From now until the 31st October 2010, Ableton are offering FREE online training with the purchase of any Ableton full version or upgrade product.

Click here to visit the Ableton product page or head down to a Dawsons Music Store to pick up your copy today.

See below for details of the lessons available:

Berkleemusic.com is offering one week of access to their “Producing Music with Ableton Live” and  ”Advanced Music Production with Ableton Live” courses. These are university-level courses on all aspects of Ableton Live.

Sonic Academy is offering 30 days of free access to every Ableton video in their library, covering everything from Ableton basics to genre-specific how-to videos.

AudioTechKnowledge.com is offering a sampling of both Volumes 1 and 2 of their Ableton Live course. This special version, produced by ASK Video, includes 24 lessons.

Live-courses.com is offering a sampling of both their Beginner and Advanced Ableton Live courses. These four lessons are taught by Ableton Certfied Trainer Rob Jones.

NEWSFLASH! SALE STARTING THIS SATURDAY IN DAWSONS MUSIC STORES!

The end-of-summer sale is starting this Saturday in Dawsons stores! We’ve got hundreds of ex-display items priced to clear.

Check out whats on offer in our stores here.

Click here to find your nearest Dawsons Music store.

Please note that these offers are available IN-STORE ONLY.

The use of auto-tuning has long been a part of commercial studio recordings (in-fact before it even existed, some sound engineers would meticulously slow down/speed up analogue tapes slightly to improve the tuning on recordings).

The people generally known as ‘musical purists’ are often scathing of the technology as, in their opinion, it enables people who ‘can’t sing’ to be professional pop-singers which they see as fraudulent. The reality is that it can be used to great effect with even the best, most accurate singers. When a produced sound is desired, auto-tuning adds that professional level of perfection. In fact, perfection of vocal parts is so important to so much of the music industry that auto-tune is an essential part of live and studio performance today.

Auto-tune can also be used as an obvious effect with artists like T-Pain and Cher as the proud ambassadors. This hard-tuning style is extremely popular, particularly in urban and dance music genres.

These effects are now so advanced that they can be achieved with both powerful studio software and live on-stage with a number of excellent vocal-effects pedals. If you are interested in what they can do for your performance, read on…

A Guide to Auto-Tune Products Studio Software
Antares Auto-Tune EFX At £99 Antares Auto-Tune EFX is their cheapest studio plug-in, but while it doesn’t have all the features of their flagship version (EVO) you can quickly correct pitch and easily make the popular hard-tuned vocal effect by simply selecting the key of a piece or if it is more complicated you can create custom scales or programme automation.
Celemony Melodyne 3 For top level music production Celemony Melodyne 3 is the industry standard. Melodyne 3 offers a new algorithm that allows any type of audio material to profit from Melodyne’s unique editing functions and sound quality; in other words, Melodyne is no longer limited to the editing of melodies but can handle homophonic and polyphonic textures. Celemony Melodyne 3 also offers fully automatic analysis of the audio material, powerful macros for the correction of intonation and timing errors, and numerous improvements in the user interface. Melodyne3 is not only capable of doing far more than its predecessors; it is also faster and easier to use. Probably the best £499.99 you’ll ever spend as a producer.
Antares Auto-Tune Evo Native Pitch Correction Plug-in Antares Auto-Tune Evo Native Pitch Correction Plug-in is hailed as a “holy grail of recording,” by Recording magazine (and adopted worldwide as the largest-selling audio plug-in of all time), Auto-Tune corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments, in real time, without distortion or artifacts, while preserving all of the expressive nuance of the original performance – with audio quality so pristine that the only difference between what goes in and what comes out is the intonation. All with a user-interface that is a model of clarity, speed and ease-of-use. At £189 this product is seriously powerful and professional, with automatic detection for super-quick results.
AVOX- the Antares Vocal Toolkit From the company that revolutionized vocal production with Auto-Tune comes AVOX- the Antares Vocal Toolkit. With AVOX, Antares has combined five state-of-the-art vocal processing modules to give you the power you need to create stunning vocal tracks in any musical style as well as design unique vocal effects for audio post-production applications. These 5 plug-ins are a great compliment to Auto-Tune and in combination make a complete vocal enhancement suite for serious producers £500.64.

A Guide to Auto-Tune Products Auto-Tune Pedals
	TC Helicon Voicetone Correct Ever noticed as a singer that you seldom have control of the sound system or effects and often have no sound engineer to help you get a great live vocal sound? VoiceTone Correct will finally satisfy your quest for great live vocal sound. It combines pitch correction with tone and dynamic shaping that put a recorded gloss on live singing. £225
	TC-Helicon Voicetone Create XT Now you can get those “ear candy” vocal effects that producers call on every day to create hit tracks. The TC-Helicon VoiceTone Create XT improves on the original Create by incorporating HardTune (used by artists such as Tpain and Kanye West) and the rich, front-of-house quality reverb from its famous big brother, VoiceLive 2. TC-Helicon have also made Create XT easier to use with individual on/off buttons for the effects blocks, new tweak controls, an input for an optional Switch3 footswitch and more. £225
	Boss VE-20 Vocal Performer The easy-to-use Boss VE-20 has been designed from the ground up for singers, featuring some of the finest vocal-effects technology on the market. With the click of a footswitch, you can instantly add lush vocal layers and harmonies to your singing, add realtime pitch-correction, and you can show your creative side with special effects such as Distortion, Radio, and Strobe. You can even create loops and layers in real time with the onboard Phrase Looper. £169
	TC-Helicon VoiceLive 2 Vocal Multi-Effects Pedal What does a vocalist live for? A jaw-dropping vocal sound that takes audiences over the edge. Get that sound instantly with the TC-Helicon VoiceLive 2, the ultimate floor-based vocal processor. It’s more than an upgrade, it’s a vocal revolution. This pedal is simply amazing! It can generate live harmony on its own and can use MP3, Guitar and MIDI inputs to generate harmony parts too. There are a full range of effects as well as live pitch correction for achieving your best vocal performance, night after night. £659

