When I asked what albums readers were loving early in 2011, England-based James Blake’s full-length stood out in numerous reader comments. If you haven’t already seen him plugged on radio and online – and at least some of you haven’t yet – it’s a perfect time to check him out, with the full-length this week available for digital download even outside the UK. Blake made a name for himself in some astonishing EPs over 2010, with a haunting but fragile voice singing soulful melodies atop minimal percussion and warm, fuzzy keys in close-fingered voicings. Now, his full-length is here. If you needed someone to tell you to listen to it, you certainly would have no problem finding a blog — or five hundred – to do so. But what strikes me is that the self-titled James Blake is something readers say they are giving repeated – and I mean repeated – listening. That’s when any hype or popular opinion melts away, and it’s just the intimacy of you and a record. And it’s an experience that, amidst plentiful access to music today, has never been more valuable.

Apologies if any of these videos refuse to play in your country because of odd licensing restrictions. (No soup for you!)

With all that hype, of course, some of the reviews of the album have been less than spectacular. Some of the best tracks, like “CMYK,” were on previous EPs and not here – and it’s well worth giving those releases a try alongside the full-length. I’m personally in no need to hear any more applications of pitch correction, ironic or otherwise – the effect that was for me utterly magical in the hands of Bon Iver now seems a sort of cliche, and those to me are the weakest tracks on this collection. Call it hipster AutoTune. Anyway, even with lo-fidelity digital effects part of the aesthetic, and successfully so, you don’t want anything standing between you and James Blake’s lovely voice. When it does come out, the album shines.

I say give it a listen yourself, and forget that anyone has hyped this. What some people criticized as weak songwriting I find to be part of the appeal. Absent hooks and willfully earnest, the melodies are often sparse fragments, repeated as though a sentence trailed off. At its best moments, it’s something really unique. BBC has removed some of the excellent live performance videos; I’ve included one candidate below before it goes, too, though the official video is nice, as well.

BBC did leave an official, and excellent, interview:

Let us know what you think. I’d love to hear a track-by-track review and not just broad strokes, perhaps from someone other than me. (I’m in my head all the time.)

Enjoy, and have a great weekend.

http://jamesblakemusic.com/

Adding a remix here, thanks to reader John Meredith:

Effect pedals on CDM? Heck, yes. Electro-Harmonix may have just stolen the show in Nashville with the Freeze pedal alone. Continuing our coverage with Nashville locals and musicians Tony and Jeremy, we have some hands-on videos, images, and impressions of the gear on offer. Don’t miss yesterday’s story on how the trade show helps Nashville recover from flooding. They offered a sobering picture of the state of the show, as well, but that didn’t stop them from finding good stuff to share. -Ed.

Summer NAMM was never the size of its winter counterpart. We were still surprised by the poor manufacturer turnout at the June 18th – 20th convention in Nashville, TN. Absent were heavy hitters like Roland and Korg and innovators like Moog, ZVex, and Dave Smith. Luckily, those that did attend brought some pretty cool new gear. Here are our impressions:

TC-Helicon VoiceLive Touch

The VoiceLive Touch puts the famous TC-Helicon harmonization technology and effects in a unique, stand-mountable package, with the addition of performance-oriented looping. The unit feels very rugged, locking onto the stand to give the performer all of the controls at the right height. The interface is a simple array of touch “buttons” for access to the different DSP units with display duties being handled by a simple LED matrix display. Parameters are accessed and manipulated by a touch slider below the display. The VoiceLive Touch seems designed for quick access to presets in the middle of a gig rather than for delicate parameter tweaking. For ease of use during a set, the vocal harmonizer/looper looks like a winner. TC-Helicon says that while preset management over USB is the name of the game for the time being, a software editor could be in the cards down the road. In the first video, TC-Helicon rep Laura Davidson gives CDM a hands on look at the device. In the second video, a singer-songwriter demonstrates one of the harmonization presets. – JD

