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Björk and Biophilia on the iPad

The iconic Björk released a new album — Biophilia — for the iPad and it is a magical experience to interact with her music with your ears and fingers and eyes.  This is how music is meant to be experienced.  You can touch the tones.  You can manipulate rhythm and melody — and everything still remains innately Björk — but your unique involvement in changing the music through experimentation cannot be denied:

For Biophilia, she’d originally envisioned a musical house — like a museum, she’s said — wherein people could roam from room to room, with each interactive space designated to a different song. Later, she envisioned an IMAX film experience with visionary filmmaker Michel Gondry. When both of those ideas fell through, Björk commissioned an iPad app with which users can manipulate her music with various games, remix it and further understand the scientific and musical principles behind each song. It’s a lot like her idea for the musical house, but in a digital environment. It’s also just the kind of bonkers vision that Björk would be drawn to, and if it all works, it ought to be ingenious and tons of fun.

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Steve Jobs Replies from the Grave: From iBoles to iPad to iAuthor

When the iPad was originally introduced, I was already an Apple fanboi with iBoles and iJanna and a couple of Apple books in the pipeline — and I was especially interested in the iPad as a book publication vehicle.  At that time, Steve Jobs was still alive and randomly replying to email inquiries, and on March 23, 2010 at 8:29pm, I decided to take my shot with Jobs and I emailed him my iPad Book Publishing Query:

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Jazzwise Magazine for iPad Review

Over the last two days here in Boles Blues, we’ve taken a hard look at two guitar magazines — Guitarist and Guitar World — published for the iPhone and iPad via Apple’s Newsstand application and we came away disappointed in the lousy textual reading and wanting multimedia experience.  Today, in our final installment in the neverending search for a grand music publication for the iPad, we happen upon Jazzwise — a UK-based magazine that provides wonderful writing, but results in an even more dire and dismal reading experience than Guitarist and Guitar World put together.

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The Guitar World Magazine for iPad Review

Yesterday, I reviewed the UK-centric Guitarist Magazine for the iPad and today, I’m here to review its American sister-friend, Guitar World Magazine.  Both publications are produced by the same company and, unfortunately both Guitarist and Guitar World suffer the same, awful, interface fate as iPad Newsstand subscriptions.

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Guitarist Magazine for iPad Review

The iPad is a natural wonder for multimedia publication.  The New Yorker gets its magazine perfectly right on the iPad.  I went in search of music publications that would take the New Yorker example of perfection to the next righteous level of multimedia immersion in music.

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The New Yorker for iPad Review

I finally bit the bone and bought a year subscription to The New Yorker on my iPad 2.  I resisted the purchase for so long because the weekly magazine is pricey and because getting magazines to work on an iOS device was an expensive hit-or-miss adventure that usually entailed hours of fiddling and re-starting and re-installing just to get a new issue to load.

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The History of Jazz on the iPad Review

We learn through experience.  Sometimes the experience is direct.  Other times, we experience the experiences of others through immersive reading and learning.  “The History of Jazz” is a terrific iPad app that, for under $10.00USD, will give you a wonderful new way to learn about the makings of Jazz.

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The MusicNotes.com for iPad Review

If you want to buy professional guitar TAB sheet music online, you really have two choices:  Hal Leonard’s GuitarInstructor.com and MusicNotes.com that offers a lot of Alfred Publishing songs.  Between those two services, you should be able to find almost any song you want to play.  Here’s the PR blurp for MusicNotes.com:

Musicnotes, Inc. offers an online catalog of 100,000 digital sheet music titles, built on the strength of content agreements with Alfred Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Faber Music Ltd, Sony/ATV Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Disney Music Publishing, Cherry Lane Music Company, Peermusic, Word Music, EMI Christian, Bug Music and many others.

I usually buy my songs online from Hal Leonard, but now that I’m dipping a bit more into guitar Jazz, I was desperate to find “Take Five” — scored for the guitar — written by Paul Desmond and made popular by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. I found just what I wanted, and more, on MusicNotes.com:

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The iMuscle for iPad Review

iMuscle is a new, $5.00USD, iPad App from NOVA and, at first glance, it seems like it would be a real winner of a Human Body in Motion workout App using an animated anatomical man as your virtual trainer but, in reality, iMuscle is nothing more than a curiosity.

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Apple AirPrint on the iPad: The HP LaserJet CM1415fnw Review

For the past eight years or so, I’ve lived my non-virtual, printed, life through a Canon InkJet printer.  The printer was slow.  The quality was so-so.  The replacement ink cartridges were incredibly expensive.  When Apple announced the availability of AirPrint for selected printers and iOS devices like the iPad and the iPhone, I knew then that I would soon be in the market for a new printer.  Yesterday, the HP LaserJet CM1415fnw was delivered to my front door, and I’ve been a printing maniac ever since!

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