Star Wars Apple Music Playlist with a Nine-Year-Old

So here I am in line for a movie that’s not going to start for another 6 hours and I’m giddy like a schoolboy. Tonight I’m going to see a new Star Wars movie. I get to hear a new John Williams score. I get watch the snap-hiss of a lightsaber igniting.

After the prequels, I swore I’d never let myself get all jacked up about Star Wars again but I’ll be damned if I’m not sitting here wearing Star Wars shoes. That’s right. Shoes.

There was something special about being nine years old in 1977 and walking into that theater. It was an inflection point in my life and here I am at 47, middle aged on the outside and still nine years old on the inside.

If you are also in line or thinking about a galaxy far, far away right now, why not check out this sweet, sweet Star Wars Playlist I made in Apple Music. It’s got some choice Williams but also Star Wars music in several different genres, including disco. Yup. I just wrote “disco” on this blog. That’ll probably never happen again.

The Yamaha AG06

A few months ago I decided to up my game a bit with my audio recording rig. I’d tried to use an XLR microphone in years past but never got it working quite right. My hang up was getting a sufficiently powerful pre-amp to drive a decent microphone.

So with this new effort I ended up buying a Shure Beta 87A but was having trouble (again) getting the right USB to XLR interface. I bought (and returned a few) again dealing with the issues of low power and hissing. I then talked to a friend at Yamaha about the Yamaha AG06. I saw it for the first time at the NAMM show earlier this year and Yamaha was nice enough to send me one to try.

I’ve been using it now for a few months and think that finally, after many years, I’ve got the right mic/mixer combination for audio bliss.

The AG06 is an all purpose simple mixer but Yamaha had podcasters in mind with this board. The AG06 has a small footprint at 6 x 8 inches. There are six analog inputs including line 1, which has both XLR and 1/4″ connectors plus phantom power to drive my new podcasting mic and a pad switch for a quick mute.

The XLR 1 input uses the D-PRE mic preamps found in high-end Yamaha mixers and and for me, at least, that’s where the AG06 wins. My Shure mic sounds great on this board and I don’t need to maximize the pre-amp to get there.

There are more inputs including 1/4” and RCA connectors. In short, back in my musician days, I could have used the heck out of this board.

But putting my podcaster hat back on, with the AG06 I can independently control the mix into my monitor headphones so I can adjust Katie’s voice and my voice on separately. This is one of my favorite benefits after years of having bad audio balances in my ears while podcasting.

There’s a 1/4” foot switch connector that provides hands-free reverb which is perfect for musicians. I wish there was a way, however to toggle that to a mute switch, which would be really great for podcasting.

That said, I’m quite pleased with the new setup and the Yamaha AG 06 has my podcasting/screencasting voice sounding better than ever.

∞

Checking in with the iPad Pro

I’ve now been using the iPad Pro for several weeks. There are lots of great reviews already out there so instead I’m going to share a random collection of thoughts:

The iPad Pro is A LOT bigger than my iPad Air. On paper it doesn’t seem like it. When you pick it up, however, it is something entirely different. As a result it is significantly less portable and I suspect that will be a deal breaker for a lot of people. I’m seriously considering keeping my iPad Air around for this reason.
I’m typing with the on screen keyboard on the iPad Pro more than any previous iPad. (I’m still waiting for the Apple Keyboard cover to ship.) The best I could do on the iPad Air was thumb typing in portrait. With the iPad Pro I can lay it on my lap in landscape and go to town. I do, however, need to keep an eye on my fingers to make sure they don’t drift off-key.
Split screen on iPad Pro is great. This feature alone could justify the purchase.
I’ve already written about Duet. I still love turning my iPad into an extra monitor for my iMac when required.
Over the weekend I had to read and annotate a 100 page contract in tiny print. Using the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil I killed that project.
Speaking of the pencil, it’s pretty great. I’m not much of an artist but enjoy playing with it. Also, this is the first time I’ve ever been able to take handwritten notes and reliably mark up contracts and documents with a stylus.
The silicon inside this thing is fast. Also, not losing Safari tabs (thanks to 4GB of RAM) is even better.
The speakers are much better than you’d expect from a flat piece of glass. That said, I rarely use it to play music.

I’m going to keep writing about this jumbo iPad as I use and wrap my head around it more. If you want something portable, this is definitely not the device for you. However for getting work done on an iOS device, the iPad Pro is pretty special.

Double Dose of Mac Power Users

This week I’ve got two episodes of MPU to share:

1. MPU 293 – It Kinda is Rocket Science
PhD Physics Student Chelsea Cook (yes .. that one) joins us to talk about the state of accessibility on iOS. We also discuss Family Sharing and how it may not be right for all families and answer listener questions on a variety of topics.