Previously on CDM: a preview of the device

Numark Mixtrack DJ USB Controller

The Mixtrack is a solid little device, preset for controlling Traktor for $150. For that price, this looks like an amazing little controller – touch sensitive platters for playback control matched with the full range of DJ-mixer style playback, pitch bend, EQ, and looping controls, many of which are illuminated. It’s class-compliant USB and operates as a simple MIDI controller, so it should work out of the box with any application with a fairly minimal amount of mapping and setup. The Mixtrack supports Mac and Windows with possible future Linux support, “if the customer demand is there.” Ed.: actually, since it’s class-compliant, it will already work on Linux. It’s plastic, but it feels quite solid to lift. The encoders have a nice size and grip, with a just a touch of resistance when turning: you don’t feel like you’re going to pull the encoder off of the front panel when adjusting the EQ. I don’t think the crossfader is going to win any awards when put against a DJ battle-style mixer, but it seems like it will do the job without any complaints, especially considering the price of the unit. While the unit is obviously very portable, it may be just a bit outsized for most laptop bags; but that goes with almost every portable controller out there that isn’t named “micro”. In the video, Numark rep Eric McGregor gives CDM an in-depth look. -JD

Alesis MultiMix8 USB FX

The Multimix8 is another iteration of small mixer/USB interface device from Alesis – 8 channels, 4 with microphone preamps, a high-impedance instrument input on channel 2, and 2 pairs of stereo line inputs. Built-in preset effects with individual sends on each channel, all mixed to a class-compliant 2-channel 16/44.1 bidirectional USB audio interface. Alesis is apparently taking user feedback from their original MultiMix8 USB to improve panel layout and knob spacing, dropping 24/96 support and reducing the power consumption. We were quoted $149 street price, which is only around $10 or so off the predecessor’s street price. -JD

Beat Kangz Beat Thang

A personal highlight for me was finally getting the chance to meet Aja and the Nashville-based Beat Kangz crew. I was impressed with their end-user friendly approach to the marketplace, valuing user feedback on their products. News to me is that Beat Thang Virtual is getting an AudioUnit version within the next two weeks, with VST coming soon after. I think that getting that product integrated with existing DAWs is going to do a lot for them. Of course, the one everyone is waiting for is the Beat Thang Beat Machine. It was there in all of its prototype glory, although Aja said that the first shipment of test units at full production spec were going to be in their hands soon, with some small tweaks to the hardware (particularly with the feel of the pads) ready to go through a final beta test phase. If their goal is to make the ultimate beat production device, I think they stand a really good chance of delivering. The prototype box is solid as a rock, intuitive interface and spec’d out to be an MPC killer. At $1000, it’s hard not to be interested in this box if you do any kind of rhythmic production. In the first video Aja shows Create Digital Music the Beat Thang Virtual. In video two, Aja shows us the Beat Thang Beat Machine. – JD

Akai SynthStation25

What may be the first of its kind, Akai has released a hardware accessory for their SynthStation iPhone software. Unveiled at Winter NAMM, the controller is simplicity itself – It’s an iPhone dock with 25-key keyboard, mod and pitch bend wheels, Octave and Program buttons and 4 buttons for accessing the voices in the SynthStation application itself. Couple this with headphone and RCA outputs and USB interface for MIDI, and Akai is offering a package to give actual musical performance control to their iPhone app. The relative merits of the controller or even the use of iPhones for performance and composition aside, Akai is making a strong move here by being the first to market with such a device. Given the sales of SynthStation in the iTunes store, Akai is betting that there are a significant number of people out there that would want to have an extended musical experience with their app and that those people are going to pony up around $100-$150 for a dedicated hardware controller for it. The release date has slipped on this device at least once already, but they seem to be pushing for July at this point. Interestingly, Akai is going to make their API available to third party developers, wishing to allow opening up the SynthStation25 to other iPhone applications. – JD

Electro-Harmonix Freeze

Shipping in late June, The Electro-Harmonix Freeze sample-and-hold pedal may be my favorite effect unit at Summer NAMM. The concept is deceptively simple: press down on the footswitch and the unit sustains what you just played. Let go and the sustaining stops. In the meantime, you can layer over the frozen part with additional notes. See the video below for a great demonstration. The Freeze seems perfect for experimental music and non-guitar instruments. Homebrew modifications are inevitable.

