Support your local music shop!

We’re all instinctively quite lazy! For our ancestors, hunter-gatherers, the balance between energy expended catching something to eat and the energy gained from the lunch they just caught was a matter of survival.

So whenever we (humans) want or need something, we have a tendency to get it in the least energy-costly way. The INTERNET is a great example of how we approach getting the stuff we want as cheaply as we can with regard to energy expenditure.

Retailers with bricks-and-mortar shops have had a hard time competing with internet retailers because they are at a disadvantage when it comes to the effort their customers need to make in order to get the thing that they want.

Of course, we all know the advantages of buying in a shop – we get to see the thing, try it out, compare it to other things and have somewhere to take it back to if there’s a problem - especially important if the thing is a guitar!. But we still get lazy and buy gadgets and accessories on-line a lot of the time. This doesn’t help keep high street stores open for those occasions when we really wish we could get some advice and have a look at something before we buy it. We just can’t get the service level we expect from an on-line retailer, in spite of the rights we have to return goods. 

So remember that if you can get the thing you need locally, then you should go to your high street and buy it there. Help keep your local shops open, because when they’re gone, they’re gone!

Smart Phones for Music

Smart phones are certainly getting smarter! You can now keep all your favourite music on your phone along with videos, games and other great apps.  But did you know that the iPhone and iPad can also handle music creation and recording? If you play music, the iPhone can be your tuner, sheet music, recording studio, effects pedal and synthesiser. Some of the apps can do things that no other gadget could do before - even in the top recording studios! Garage Band for the iPad is an eight-track recorder with built-in instruments and the ability to connect a microphone so you can add vocals to your track. The Animoog synthesiser is a clever analogue synth which lets you layer sounds and morph between them in ways you wouldn't have dreamed possible before. And the  iRig interfacecan be used to plug in a microphone, guitar or keyboard to capture your performances or use as an effects processor with the Amplitube app. If you use your iPhone or iPad for live performance, you can get specially designed clips or mountings to allow you to clamp them on your mic stand (or anywhere, really). There’s even a motion-sensing gadget that lets you play instruments by waving your arms in the air. Now that’s progress! Watch out for the new iPhone 5 advert on the telly for a taste of what you can do.