The BBC has a great story titled, “Giving up my iPod for a Walkman” in which a 13 year old named Scott swapped his iPod for an original Sony Walkman. I often think what must young kids think when they play with old cassette decks and such.

“Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly – effective, if a little laboured.” – Scott Campbell

Scott also is late to discover there another side to a tape and that “metal” doesn’t mean “metal band eq”!

Read the full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8117619.stm

photo credit: Rosa Pomar

A few years ago when my brother got married I was the best man and has tradition dictates I received a gift for my duties. He handed me a small square box wrapped nicely and when I opened it I was surprised to see an Apple logo. He gave me an iPod Nano. At that time I never owned an iPod or believe it or not even thought I wanted one. I knew they were cool but I was only really listening to music in my studio. For the first few weeks after the wedding the iPod sat in a pile of stuff next to my computer. When I plugged it in iTunes popped up and it synced some music. I remembered reading on a few blogs about TWIT (This Week in Tech) which was a “podcast”. Basically a podcast is an audio file you can subscribe to via a special RSS feed from inside the iTunes Store. I subscribed to TWIT, re-synced, put my headphones on and walked to my studio which was about a 10 minutes away. When I got to the studio I was so into the podcast I decided to just keep on walking and listening. Today I subscribe to about 20 podcasts.

Without a doubt the best podcast for pro-audio is Sonic State’s Sonic TALK from Nick Batts and his friends. If you like this blog there’s no doubt you will like Sonic TALK. A few brits, Americans and sometimes a German very politely chat about synths, weird music, live performances and software.

PJ Tracy, Dave Spiers, Nick Batt. Our first moments are spent marveling in the wonders of Ad Jingles and their creation, with blasts from John Parr and Jonathan Hodge, then we discuss the recently announced Moog Taurus pedals reissue. Then a quote from Blixa Bergfeld on Disquiet gets us onto the topic of originality, then we talk about Raysgigs.com – a site where Ray Morrissey lists over 5000 gigs he has attended and made notes on many occasions – a real goldmine of information and impressions. And thats it for this week. – sonicstate.com

Recently they started to record Sonic TALK live. Everyone is invited to listen and join in the chat room for a real time discussion. I’ve been meaning to join in the TALK for a while and I finally remembered the time slot. It was definitely fun in a super geek way. From time to time Nick and crew would check in with the chat room and mention us “on the air”. To listen to this week’s episode: click here

Catch SonicTalk live every Wednesday at 11:00 AM EST. For more info: click here

photo credit: zoomar

One of the things I miss the most about vinyl records is the nice large artwork, inner sleeves and lyric sheets they came with. Compact Disc booklets forced us into reading lyrics in font sizes only really meant for legal fine print. When the MP3 took over on the original iPod we were left with nothing to look at all.

I’ve always said that technology will save us. Man will end up using solar power, curing cancer and inhabiting other planets. Technology will also bring back album art. Next month Apple will release an interactive album application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The application will add artwork, lyrics and behind the scenes goodies to music.

“The new app also highlights an important point: CDs may lose one of the advantages they have clung to in their losing fight against digital downloads. Now that iTunes albums will offer the extras already found in CDs, the latter is quickly becoming even more irrelevant.” – TechCrunch

I know your thinking that, “Oh wow that’s nice but an iPhone is only 2.5 x 4.5 inches. That’s way smaller than my old 12″ albums!” You know where I’m going with this right? Time and tech will fix this issue too. Surely you can bet multi-touch tablet computers with large screens and nice speakers will be in our hands within 48 months. If someone makes a 12″ square tablet my credit card is done for! I can imagine tablet computers will get as thin as old 12″s too.

I hope independent artists will have a way to add their own interactive album artwork. Tunecore are you working on procuring that deal for us? So musician friends it’s time to start brushing up on your Photoshop skills!

photo credit: ntr23

via MusicWeek