EH showed off other new products, including the Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi distortion/overdrive (so named because of its 4 germanium transistors), the Neo Clone (smaller version of the Small Clone analog chorus), and tiny Headphone Amp. In the video below, Larry with EH gave CDM a demonstration of these effects as well as the Ring-Thing Ring Modulator. Ed.: Or, as they describe it, to be semantic, a “single sideband modulator.” The unique thing about the Ring-Thing is that you can tune it from an incoming signal and avoid the unwieldy dissonance that come from most ring mods. Of course, unwieldy dissonance is a ring mod’s main charm. But should you want it to sound more musical, you have that option. – TY

Pigtronix Keymaster

Guitar-pedal bad-boys Pigtronix debuted an innovate universal signal router at Summer NAMM called the Keymaster Re-Amp Effects Mixer. Unlike most loopers, the Keymaster has a plethora of input/output options, including xlr and 1/4” in/outs and two pedal-level effects loops. You can run the loops in series or parallel with the option to mix the two loops in parallel mode. The beauty of this pedal is the limitless ways you can use it. Power two amps at once, instantly switch between two amps on the fly, switch between two effects chains, blend two effects chains, put two instruments in the two return jacks and mix them together to a single amp, and any routing you can dream up.

In the video below, Pigtronix founder Dave Koltai gives CDM an in-depth tour of the Keymaster. The second video shows Dave Koltai sampling a variety of Pigtronix’s other innovated pedals, including the Mothership Analog Synthesizer, Philosopher King polyphonic amplitude synthesizer, EP2 Envelop Phaser, and the Echolocution. Great sounds! – TY

Glasstones

Mark Payung’s fledgling Glasstones guitar company isn’t a household name. . . yet. But that may change if the final Glasstones guitars sound as good at the prototype did at Summer NAMM. The secret of the guitar’s long sustain is a patented glass compound that the nut, frets, and fretboard are made of. Supposedly, the highly-dense material better transmits the vibrations of the strings into the wood. Mark excitedly took us over to his friends’ 3rd Power Amplification booth to let us hear the Glasstones prototype guitar through an American Dream amplifier. The American Dream amp features some innovations of its own, including a triangular speaker chamber and switchable output between 22 and 10 watts. Channel one is voiced to sound like a ‘62 brownface Deluxe; channel two, a ‘65 blackface Deluxe.

Of course, it’s always hard to tell what guitars and amps truly sound like unless you’re playing them with your own gear; but this combination under the ideal conditions of the show floor sounded fantastic. (Watch the video below to hear for yourself.) Time will tell if the Glasstones guitar is a game-changing innovation or a fly-by-night novelty. If I were forced to choose, I’d bet on the former. – TY

Tony Youngblood (story, photos) resides in Nashville, TN and hosts the experimental improv music podcast Theatre Intangible. [@tonyyoungblood, Twitter]

Jeremy Dickens (additional reporting, photos) is a native Nashvillian musician, engineer, sound designer and and producer with works on dPulse Recordings, Sony Digital and his own Discrepancy Recordings imprint. [@logickal, Twitter]

Want follow-up coverage of any of this gear? What strikes your fancy? Let us know in comments.

Singers often get left out, at least when compared to the toys heaped on guitarists and keyboardists. But vocalists looking to add effects and loop their vocalizations can now do so in one box, all attachable to a mic stand.

TC-Helicon has an intriguing-looking gadget they’ve unveiled for vocalists, just in time for the summer NAMM trade show in Nashville, Tennessee. Called the VoiceLive Touch, it’s an all-in-one processing and looping box. TC are no stranger to vocal effects, with the recent, compact (and akwardly-named) VoiceTone Create XT and the hefty, stompbox-style VoiceLive. What’s different here is that the resulting gadget is small enough to hook onto a mic stand, without sacrificing built-in audio I/O, and that you get looping and effects with a touch-ready performance interface. (If you still like triggering on the floor better than operating things with your hands on the mic stand, you can couple it with a foot switch.)

Looping includes 30 seconds of sample time, 25 separate loops, and integrated onboard effects. To make it easier to use in performance, there are convenience features like touchable preset recall, favorites, and an easy “talk” bypass switch. Effects include tempo-synced delays, harmonization, reverb, and the usual EQ / compression / de-ess, so you can go a bit wild or stick to the basics.

The touch-membrane control layout screams the 1980s to me (as a child of the 80s myself), but the functionality looks really strong.

I/O is generous, too, with guitar in and thru, USB for audio connections to the computer, an aux in for other devices (like an MP3 player), and MIDI input for controlling harmonies from a sequencer or keyboard (or something else). To me, the combination of TC-quality effects, looping, and all that I/O ought to pretty easily justify the US$695 list; the bigger question is whether the kinds of vocalists who want to do this kind of looping have already gotten used to a looper from another vendor (like Korg or Roland/BOSS) that they prefer, and whether the looping features can compare.

If there are any especially creative vocalists out there in the CDM readership (or if you know anyone we should know), please do get in touch; I’d love to talk to you about live vocals and effects with this and other tools.

