Moseph

I think it would only authorize border security agents (e.g. airport secutiry) to do these searches, so they still shouldn't be able to search your house. Not that this makes it much less troubling.

It's the hammer falling back into place. IMO, it improves the sound dramatically, and the effects can be lessened by pedaling like you would on an actual piano.

I can play everything. But not necessarily well enough to perform ... or even sound good ...

TASCAM Giga Continuous Velocity Piano. It's free. And it's really good.

You can, but it takes practice. For those who can't (or don't want to bother), it's most common to just import a MIDI file into whatever sequencer they use and work from there rather than referencing actual sheet music. (vgmusic.com is a good resource for MIDIs.)

You'd probably be able to just buy a cheapo pair of headphones, cut the plug off, and splice the plug onto the Sennheisers. Since there are two wires involved in a headphone cord, I'm not sure how to tell which wire splices to which. Presumably if you got it wrong, it would reverse the stereo.

Those iPod users with their white earbuds are going to miss out.

Here's what Sound on Sound has to say: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan07/articles/mixingheadphones.htm

This was a forum feature that djp specifically added. I don't know if there's a way around it.

Have you used the External Compression tab in the compression options (F11) to set up the FLAC encoder? If you haven't, you basically just need to tell it the location where the FLAC encoder is installed. There's a setup guide here if you need it.

I had no idea that they'd finally finished this album. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

This is the reason I'm still using the 2006 version of Finale. Most of their recent updates to the program have focused on making things sound good in playback, which is not something I'm overly concerned with when I use Finale. They still haven't fixed my pet peeve -- the difficulty of creating beamed slashed grace notes.

For me, the question of piano roll vs. staff is determined by what I intend the music to be. If I'm writing something that will exist only as a synthesized audio recording and need to make it sound just right, I'll do it all on a piano roll. If I'm writing something that will actually be performed and needs to look just right, I'll do it all in Finale. With regard to the latter, it's easier for me to judge what a piece will sound like when performed if I'm looking at actual musical notation. EDIT: Finale can do it, and so can some sequencers (I know that Sonar can), but I don't think FL can do it.

If you're already familiar with Pro Tools and really like it, use it. Otherwise, don't. I used it in school (but don't own it myself) and I can still edit faster with it than with any other program.

I haven't read anything yet except for the Wikipedia entry on orphaned works and the full texts of bills S.2913 and H.R.5889, but I haven't seen anything that indicates this statement is accurate. Am I misunderstanding the purpose of the pictorial/graphical/sculptural works database? EDIT: What I understand the bills to do is (1) limit the damages that can be awarded when someone infringes a copyrighted work for which the copyright holder cannot be found and (2) establish a database to make it easier to find copyright holders -- and this database is NOT the only thing that the bill requires to be consulted when looking for a copyright holder. From what I can tell, it doesn't change any other aspect of copyright law.

He wants to change the mode -- e.g. major scale to minor scale. EDIT: @max97230: Any program that has a diatonic transposition feature can change the mode for you, but you need to know how the starting mode and the desired mode relate to each other. If, for example, you want to change major to Dorian, you would transpose up diatonically by a second. You could then transpose back down chromatically by a second to put it back in the original range. (Obviously, this only works for the standard seven-note modes -- you can't convert into something like pentatonic with this method.)

He made a good movie based on a freakin' amusement park ride.

Finale's really slow unless you're extremely familiar with it because it's basically a typesetting program and not a sketchpad. Check out the Sibelius demo. It's similar to Finale, but more user-friendly, and if you decide you like it, you can get a discount for crossgrading from Finale. EDIT: Have you learned how to use the Speedy Entry tool in Finale? If you have a MIDI keyboard, that's definitely the fastest way to get things written down. (Actually, in terms of notes written per second, I can go faster with Speedy Entry than I can with a piano roll editor.) EDIT 2: I just now figured out how to use the step entry in SONAR's piano roll, so now it works like Finale's Speedy Entry

Stick a wad of felt on the pen's tip, making sure it doesn't obstruct the LED that the Wiimote looks at. Problem solved. Also, is there any reason you couldn't just use your mousepad as a tablet? Man, now I need to buy a Bluetooth receiver. This stuff is cool.

I think the consensus is that to get a really good guitar sound you either have to buy an expensive sample library (like Prominy LPC) or record a real guitar. Depends on exactly how good you need it to sound, I suppose -- have you checked hammersound.net for guitar SoundFonts?

Reason's Orkester soundbank is better than anything you're likely to find for free (at least as far as complete orchestral libraries go -- you might be able to piece something together out of individual free instruments). As far as I know, the version of Orkester included with Reason 4 is the same one that you've already got with Reason 3. If you're looking specifically to do orchestral stuff, you might be better off getting an orchestral sample library like EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Silver or Gold -- in which case you would also need a sequencer that supported VSTs. That's not to say that Orkester is terrible -- I've actually gotten it to sound pretty good, but it's unbelievably labor-intensive with a lot of manual tweaking needed. Basically, Reason's orchestral capabilities aren't going to change if you upgrade, so you already have what you need in order to decide if you're satisfied with it.

Go to Start Menu > Control Panel, then open Folder Options. Click the Files Types tab. This lets you set what program will open a file with a given extension -- you may be able to fix the problem by manually setting default programs for the file types that are giving you trouble.

Exact Audio Copy. You will never need another ripper -- it handles scratched discs wonderfully, it can get around a lot of copy-protection garbage, and it can call an external compressor so you can use any compression type you want.

The verb forms of the mic spelling (which I otherwise prefer over mike) have always been troubling to me -- micing? It sounds like you're throwing mice at people.

Using only one mic would give you a mono recording, which might be okay if you were mixing this with other instruments, but two mics would be better for a solo piano performance because it would let you get stereo. As long as the mics are positioned well, it will sound good. Six to eight is definitely overkill. If you go above two mics on a single instrument, it's usually because there are specific nuances you want to pick up such as the room's reverb qualities -- more mics doesn't necessarily equal a better recording. The SM57 is a perpetually-popular cheap-ish mic, but it isn't the only option. Really, any mic in the >$40 range would probably give you acceptable sound-quality for OCR. To hook the mic up to a computer, you'll either need it to be a USB mic, or you'll need a soundcard or recording interface that can accept mic input (this site is a good resource for learning more). There is free/cheap software available for recording -- Audacity and Reaper would both work fine. Another option besides actual recording is to download a good free piano VST such as the GIGA Continuous Velocity Piano. This would let you create a "fake" piano performance with just the computer by either programming by hand the notes that you want played or by playing on a MIDI keyboard connected to the computer to trigger the sounds on the computer. The results probably wouldn't be as satisfactory as an actual recording, but if you opted not to buy a MIDI keyboard and wrote the notes manually, the stuff you'd need for it would be free.