The new and improved Indaba Music comes fully loaded with features that’ll make online music collaboration simpler than ever before.  We listened to your feedback and gave you more control over how you use and experience Indaba. Plus, we gave you a killer online digital audio workstation!

In all, there are FIVE significant upgrades that we want to tell you about in this blog post.  They are:

- My Studio
- Sessions
- Membership Levels
- Community
- Session Console 2.0

For more info, check out the Help section, and head over to the What's New page to tour all of the new features!

My Studio

Quick Tour

New Features

With Your Studio Feed, you can keep track of all the activity in all your session in your dashboard.  You’ll have the ability to up your profile completeness with the links in My Checklist, and you’ll be able to see manage all your sessions straight from you’re My Studio page.  You’ll also find a brand new toolbar at the top of My Studio which easily enables you to create a session, edit your profile, find a friend, or create a blog post.

•   Keep track of your session activity with Your Studio Feed!
•   Up your profile completeness percentage with My Checklist!
•   Manage your Sessions!
•   Use the session toolbar to quickly explore Indaba!
  
  
  

Sessions

Quick Tour

New Features

Now you can dive into creating a session with just one-click from the My Studio page.  The user interface enables you to organize all your files, comments, and other session information in a clean and efficient way that will improve workflow and get you collaborating fast.  Our easy-to-use session toolbar enables you to launch the new Session Console, post a comment, invite members and more.  Now you can even invite non-Indaba members to join in the action with the invite by E-mail feature, expanding the scope of your collaborations.

     Start a Session with one click

•     Organize your session information with the new Session Feed
•     Create and manage with our easy to use Session Toolbar
•     Invite Non-Indabans to your session with Invite by E-mail

Membership Levels

Quick Tour

New Membership Options

Our Basic Membership is still free of charge.  With it you can own up to 5 public sessions and 1 private session - each with 100MB of storage space.  The Pro Membership now offers 10 public sessions and 3 private sessions - each with 500MB of storage space in each.  You’ll also be able to use the new Session Console offline in addition to online, and all this for HALF the price of the old pro membership - $5/month or $50 a year. Our new Platinum Membership will offer you unlimited public and private sessions with unlimited storage space in each for only $25/month or $250/year!

•    Basic Membership (FREE!)
•    5 public sessions, 1 private session, 100MB of storage in each
•    Pro Membership ($5/month or $50/year)
•    10 public sessions, 3 private sessions, 500MB of storage in each
•    Platinum Membership ($25/month or $250/year)
•    Unlimited public and private sessions, unlimited storage in each

Community

Quick Tour

New Features

With our brand new Community page, we’re introducing gadgets that will display contests, recommended collaborators, and much more to help you connect to the community.  You’ll have the ability to drag and drop these gadgets anywhere you’d like on your community page to organize Indaba according to your personal preferences.  We’ve also added a new profile completeness meter to encourage you to get the most out of the site, along with a new rotating image banner to keep you in the know about all the latest contests, Indablogs, and other happenings on the site.

•     Customizable Gadgets
•     Profile Completeness Meter
•     Rotating Image Banner
  
  
  

Session Console 2.0

Quick Tour

New Features

The new Indaba Session Console 2.0 allows you to record high-quality 16-bit sound files straight into your session.  No more need to save files locally!  The console includes non-destructive, real-time effects so you can mix your songs like the Pros, and our royalty-free loops library will give those of you who don’t have a full band at your disposal the ability to rock with the best of them!  If you are a pro or platinum member, you also have the ability to work both online and offline at your convenience.

•      High-quality recording directly to Indaba!
•     Real-time, non-destructive FX!
•     Royalty-free audio loops library!
•     Pro & Platinum Members can work offline!
  

We're committed to making Indaba Music the ultimate destination site for musicians. We've worked very hard to create an even better user experience for you and we hope you'll agree that these upgrades make it easier than ever for you to find people and make music online!  If you have any thoughts on how we can improve the site, please post your thoughts HERE, and if you have any feedback on the new session console, you can post your thoughts HERE.

Have Fun!

- The Indaba Music Team

From 12noon July 8th to 8am July 9th (ET), we’ll be taking Indaba Music down to install some upgrades and improve your experience on the site.  During this time, you won't be able to access the site, so please make sure you have everything you need. 

Don't fret, though:  once we're back up, you should find Indaba a faster, stronger, prettier place.