In the meantime, if you want a little hype to go with your info, TC have put together a video displayed after the jump that’s spot-on in the vein of those Apple – Jonathan Ives product unveilings. (The word “magical” doesn’t come up, however. Funny that vendors catch on now; I remember watching Apple’s vids in this style over a decade ago.)

Product details:
VoiceLive Touch [TC Helicon]

Elly Jessop and VAMP at the Maker Faire from The Amazing Rolo on Vimeo.

Yann Seznec aka The Amazing Rolo brings CDM his coverage of music tech at the Maker Faire in three episodes today.

Continuing the tradition of computer-augmented vocal performance and interactive gloves, Elena “Elly” Jessop shows off her VAMP system at Maker Faire. Elly is a Masters student at the MIT Media Lab’s Opera of the Future research group, headed by Todd Machover. Interestingly, Elly’s background is in conventional theater, including stage and costume design and choreography.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~ejessop/

VAMP stands for “Vocal Augmentation and Manipulation Prosthesis.” What’s really nice in this demo is that the results sound like more than just effects – they begin to become real augmentation, setting up a complex relationship between the vocalist and the sounds that come out.

It’ll be great to see your work evolve over time, Elly, as you fuse that experience. (And I know what a challenge can be, as I’m still working on fusions of my own, having likewise come from various non-digital backgrounds… heck, I made my way through puppetry class at Sarah Lawrence, even. It’s a lifetime-scale commitment.)

For more on data gloves and such: composer, computer scientist, and futurist Jaron Lanier did lots of seminal thinking about these ideas leading back to the 80s. And you can find some extraordinary work from “augmented vocalists” like Laetitia Sonami and Pamela Z. Here’s a terrific 2006 interview by Sua Constabile for Cycling ’74 with Laetitia:

Well, fine, Jamie Lidell. Now you go and ruin it for the rest of us. See, none of us playing with a Nintendo DSi will possibly look as good as you do.

I jest, of course. Jamie Lidell, the wildly-talented vocalist, picks up the new, online-savvy take of the Nintendo DS and breathes cool into it. This is what Sony ads tried to do, but Jamie does masterfully. And, okay, don’t expect the built-in sound app on the DSi to do as much as it appears to be doing here – there’s quite a lot of non-real-time, non-DSi remixing going on, even though what he does do with the simple app is genius.

Thanks to Liz Revision for finding this one.

This does bring us to a burning question: Nintendo and Sony, I’m looking at you. When will we be able to run eccentric and niche music creation apps as official software on your machine? Imagine NitroTracker on the DSi download store or PSPSEQ and PSPRhythm on the Sony Store.

It’s not lost on me, either, that I’ve complained about Apple’s App Store approval for iPhone and iPod touch as being vague and inconsistent with a few apps, while Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft’s Xbox only allow a few apps to ever see distribution. But now that the game makers have online distribution, I wonder if that could change. Movie multiplexes once promised that, amidst a few dozen screens, one would show Bollywood and experimental film. Perhaps these stores could have an “enter at your own risk” category for homebrew. Sony, after all, is desperate to recover sales lost on its PSP. And I have to admit, I think homebrew is, sadly, partly at fault. Homebrew developers and users painstakingly document hacking steps because it’s the only way to get their software on the device – only to have the same system abused by people who don’t want to pay for games.

Korg came out with its DS-10 app for the Nintendo handheld officially, and it was an enormous, runaway success, spawning YouTube virals and entire bands. Now, granted, the app had a major commercial publisher behind it (AQ Interactive), adding credibility – but distribution was limited by the physical cartridge, and the app itself didn’t shy away from Big Boy, niche soft synth controls.

8-bit musicians will likely never touch the DSi, preferring the vintage Game Boy. But a few hard-core gamers are also hard-core handheld musicians. Underground is great, and there’s a certain ethos around hacking. But access isn’t such a bad thing. If just one advocate at Sony or Nintendo would consider it, I think wonderful things could happen.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see if it’s possible to get a DS homebrew music app running in an emulator on my Android.

Updated, for all time:

Readers are nearly 100% for judging this one. It was a fake. And the site with a really stupid name (hellohomo??) admits that it was faux.

Howard Stern Hoaxed! Beyoncé "Outtakes" Are Fake, Creator Admits [E! Online]

Wow, that may be the last time CDM links to E!