2. MPU 294 – Workflows with Mike Vardy
Mike Vardy of the Productivityist drops by to chat about getting work done on his iPad Mini workflows, presentations, making over meetings, virtual assistants, and productivity through simplicity.

Both of these episodes are gems. Enjoy.

Jazz Friday: Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Here is a short one for you. At some point, Gerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck got together to record Santa Claus is coming to Town (iTunes). I’ve been unable to figure out exactly when they did the session but it shows up on several Christmas albums including Santa’s Bag (iTunes). It’s two of my favorite jazz artists playing one of my favorite Christmas tunes. You can’t go wrong.

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Dragon Anywhere Initial Impressions

Nuance has made some big changes in the last few months to its Dragon Dictate applications. They released a new version for the Mac, which I’ve been using and will be publishing a review about shortly. They’ve also changed their iOS strategy and released a new application, Dragon Anywhere (iOS App Store).

Dragon Anywhere is a dedicated dictation application for the iPhone and iPad. You may wonder why you would need such an application when Siri dictation is already pretty good. The problem with Siri dictation, however, is that it has a short fuse. At most you can get two or three sentences out before it stops. With Dragon Anywhere, there is no such limitation. You can leave the application open, turn on the microphone, and start yakking away. I’m doing that right now as I dictate this article. There are additional features, like custom words that synchronize between your devices.

Dragon Anywhere also brings a lot of PC and Mac functions to the iPad and iPhone that you don’t have with Siri. For instance I can select and edit text, use phrases like “scratch that”, and other dictation power user tricks.

I’ve only been at it a few days now but already I really enjoy using it on the iPad Pro. I’ve been opening it up as a split screen application with research on the left side of the screen and dictation on the right. It works great. Nuance claims 99% accuracy. I’m not getting it that accurate but it is more accurate than Siri dictation and adding my own words makes a bigger difference than you’d think. As an example, the screenshot below is the actual dictation without modification and you will see there are some errors. (Click on the screenshot for a bigger view.)

I can already see that the sharing tool needs some work. It is overly Microsoft Word focused. There is no one-tap the button to simply save text to the clipboard. I’ve been getting over that by using the verbal commands “select all” and “copy that”.

It still requires that you have an active Internet connection and it’s pricier than most iOS apps. It’s a subscription-based model that runs $15 a month or $150 year. While it may not be worth it if you only use it occasionally, if you dictate a lot, it’s at least worth consideration. (They have a free one-week trial.) I still have a few days left on my trial but I expect I probably will subscribe because of the amount dictation I do. Either way, expect a more thorough review of this product in a few weeks after I’ve had a bit more time to kick the tires.

Pixelmator Gets iPhone and iPad Pro Love

Today Pixelmator (website) (App Store) released an update supporting the iPad Pro including 16K image support and a new palm rejection feature. There are over 50 brushes that work with the Apple pencil.

I’ve been working on the family Christmas card in Pixelmator on my iPad Pro for a week now. When I loaded the image in the updated version of the app, I immediately saw the benefits. I particularly like the way they’ve taken advantage of the additional screen size.

This update also introduces support for 3D touch on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. Force touching on the Pixelmator icon opens quick action shortcuts and inside the application they use 3D touch support to bring touch sensitive painting. Varying the pressure on the screen with your finger changes the thickness of a brushstroke.

Over the past year I’ve increasingly done my more complicated photo editing on the iPad. This trend will only continue with this new version of Pixelmator and the arrival of my Apple pencil.

DJay Pro for iPad

There are some applications for which the iPad is simply better than a traditional computer. One of those is disc jockeying. Today Algoriddim, developer of the popular DJ app, released DJay Pro (website)(App Store). The new application takes advantage of the iPad Pro to give professional level DJ tools including 4 Decks, HD Waveforms, and Video Mixing. The application can work with locally stored music or your Spotify account. The app also has support for many popular DJ controlers and multichannel USB audio interfaces.

In addition to four audio tracks, it can also handle two 4K video streams and works with the iPad Pro using keyboard shortcuts for cue points, looping, library navigation, search, and more. While these tools would all make a professional DJ quite happy, I think it is also great for amateurs. I was able to operate the app after just a few minutes fiddling in the interface. The next family party just got a significant audio upgrade. As a side note, when my kids heard me mixing tracks in DJay Pro, they thought I was a total badass.

Ulysses for iPhone

Ulysses is an interesting long form tool for Mac and the iPad. For me, it falls somewhere between a traditional text editor and Scrivener. I’m currently using it to write one of the two field guides I’ve got in development (Yes. Two.) and I’ve been pretty happy with the experience.

Today Ulysses’ developers, The Soulmen, announced they’re working on an iPhone version along with some iPad Pro tweaks to their already excellent iPad version. They’ve already announced that when complete, it will be a universal version and they’re looking for beta testers so now’s your chance.