTools is just a status symbol) last month, I was really pleased to learn of this anouncement made at Winter NAMM:

Cakewalk® Releases Free SONAR 6.2 Update

Looks like some some really cool improvements for a “point” release. What really caught my eye was

New ACT Presets: SONAR 6.2 adds dedicated ACT support for popular hardware controllers including Alesis Photon 25, E-MU Xboard25, Edirol PCR 300/500/800 Series (further enhanced, see below), Korg KONTROL49, M-Audio Axiom 49, Phat.Boy

I’m very curious to see what the Axiom 49 presets will do for my Axiom 61 (same controller with one more octave of keys) setup. The price is definitely right.

Okay, a bit late on this, but I thought I should post a review of the score of the recent big screen rendition of Charlotte’s Web. As a media publicist and reviewer, my wife often gets invited to pre-release screenings, and, some weeks ago, I tagged along for this one, also.

Listening to Danny Elfman’s score to Charlotte’s Web, you’d never guess that this was the same guy of Oingo Boingo fame, years ago. Indeed, Elfman has made quite a scoring career for himself with music credits for superhero movies Batman, Spiderman, and the hulk, as well a long list of other movie and TV dramas and comedies.

While Charlotte’s Web (the 2006 film) itself received mixed reviews and lackluster box office success, I thought that the score was worked quite well. For me, the apex of film and music in this production was during Charlotte’s long good-bye at the fair (if that was a spoiler for you, then I greive for your literature-free childhood).