More Music (and Music Software) For Christmas

[filkertom]

It being Christmas time, that wonderful bunch at Garritan have their fifth annual free Christmas album, created by members of the community.

They also have a $99.99 sale for the next few days on their best-selling products, namely the Garritan Personal Orchestra, the Jazz & Big Band, Concert & Marching Band, and the Steinway Basic. (They're also planning a major upgrade for GPO in January, for which I'm champing at the bit -- it has a bunch of new instruments, and it uses their new Aria player, which I got bundled with Acid Pro 7, and which is much, much better in every way than the Kontakt player they've been licensing from Native Instruments.)

If you're looking for any other music software deals, the best place to start is the KVR 2008 Holiday Special Deals thread.

And you can download BNL's Barenaked For The Holidays from Amazon for only $2.99.

And, I would be utterly remiss if I didn't mention Band In A Box 2009 and RealBand 2009, which I helped beta. :) RealBand still has some quirks which keep me from using it a lot; I should spend more time figuring it out. But BIAB is almost out of quirks, and the sounds I can crank out of it--!

Any other holiday music or music software goodies you've found?

Comments

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_7745532_3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000314901&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=right-4&pf_rd_r=1VM6VGC8R19JR9XJYQ28&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=465272751&pf_rd_i=507846) is also giving away a free holiday song per day; there's some decent stuff on their list so far.

And I am absolutely loving this free Xmas mash-up of bootlegs and B-sides (http://www.santastic4.com/).

[doctorpinkerton.livejournal.com]

Wow, I remember back when Band in a Box was an Amiga product!!! Feh - a pox on machine-made music (he said, looking hypocritically at drumbot...)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

You may be thinking of SuperJam, which made it up to v1.1 on the Amiga... and version 2.0 on the PC (http://www.musicmachines.net/faqsj.htm). :)

[ladysmith.livejournal.com]

I just posted on my blog that Franklin Mint has two free downloads of Muppet holiday albums. They have Emmett Otter's Jug-band Christmas and Merry Christmas from Sesame Street.

http://franklinmintblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-countdown-emmet-otters-jug.html

http://franklinmintblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-countdown-merry-christmas.html

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

they only let me have emmet for free.

they want you to sign up for their filesharing scheme to get the second one.

will have to try tomorrow.

[ladysmith.livejournal.com]

Sorry. I should have said. You have to wait 15 minutes between the downloads.

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

Music Vampire mode activated...

*begins pulling down music files*

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

I've been a BiaB fan for a long time. (The first version I bought was for a PC *AT* clone; the first version I had that actually ran was for an Atari ST 1040. :)) But I truly wish they would fix some of the "quirks" that have been on users' hit lists since about that same era: more time signature variation without kludges, recognize more chord names.... And my #1 un-favorite, the lack of flexible "parts" in songs. (Tag endings don't fix everything and recommending "unfold" is an admission of guilt.)

Sorry...BiaB's long-standing blind spots are kind of a "slowly I turned" thing with me. :-)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

RealBand addresses some of those, although I don't feel it does so adequately yet. BIAB has gotten much better at recognizing chords the past couple of years. The biggest thing I wish I could have, besides getting past the stupid 8-bit limitation of 256 bars (which will hose you like crazy if you unfold) is the extremely primitive and inadequate Undo -- one level, one, and it may not actually undo what you just did because some tweaks apparently don't count as actions.

[lukeski.livejournal.com]

http://www.thenickatoms.org

The legendary Nick Atoms (two-thirds of which are now "Possible Oscar") have put up their 2002 Christmas Album up for free download at the above URL. In my opinion, one of the best Christmas albums of the past decade.

[amazingadrian.livejournal.com]

Suddenly...free music!

Thanks Tom.

Actually, if you want, I can troll through my blog and share some of my past free music finds with you, assuming they are still up.