The ScoreCleaner Notes app for iOS ($0.99) can turn any recorded monophonic melody into written musical notation. ScoreCleaner Notes, one of the best-selling apps in Sweden for the last few months, was developed by Sven Emtell at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, along with Sven Ahlbäck, a professor at the Music University of Stockholm.

Daniel Sierra, a digital artist from New York City, just recently put his thesis animation done at the MFA Computer Art program in the School of Visual Arts on Vimeo. The audio-visual experience visualizes waveform patterns that evolve from fundamental sine waves to more complex patterns. It is now officially a Vimeo Staff Pick.

On a good day, somewhere in Pennsylvania in the early nineties, I bought a Roland TR-909 on Ebay. The deal closed at $900 – I paid $909. There’s nothing like the real thing – a good old 16th note snareroll (remember those?) coming from this box is still one of the hardest things to reproduce with samples. The trick is to have a lot of samples, and program patiently.

German plugin developer Hofa, known for some remarkable free metering plugins, just introduced the IQ Reverb, a convolution reverb plugin with innovative editing capabilities, most notably a 3D interface and reverb times that are adjustable in multiple frequency ranges.

News from Native Instruments: Solid Dynamics, Solid EQ, and Solid Bus Comp have been improved with new interfaces. All plugins – part of the Solid Mix Series Bundle -now run as self-contained plug-ins in any DAW.

Wouter Janssen and Sjoerd Janssen, also known as Dutch EDM act “Showtek”, join Dave Pensado on the 112th episode of Pensado’s Place.

Must see video: Full Sail Recording Arts graduate/Hall of Fame inductee Phil Tan walks you through his mix session for Rihanna’s chart-topping hit single, “Diamonds,” talks about his career, and answers questions about his mixing techniques. Runtime: almost an hour.

This just in my inbox: Waves just introduced the GEQ 30 band Graphic Equalizer, a full-featured graphic equalizer with both Classic and Modern mono and stereo components, featuring 30 ISO bands plus high and low pass filters, a high precision floating parametric EQ bell filter, and a real-time analyzer.

This EQ tip comes from Fabfilter, the plugin company that added ‘plugins’ to the list of products the Netherlands have been famous/notorious for. In this video, Dan Worrall uses the Fabfilter Pro Q EQ plugin to explain when and how to use linear phase EQ and (normal) minimum phase EQ. The same information applies to using Logic Pro’s Channel EQ plugin vs the Linear Phase EQ plugin, so don’t miss this.

If you’re struggling with music theory, or want to force yourself to recall what you’ve already learned, have a look at the Better Ears Beginner app in the App Store. It’s a very decent looking app for both keyboard and guitar players that will help you recognize intervals, scales, chords and chord progressions, pitch, tempo, key signatures and music reading. The app’s Preferences section offers many options to fine-tune each exercise, and the app offers both MIDI In and Out.

Here’s a fun fact: of all the records that are in today’s Billboard Hot 100, roughly 20 % of those tracks were built on top of an 808 kick – see the 808 kick Spotify playlist I made below. Though it’s specific to certain genres, that’s a solid foundation – considered the fact that The Roland TR-808 drumcomputer was introduced in 1980.

A Daft Punk / Skrillex Remix Launchpad video to kick-start your day.

https://www.facebook.com/JackConteMusic

Now this looks interesting as much as it looks daunting. Hummingbird is an attempt to make the traditional form of music notation “easier to learn, faster to read, and simpler for even the trickiest music”. By removing the need to count lines, making bass and treble clefs the same, have notes display their actual lengths and making accidentals appear every time they occur, this new form of music notation should be more inviting, according to its creators.

One second = 1/2 Measure. From 1943 until now.

Oh boy this reverb scene is getting mighty convoluted!

This in my inbox: Native Instruments just introduced Reverb Classics, offering two reverb plugins that recreate the sound of two of the most sought after reverb units in history. The plugins were created in collaboration with Softube.