Beatles X-Box 360 Spielberg E3!

I went to the Microsoft E3 launch today, they have some pretty mind blowing stuff coming out.

Left for Dead 2 got a huge cheer, it looks great, they are putting Twitter and Facebook on there as well as Sky TV in the UK. They recon you will be able to watch the same movie as your friend is watching on his/her X-Box at the same time?

Modern Warfare 2 looked good, there are 2 new Halos coming out, and they also announced Metal Gear Solid is coming next year!

They showed the new Project Natal “controller” they are going to blow away the Wii with, it is basically no controller, it sits on top of the TV and responds to body movements and voice commands!

They had several live demos, including one interactive game where the in-game character recognized the girl playing the game, talked to her and interacted with her, then she drew a fish on a piece of paper, showed it to the controller and it then appeared in the game and the character held it and explained what he saw.

Natal also allowed the girl to be in the game, it used her image that was seen by the controller and she made hand movements which became ripples in the water over her image, mind blowing stuff.

Ringo and Paul McCartney were there for the new Beatles edition Rockband, Steven Spielberg was there, as well as many game stars like Tony Hawk.

It really was fun, tomorrow I get to check out all the other games and consoles, nice work if you can get it!

Go to: X-Box.com to get the full story!

Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam

I had the great honor of taking my wife to see a private Yusuf Islam show at the El Rey Theatre in LA last night.

My friend and once relative Alun Davies who is back playing guitar with him again (he was the guitarist on all the hits, and has been Yusuf’s friend for 40 years!) invited us, it was a great show.

They played some new stuff, but also a lot of the old favorites including Wild World and my personal favorite, Father and Son.

Those of you who missed it but want to check out the band (I believe they only have one more private show in NY before going to Germany), they are making a guest appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Wednesday May 13th, so check it out.

The new material from the ‘Roadsinger’ album sounded great and sat well with the classics, and although his appearance is slightly different, if you closed your eyes there was no mistaking that fantastic voice, and Yusuf seemed to have a blast, let’s hope they tour here for real at some point!

NAMM 2009 Report

I was fortunate enough to go to the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants), winter trade show in Anaheim, California this week and see all the fantastic new products from all the big hitters of the music world.

There was so much great stuff I did not get to see half of it, there were many special guests appearing and performing including Alicia Keys, Brian Wilson (who sung California Girls), Flea from the Chilli Peppers (who jammed for the fans), Kerry King from Slayer, Gene Simmons from Kiss, Dave Mustane from Megadeth, Joe Satriani and even Elmo and Cookie Monster (really!), amongst many others.

The good thing is I got a close up hands on look at the new Steinberg Cubase 5 which I reported about on my blog. The PitchCorrect and VariAudio looked very impressive, Steinberg will steal a lot of business from the other companies who produce this type of software by cleverly including it as standard in the Cubase 5 program, and not as a several hundred Dollar add-on or plugin.

I was also impressed by the REVerence VST3-based convolution reverb processor, it has 70 impulses built in, and also the ability to import multi-channel custom user impulses so you can emulate any acoustic environment, I played with it and it really does work well.

There was so much to see and so many great demos, I was sad when I had to leave. Thanks to Michael Logue and the fantastic Koblo music software for the pass.

I have uploaded a few pictures I took on Saturday if you want to take a look.

Steinberg Cubase 5 Release Announced

Steinberg have announced the release of Cubase and Cubase Studio version 5, available mid-February 2009.

They have added some welcome new features to the already powerful workhorse, I was especially excited to hear about VariAudio and PitchCorrect. VariAudio is an integrated vocal editing and pitch alteration tool and PitchCorrect does automatic intonation control and scale correction of vocal and monophonic instrument recordings on-the-fly, these are similar to Antares Autotune and Celemony Melodyne, how great they are remains to be seen, but it is still exciting none the less.

Groove Agent ONE slices loops but also has its own custom library of acoustic, urban, hip hop and dance drum kits. Beat Designer is a new beat construction plug-in that allows you to get hands-on with beats for step programming for beat creation, while LoopMash is a virtual instrument that offers a way of creatively working with loops and beats to create new rhythms and grooves.

VST Expression tools for composers combine with the first VST3 convolution reverb and improved automation for more dynamic mixes and is an intuitive new way of working with multiple instrument articulations, such as huge orchestra libraries, with customizable editing integrated within the Key and Score Editors.

Pricing of the updates are:
Cubase 5 Update from Cubase 4 / Cubase SX 3 MSRP $199.
Cubase 5 Upgrade from Cubase Studio 5, Cubase Studio 4, Cubase SL 3 MSRP $249.
Cubase 5 Full Version MSRP $599.

Cubase Studio 5 Update from Cubase Studio 4, Cubase SL 3 MSRP $99.
Cubase Studio 5 Full Version MSRP $399.

To check out the full list of features go to: Steinberg Cubase 5 Features.

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