]]> http://www.dawsons.co.uk/news/2010/08/you-too-can-have-the-x-factor/feed/ 0 http://www.dawsons.co.uk/news/2010/08/free-tuner-from-korg-every-monday/ http://www.dawsons.co.uk/news/2010/08/free-tuner-from-korg-every-monday/#comments Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:57:37 +0000 Sam http://www.dawsons.co.uk/news/?p=4599 Korg is giving away a FREE tuner every Monday (until the 19th December). Enter to win here. You can enter as often as once per day until the promotion finishes!

Click here to enter

Tickets are now on sale for charity rock event ‘Rockin’ for Cerebral Palsy‘ due to take place at the King’s Head, Belfast on Wednesday 15th September 2010, with all proceeds going to The Cedar Foundation. Tickets cost £25.

Approximately £24.5 out of each £25 to be used directly for the nice stuff Cedar find it hard to provide; like day trips, new equipment for centers like PS3, TV’s Wii’s computers etc.

Each attendee will also get free entry into the raffle, with lots of quality prizes to be won!

Bands:
The Simon McBride Experience
You Don’t Fool Me
Mothers Little Helpers
Partners In Crime

The night will also feature ‘Head Cutting Duels’ (like Duelling Banjos from the classic film Crossroads) where guitarists will go head-to-head with finger-blistering fury, attempting to win over the audience who get to pick the winner via db meter (clap-o-meter).

Details of the money raised and what it has been spent on will be available from the Rockin’ for Cerebral Palsy web page, so people can see what their money has achieved.

For tickets and more information click here.

While I am obliged to keep the exact details of the new Roland Connect 2010 products a secret until the 1st of September, I can still tease you with a few things…

Firstly guitarists, pianists, synth players, sound engineers/producers and music educators all have a lot of shiny new things (17 new things to be exact!) to be excited about with the imminent Roland Connect Launch.

Secondly, the Roland demonstrators are brilliant and their rendition of Hella Good by No Doubt – using some of the new Roland products as well as some of the excellent and already-available products (like the flagship TD-20KX – which was being expertly beaten by Michael Schack) – was virtually identical to the original track and sounded absolutely amazing.

Finally, I learnt that the Roland SPD-30 Octapad is the fastest (lowest latency) trigger interface on the market and, although it was designed with mostly percussive applications in mind, the rapid response of the Roland Octapad makes it the best MIDI trigger available for live applications (be it DJ’ing, working with samples or playing live drum & Bass) and great in the studio too. Apart from anything else the lightening fast response, sensitive dynamics and ability to play with either hands or sticks make the Roland Octapad a robust, reliable and stage-friendly device. Plus, it is really addictive…

Anyway, I suggest you keep an eye on the countdown (above) to make sure that you are one of the the first to see the new product info when its time to launch.

- Sam Morrow (Dawsons Music Web Dept.)‘

Follow this link to visit the Reading store page http://www.dawsons.co.uk/acatalog/Dawsons_Music_Reading.html or contact the store on 0118 958 1320.

 This offer excludes gift vouchers, Apple hardware and sale or clearance items but it includes everything else (including that new guitar or digital drum kit you’ve been dreaming about!).

It doesn’t matter which subject you have got your “A” grade in but you will need to prove it by bringing  your official results paper into your local Dawsons Music store. Please note that only one 10% discount can be claimed per student (so sadly we can’t give you 40% off if you get 4 “A” grades but we’re pretty sure you don’t need to be a business studies student to work out why!).

We look forward to congratulating you soon!

The intriguing history of the Marshall amp used by Slash on Appetite For Destruction and its subsequent disappearance has now passed into rock folklore. Widely believed to be a hot-rodded, 100 Watt, pre-master volume model from the early 70s, this legendary amp was hired specifically for the “Appetite” sessions in 1986. Eager to hold on to the amplifier, Slash told rental company S.I.R. that it had been stolen, only to have it “stolen” back a year later during tour rehearsals. Ever since there has been little to no word on the whereabouts of that mysterious 100 Watt head, synonymous with a true rock icon and one of greatest rock albums of all time.

Now Slash and Marshall Amplification have joined forces to re-create that revered ­”Appetite Tone” with the new Marshall AFD amplifier, which is available for pre-order now and we are offering FREE Delivery on Pre-Orders.

Click here for more details.