Lesson learned: yes, the Internet has the power to spread rumors at new speeds. It can also debunk them even faster. That’s something to pass along to the “get off my lawn!” crowd.

Okay, sound engineers and audiophile experts out there: it’s time to play “is this YouTube video real?” (And, heck, even if it’s not, it’s oddly hilarious.)

A recent episode of Howard Stern’s Sirius radio show claimed to expose a “leaked” feed of the raw vocals for Beyonce Knowles as she sang live on the Today Show. I could try to describe just what they sound like, but it’s really best to hear for yourself.

So, what’s the deal? You can hear the in-tune vocals in the background, as though they actually are bleeding into the mic. Does Beyonce have access to some super-secret, military grade version of Auto-Tune? Is the difference between her processed voice and her actual voice as comically radical as depicted in the ‘N Sync episode of The Simpsons?

I mean, I know – YouTube? Blogs? Howard Stern? The Internet? How much more credibility could you possibly ask for?

I’ll let you be the judge. For the record, the Today Show audience actually heard this.

Found via the brilliantly-domained Yes But No But Yes and Matt Ganucheau. YBNBY or whatever you want to call it describes the singing talentes here as “a parrot being sawed in half.” Hatebeak, an actual parrot trying to sound as though he’s being sawed in half and unofficial mascot of CDM, I’m sure you’re jealous.

Previously: the Great Van Halen Detuned Keyboard Incident.

Oh yeah, and you may want to download this video before someone has it removed.

And yes, hey, if it’s just a fake, it goes nicely with the "shreds" video meme. So bring it on.

Updated: Consensus is that it’s a beautifully-executed fake. (I’m inclined to agree – sorry, Mr. Stern.) And to think, we thought all this time the advantage of tools like Melodyne and Auto-Tune would be taking out-of-tune things and making them in-tune – ignoring the expressive potential of doing the reverse.

Britney, meanwhile? That’s another story.

Now, what I’m curious about:

Who faked this?

How did they do it?

Speculation?

Electro-Harmonix has made a quick-and-dirty vocal effects box. Usable parameters, good fun, and $200 – sure, it may not be the highest-fidelity vocal box ever, but what’s not to love? Our friend Collin Cunningham at MAKE gets the jump on this one.

It’s got some surprisingly unique features:

• 256-band vocoder “designed by the same EMS genius who made vocoding famous,” they say
• It will harmonically match electric instruments as well as vocals.
• 2- to 4-part harmonization, at the 3rd and 5th (labeled “Low” and “High” in case you slept through Music Theory class)
• 9 programmable presets
• Gliss
• Gender bender male/female formant mod (which actually sounds decent, and could be fun with instruments, as well)
• Mic pre, phantom power, balanced XLR output (thanks for not making this like a cheap consumer toy)

And the whole thing is built in NYC. I have to go see where they’re making these things.

I think this line is hilarious: “Diana Ross had the Supremes, Brian Wilson had the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk had The Robots. You have the Voice Box.”

Well, speak for yourself. I want the Kirnaires backing me up (matching sweaters and all) and I still want a Voice Box.

Above: proof you can have a product demo video that isn’t lame. (I’m looking at you, um … almost entire music instruments industry!)

EV appear to have seeded these to other folks to make some YouTube videos. You know what that means: it’s time for a really odd and wonderful cover of Knights of Cydonia. That’s funny, “No One’s Going to Take Me Alive” is the line I last used when I neglected to return a demo hardware loaner.

For an impressive, competing line of products, check out the TC Helicon line. They’ve recently offered up the smaller, stompbox-style Voicebox line, which nicely reduces their high-end effects to a smaller form factor. It’s a good time to be a vocalist shopping for gear.

Today, CDM is proud to announce a new feature to keep us competitive with fast-moving music technology coverage on the Web. It’s called “Industry Clipboard Connection,” and it allows us to fully connect you with the latest industry news by giving you complete, un-edited press release content, pasted up to the minute. And we kick it off with what I think is a really game-changing product that could change the relationship of vocalists to bands forever. Be sure to read the full press release for the complete details. Seriously. I think you’ll want to read to the end.

Sweetwater announces today the innovative Virtual Frontman plug-in:

(Fort Wayne, Ind.) – New addition to Sweetwater’s plug-in family brings true character to any vocalist -

Sweetwater’s Reasearch & Development Department, creators of such popular tools as the Talent plug-in, Guitar Racket, Minute Audio, and the Octavisor, has announced their latest addition to the Sweetwater family of professional music and audio tools, Virtual Frontman.

