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Google Loves Music

Jeff Owens — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:38:06 +0000

Music fans rejoice, today Google is rolling out a new music search feature that allows you to discover music through an audio preview feature. Type in the name or part of a name from a song and Google will find it and offer you an audio preview.

They have partnered with MySpace, Lala, Pandora, iMeem and Rhapsody to license these musical previews. With Google’s search algorithms combined with their new content partners, searching for music online just got a whole lot easier. They plan to roll out this feature across the U.S. in the next couple of days. Try it out, and let me know what you think.

Amazon MP3 Music Service (Review)

Jeff Owens — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:47:34 +0000

The Amazon MP3 Music Service has just been released. It is in beta and works quite well. To use it you must agree to the terms of service. You then are allowed to download the client software which is used to retrieve purchased music from Amazon’s servers. Client software is available for both Mac and PC and has been promised for Linux sometime in the future. Linux users can download single items in the interim.

Short previews of available music can be played just as in iTunes. The music, once downloaded, contains no digital rights management. The files are in MP3 format and are encoded at 256 kbps. A typical 3-minute song takes up approximately 5MB of storage space. Album cover art is included with each song you download. Once the download is complete, your music is automatically available in iTunes.

You may not download purchased music more than one time. Music downloads are also not returnable. Once you’ve purchased something from the MP3 service (they allow one download for free) it will show up in your personal media library on Amazon.com’s website. There you can post reviews and share your library with friends.

Amazon’s Mp3 Download Service provides needed competition for iTunes. The fact that the music is DRM free will appeal to many. The pricing is variable and comparable to iTunes. The fact that neither Amazon or iTunes allows you to download your music to more than one computer shows that their is plenty of room for improvement with both services.

LilyPond & Textmate Make Beautiful Music

Jeff Owens — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 21:45:36 +0000

This weekend I finally got a chance to take the music notation software LilyPond for a spin. I had heard of the open source project and was anxious to try it out. As a former Finale and Sibelius user I must admit to being a bit skeptical about its capabilities. I was pleasantly surprised to find the documentation and examples on the website helpful in getting started. For my first attempt with the software I kept it simple. Since my eight-year-old son is now taking piano lessons, I decided to compose a simple Minuet in the Baroque style. Here is an excerpt of the beginning of the Minuet that LilyPond created:

To create a piece you simply need a text editor. Being a programmer I chose my favorite editor TextMate. Before beginning to create my masterpiece (ahem) I did a quick check to see if there was a TextMate bundle for LilyPond. Low and behold there was. An hour-and-half later I had completed the piece and was impressed by the results. LilyPond creates a MIDI file for you as well if you tell it to. Getting it to follow the repeats took a little work, but once I found the right command, it worked fine. Below are all of the Minuet files:

Minuet in G (.ly)
Minuet in G (PDF)
Minuet in G (.mp3)
Minuet in G (MIDI)

The .mp3 file was created by importing the MIDI file into GarageBand, selecting two different MIDI instruments, and exporting. Check out the PDF link above to see the final output. Then take a look at the .ly file to see how LilyPond and Textmate make beautiful music together.