mike’s music pages

Americolor Opera Alliance, Inc. African American Voices – Our Legacy through Word and Song, Arranged by Sharon J. Willis. Sunday, February 28, 2010.
Dinner at 5:00 PM.  Show begins at 6:30 PM.
Dinner Theatre Tickets ~ $50

Theatre Tickets ~ $20
at
Historic Friendship Baptist Church
437 Mitchell Street, SW
Atlanta, Georgia 30013-1423
For more information or to purchase tickets please visit the Americolor web site.
Email: americolorpr@yahoo.com
Phone: 404.917.4137

African Attire requested but not required

Do you have musical ideas in your head that you want to record? Do you want to compose your own music? Do you feel a creative impulse? Do you want to know what your music would sound like if you had a band to play it?

You can make your own music, and you don’t have to hire a band to play it. There are plenty of computer tools available that will help you make your own music.

When I decided that I wanted to make my own music I spent money on stuff that I did not need. I did not know how to start, so I bought something that did not fit my purpose. This article will help you avoid the mistakes that I made. Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who play piano, it would be really nice to put a concert grand piano in your music room, but unless you have plenty of space and plenty of money, you cannot put a grand piano in your house. Some of you would probably like to have more than one piano. I know I would.

Grand pianos cost tens of thousands of dollars, but alternative keyboards start in the hundreds and some produce remarkably good piano sounds. There are also some very good sampled pianos available for your computer that you can use with your keyboard that will fool all but the most discriminating ear. Read the rest of this entry »

You may have heard about Band-in-a-Box from PG Music, Inc. It is the best tool I know of for quickly creating original music. Band-in-a-Box is designed to help you quickly generate musical accompaniments or complete songs. To make a song you just select a key, set the tempo, select a style and enter your chords.  There is a Band-in-a-Box for Windows and a Band-in-a-Box for MAC. Band-in-a-Box is an affordable, effective tool for creating original music quickly for making practice tracks, backing tracks, or complete songs; and it costs much less than the other digital audio workstation (DAW) programs that I use. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m looking forward to the Metropolitan Opera HD broadcast of  Offenbach’s Les Contes D’Hoffmann on Saturday, December 19, 2009. The broadcast starts at 1:00 PM Eastern time.  There is a list of theaters where you can see the broadcast on the  Fathom Events web site. Scroll down the page until you see “PARTICIPATING THEATRES.” You should also check your local theater listings to confirm that it is actually being shown at a particular theater. I plan to view it at Cinemark’s Tinseltown 17 in Fayetteville, GA.

If you love opera, then you owe it to yourself to catch these Met broadcasts. The tickets are about $20, you have a good comfortable seat, you can see and hear everything with no problem, and you can stuff your face with popcorn if you like.

They also conduct interviews during the intermissions with singers, producers, directors, set designers, costume designers, and other people who contribute to the productions. I think this is great for students.

Oh, by the way, you can also download the cast sheet and synopsis from the Met’s web site.