Virtual Frontman is a Mac- and Windows-compatible plug-in that supports Audio Units, MAS, VST, RTAS, Direct X, TDM, and 120-volt plug-in formats. The plug-in uses sophisticated proprietary runway modeling techniques to encode the vocal and behavioral characteristics of the world’s most iconoclastic rock frontmen onto any vocalist’s performance. According to Mark Hutchins, Sweetwater’s Assistant Director of Cable Ties, and the near-genius behind the idea of Virtual Frontman, “I’ve suffered for years with the uni-dimensional performances of the singers in my bands. I was looking for a simple, efficient plug-in tool that would allow you to add real excitement and charisma to a band’s vocals.”

Sweetwater’s R&DD utilized top-secret proprietary techniques to analyze the performance factors of rock music’s most charismatic frontmen, then concatenated the resulting data onto state-of-the-art Mead notebook paper (precision punched for mounting into a 3-ring binder) using a diamond-sharpened #2 pencil. No erasers were used when compiling the data. Don Delong, the Virtual Frontman Project Manager stated, “We spared no expense while compiling the data used to create Virtual Frontman. All pizzas we consumed during lunch breaks had double cheese, and were of the thick-crust variety.” 

Virtual Frontman works like any standard plug-in, and is compatible with any major or minor key DAW. The source vocal track passes into the plug-in, and is processed with a Multistage Attitude Adjustment Algorithm (MA3). Sliders are provided for imparting various amounts of up to ten different frontmen, ranging from Morrison to Mercury. In the future, Frontman Add-on Machismo Expander (FAME) modules will allow the user to add the attitude and behavior of a wide range of frontmen from the Country, Blues, Folk, Opera, and instrumental light jazz genres to Virtual Frontman.

Going beyond simple modeling, Virtual Frontman will turn any singer into the inappropriately arrogant, inebriated, immature, offensive stage nightmare you’ve been dreaming of for your recordings, and, using the optional VF Stage Dive adapter, for your live on-stage performances. Controls such as “Pitch Sense” will flatten the pitch of even the most rigidly in-tune vocalist, while the Maturity setting will bring a sense of true childishness to your singer’s behavior. The multi-parameter Stage Presence control can be used to take your singer from calm stasis to peripatetic stage domination. For after- concert situations, the Tear-down/Load Out preference setting will prevent your singer from straining him or herself by carrying more than a microphone or cable. If your singer is shy and retiring, the exclusive Verbosity control will make your singer as talkative as you desire, upping the annoyance factor on those long, late-night bus rides when you’re trying to sleep.

The high-resolution Egometer and Substance Abuse Blood Contents meters will provide instant visual feedback of your singer’s status, while the combination Pitch Correction/Artificial British Accent meter visually displays the results of critical parameter adjustments.

Virtual Frontman is also the first plug-in to offer Sweetwater’s patented Superficial Appearance Demarcation (SAD) technology. Using carefully calibrated Narcissism, Fashion Sense, and Hair controls you can tailor your vocalist’s look to exactly your specifications. Innovative controls such as Arrest Record, Political Activism, and Fidelity (selectable for Wife or Husband) will ensure your band’s appearance in the tabloid papers, while the Vocal Durability parameter will allow you to take a night off whether you want to or not. To further delay performances, the Latency control can make your singer anywhere from one to two hours late for your gigs and sessions.

Sweetwater founder and president Chuck Surack stated, “Ever since I founded Sweetwater nearly 30 years ago, I’ve been concerned that we’ve been unable to truly address the needs of bands with regard to their frontman, now we’ve got exactly the tool every band needs. I’m so proud of our new Virtual Frontman plug-in. This is the kind of technological innovation that could only come from Sweetwater.”

Sweetwater’s Virtual Frontman will be available in the 5th quarter of 2008, at a suggested retail price of $299. The optional VF Stage Dive live performance adapter will ship immediately following the plug-in, for $799. Additional FAME modules are expected to become available in early 2007.

For further news and information on Virtual Frontman, visit www.sweetwater.com.

Happy April Fool’s Day, everyone. I’ll admit, I wasn’t going to play, but this was too good to pass up. It reminded me of the true meaning of April Fool’s, in a sort of Scrooge-like reawakening. (PS, thanks to Mitch Gallagher at Sweetwater; the Sweetwater folks really did write the copy above and create the images. No foolin’.)