Late last year, Yamaha UK requested that the Yamaha Club and I produce a DVD presenting their latest flagship digital piano, the Clavinova CVP-509. The DVD included with the August / September 2010 of the Yamaha Club Magazine and other recent publications details the many wonderful features and musical qualities of this latest model.

This is my second promotional DVD following on from the earlier release covering the flagship keyboard the Yamaha Tyros3. I have been the editor for these promotional DVD offerings and also a set of three tutorial DVDs. In fact, publicly announced in the latest Yamaha Club Magazine is the fourth tutorial DVD I am working on with presenter Richard Bower. The DVD tutorials cover the basics of Yamaha keyboard and digital piano operation, ensuring that enthusiasts unlock the potential of their musical instrument.

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As much as I love my Apple iPhone 3GS, there is a lot of media resting in the devices storage that is simply yearning to be released to an audience. I have already reviewed a set of great earphones by Creative Labs, which are just wonderful for when you require a solitary music experience, but there is still the matter of sharing the entertainment within a room with your family and friends or for when you wish to dance around a bit to the melodic rhythms (don’t worry I won’t tell anyone if you don’t!).

The Creative ZiiSound D5 Bluetooth Wireless Speakers may have the answer, but not just for my iPhone, but other Bluetooth audio compatible hardware and anything else with a headphone socket. So that pretty much covers everything!

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Nearly a year ago, I played the Simon the Sorcerer theme on the Yamaha Tyros3 keyboard. Recently I taught myself another piece of gaming music nostalgia, this time from the classic puzzle game Lemmings. Using a bank of registration memory settings that I created, a Premium Style accompaniment, multipads, a range of voices and even a couple of Lemmings sound clips that I trigger with a foot pedal. I really hope you enjoy my latest performance.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:03 — 11.9MB)

Imagine my horror when I realised that I received earphones for review! The reason for this is I absolutely hate anything sitting inside my ear, but a man has to do what a man has to do. Hesitantly I inserted each earphone into its corresponding auditory opening and amazingly all my fears of discomfort and pain evaporated.

Next job was to whip out my Apple iPhone 3GS and hear the all important sound quality and so started my love affair with the Creative Aurvana In-Ear2 Earphones.

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When I first started playing around with my very first Apple iPhone, the first thing I noticed was the swish albums viewer in the iPod section. Scrolling along all the album artwork only to find there are many annoying gaps, where iTunes couldn’t locate the covers and it rather takes the shine off the whole effect. For anyone who uses Last.fm will also notice that when you scrobble your played music, the website will often make small corrections to artist names adding correct accents and eventually you admit to yourself the painful thought running through your mind of manually correcting your music library. Nightmare!

Thankfully there is a solution to your woes with TuneUp for use with Apple iTunes. This handy piece of software for the PC, Mac OS X, Tiger and Leopard will not only attempt to find missing music information and album artwork, but also suggest related music you may enjoy including videos from YouTube and if all this isn’t enough to whet your appetite there is even the option of searching for concert dates.

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