No, it's not your Roots remix.  It's Indaban, Philip Magnotti, who won - wait for it - another Grammy.  Magnotti recieved a Grammy for an album he mixed and mastered and took it home in the "Best Latin Jazz Performance" category.  From all of us at Inbada, congrats, Philip! 

Check out Philip's Indaba Profile and his recording technology site.  Do it!  He's a two-time Grammy winner!

Hey Indabans.  Just a quick reminder to enter our latest remix contest by July 14th at 11:59 PM.  This time a real prize is on the line - the chance to create the theme music for our podcast.  We've - well, Josh and Dan - have been working hard to line-up quality guests and we need some kicking theme music to along with the show.  You're remixing samples from one of our favorite bands, Jukebox the Ghost, who were cool enough to let us use their tracks free of charge. 

Now there are already a bunch of great submissions but I know you've got a burning desire to try your hand at it as well.  So, stop messing around and start messing around with these tracks.  Who knows, you just make have your name on the theme music for the most popular podcast in IndabaMusic history! (you also get an iPod shuffle)

I swung by the forums a few days ago and found some Indabans discussing the state of bass in modern rock songs.  I thought I should put it up here in case anyone might want to chime in.  Here is the first post in the thread, by Nikhil Goyal:

Hi! this is a discussion about the role of the bass in rock music and possibilities for innovative use. For some odd reason, the sound of the bass is always subdued and the bass play itself is nothing much to talk about in rock music except a few bands like RHCP. When i compare this with a band of old like Blind Faith (Clapton, winwood, grech), I find it weird. Any opinions on why i cannot hear the bass when i hear Nickelback, Hoobastank or Vertical Horizon? Seems like the bass is almost redundant . .

So, if you think you can add something head on over to the forums and make yourself heard. 

I'm fully aware that I am a week late on this news but I wanted to wait for the weekend to give it the most time on the front page.  Indaban JD Allen got an amazing review in last Sunday's NYTimes for his new album, "I am, I am."  The album is available Here and the full review article is here (the writer goes on to review 3 other new releases).  But here is JD's review, in full:

“I Am I Am” (Sunnyside), the new trio album by the youngish tenor saxophonist J. D. Allen, is redolent of serious jazz from the mid-1960s. But it’s not sentimental or glib; it’s dry, focused and compressed. More than half its tracks are under four minutes, and if you’ve listened to much serious jazz lately, that alone is a reason to be curious. In his mid-30s, Mr. Allen sounds as if he’s been through jazz pedagogy, but he’s not of it; the record is alive with the rhythmic slang and vernacular of the bandstand. (Gregg August is the bassist and Rudy Royston is the drummer.) Some of these tunes are based on small motifs, expanded in the style of Sonny Rollins; others are harmonic-motion exercises, expanded in the style of John Coltrane. Balanced somewhere between études and collective workouts, all the tracks contain nuggets of song, and Mr. Allen’s even, balanced sound works through them with remarkable care, never revealing too much or stiffing you on a good melody.

Let me be the first, and certainly not the last, to say Congrats, JD.  You've made all of Indaba proud to count you among our members.  You couldn't ask for a better review than that!  My hope is that one day I won't even post about positive Times reviews of Indaba members because they'll be so many, but for now, this is certainly exciting. 

After many weeks of hard work and participation from the Indaba community, Leo Laporte chose a new theme song for The Tech Guy Show and announced it on-air yesterday. With over 50 remixes to choose from the new theme will be a remix created by Indaba member Mdl Productions.

Make sure to check out Mdl's remix, the other final nominees David Glazier and Paul Minshall, and all of the entries! A big thank you to everyone involved, especially Ashley Witt for introducing us to Leo and providing the original sound files, Leo for being so enthusiastic about the project and to everyone who participated. We hope everyone had a great time, we certainly did!

Well, not just drummers; a whole band.  Check this idea from Indaban JA Recordings that he posted in the forums:

Pretty great idea, Juan.  If anyone is in for it, reply in the forum post.

From Matt Siegel's Blog

Thanks to everyone who submitted entires for the Leo Laporte Tech Guy challenge! We're excited to see how it turns out - a lot of hard work went into the submissions and everyone did a fantastic job.

Voting is now open for Indaba Music members, and we'll be letting you know about how voting will work for others in the next few days. Good luck everyone! Vote now!