Category: World Music

I recently got a week-old iPod nano for my wife that has some songs on it – 165 songs to be exact. All of the songs are in the MP3 format. Not a single tune was in the MP4 format – a proprietary format Apple created that produced better fidelity during the compression process.

Since the iPod nano was sold to me in good faith, I was, now, the rightful owner of the device as well as all the contents of it, right? Just like when you bought a house and the seller agreed to give to you all the furnitures and fixtures inside, you are the rightful owner of everything inside the house, correct?

Not so in the complicated world of licensing, music rights, the RIAA, music delivery formats, interfaces and the ever-changing realm of the computer industry.

Apple and iTunes brought a bit of peace of mind to music executives by paying them their dues for every song bought via the extremely popular iTunes Music Store. Apple admits they don’t make any money from the iTMS but from the device that feeds off it — the fad that became a must device for music lovers: the iPod.

The iPod, however, ‘syncs’ exclusively to the first computer you install iTunes and put songs on. If you want to sync it to a different computer, it will tell you that “it will delete all the songs on your iPod and put the songs from the new computer to your iPod.” Or, basically, you will have to reformat your iPod so that the ‘new’ computer with a different song compilation that you want transferred to your iPod, can do it without violating any music industry regulations.

But, what if all the songs on the iPod are all mine anyways? I bought all the CDs, rip them and just transferred them to my iPod (which I also bought)? All I want is just to move them all across my three (3) computers in the house?  Can’t I just transfer those songs on the new iPod to any of my existing PCs with iTunes without reformatting the iPod?

Here’s where the software iLinkPod really shines. It creates a folder called ‘iLinkPod’ on both the Mac and the iPod once you installed the software and hit the ‘Link’ button. You can then simply copy all the music files in those folders (F00, F001, F002 etc) – inside the iLinkPod folder to your hard drive. That done, yes, you can now reformat your iPod to sync with the computer of your choosing and just add the songs later on to your music compilation!

iLinkPod not only empowers the rightful owners of music but also serves as a very useful tool in case your PC crashes…and would like to re-create your music compilation on that just-fixed-up Mac or PC!

– – – notes:

You can download this very useful software (Mac version only) at:

www. ilinkpod.com

 

With a voice that seems to caress my heart of hearts
A yearning for the joyful years I had in my youth
The magical days that appear to last forever when I
First learned how to fall in love

Times when I was prayerful and remembered the bad
Things that had been painful memories of the past
All seem to disappear when the sound of your gentle voice
Soars in the air like a gentle salve

Boyhood memories from the shores of Bahia
Gave the world some of its beautiful Tropicalia
Singing in one of the harmonious languages known
The lyrics of your songs mystifies one’s existence

Lay me down to sleep or even see me to my grave
As I close my weary eyes with happiness in my heart
Gentle melodies by Santo Amaro’s gift to humankind
Caetano Veloso, please sing for me unto the afterlife

-Kupitero

Our feature for next week’s iRadio broadcast. This is just one in a series of albums that started in 1990 and showcased the world’s best Brasilian/jazz musicians, in support for the search of a cure for AIDS. Very noteable was the combo of Astrud Gilberto and George Michael – as well as Everything But the Girl’s rendition of Tom Jobim‘s classic, “Corcovado“.

Once in a while, we are in the hunt for music we had loved listening to – maybe, all throughout the years of our existence. What compounds the problem is the ever-changing mode of

recording music. It seemed that only a few years back, I was either listening to vinyl records or to 8-track tapes (and yes, even the “reeled” ones).

The latter was immediately replaced by cassette tapes while the former lingered on for a while even as the ‘digital media’ formats slowly trickled in –led by the CD.

Digital Audio Tape (DAT) tried to regain the glory days of tapes – in digital format – but the mechanism was simply too cumbersome to make DAT players a commercial success, such that almost all of the digital tape formats fizzled out.

Now that digital media is the norm, we have all sorts of storage devices for them. But the principle is the same: Music now resides as mere “ones” and “zeros” in whatever form of digital storage there is: hard drives, flash memory, MiniDiscs, CDs, DVDs, etc, etc.

But this blog is not about the medium of storing music but about the jazz/fusion group called Caldera.

I can still vividly recall that it was in the mid-70s when I was listening to their unique kind of music. Theirs was an eclectic blend of jazz/Brasilian/Flamenco and probably, New Age.

The core members of the group were Costa Rican guitarist Jorge Strunz (another guitarist, Ardeshir Farah, later teamed up with him and they are now popularly known as ‘Strunz and Farah’), a keyboardist from Argentina, Eduardo del Barrio and drummer Carlos Vega.

The other members also came from countries in South America plus some musicians that performed with the group, Earth, Wind and Fire. Then young and unknown but now extremely popular, Diane Reeves also performed as vocalist for the group – most notably in the very melodious and mystical track, “Ancient Source.”

Yes, it was in the era when cassette tapes and vinyl records were king. Now, I want to listen to some of their songs again and put it in my iPod. But I seem to have a hard time searching for their recordings in the easiest-to-find (and legal) digital format on the Internet: original CD versions of their albums. Since they were just an obscure group which disbanded a long time ago (1979), there were very, very few releases (remastered) of their albums in CD –when this medium became the standard in the early 80s.

Of course, I can simply ‘digitize’ my cassette and vinyl collection of their recordings. But, the procedure is not only too tedious, but, also, the end-product is not ‘digitally perfect’ compared to the commercial CD versions. For me, the CD is still the cheapest and easiest medium to ‘juggle’ digital music around. I may have to do it the hard way if my search for their CDs on the web proved futile.

Until then, I will have to content myself listening to their unique brand of music –plus the ‘noises’ we usually associate with recordings done in analog format.

I am simply dying to hear the unadulterated, digital version of their recording, “Seraphim” (from the album, “Sky Islands” – 1977, Capitol Records).

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This is the CD that we will be featuring this weekend (hopefully) in my iRadio webcast. I purchased this personally from the popular CD store in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro and it was very, very close to the pub/restaurant (fomerly known as Valhala) where the late maestros, Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, composed the bossa nova standard, “Girl from Ipanema.”

The store is called “Toca de Vinicius”. Not because Vinicius de Moraes started or opened the store but because it was located in a street named after Vinicius — Rua de Vinicius de Moraes. Literally, it meant, “Place of Vinicius.”

Ze Renato is a prolific performer who first attracted my attention when I saw him performed in one of the numerous shows that paid homage to Tom Jobim.

His voice seemed to yearn for the better days that had passed — like a reminder of the times when people seem to be simpler, more humble and more gentle.

It is interesting to note that former Pat Metheny Group percussionist, Armando Marcal, was also the lead percussionist in all tracks. Most of the songs were composed by Ze Keti and the CD was dedicated to Nara Leao.

Gotta love iTunes new version 2.5. Apple is pushing the envelope for more and more sassy features in their industry-leading

music software. I basically got it for the “free downloads” (just one song – and spoon-fed by Apple and, only for one week…but, well…free is free and no matter what genre of songs they give for free, I can still gladly pack them into my barely filled iPod), to commemorate last year’s launch of the iTunes Music Store.

Notable new features were: Shuffle Play and Lossless Encoding. But, what I liked best was the new “Publish-Your-Own-Playlist” feature.

iTunes enabled me to hook up once again to most of the songs I basically grew up listening to. Since most of my music collection were in LPs and cassettes (a sure giveaway of the era I grew up in), and most of them I had either long lost or given away, iTunes enabled me to ‘rediscover’ those songs and now, have a fairly decent ‘reconstruction’ of those music that I had come to love listening to!

—link:

www.apple.com