Have too much gear and no time to read all the Owner’s manuals?
I will use the text to speech processor built into all recent versions of Adobe Acrobat - Open up a new PDF User manual and let the computer read it out loud to me. I may use my 900MHz wireless headphones and be mobile around the house.
If I’m doing other tasks, (like cleaning, laundry, bachelor stuff) In this manner I can grasp functional concepts of the new gear much faster, then - when I’m finally able to sit down and play with it later - i have a head start as I use “Find text” in Acrobat to fine tune my knowledge and master the unit in question.
FWIW - the Mac with OSX (and any IOS5 device - iPhone, Ipad, Ipod Touch) can read aloud any text you highlight on the screen , and read entire documents with a much clearer voice I can understand 90% of the time I do that all the time - rather like having a “books on tape” version of my all my Owners manuals.
Prior to my iPhone, i would make MP3 recordings of these - so i could listen on headphones at work at my day gig.
But the recent IOS5 has a method of enabling text to speech right on the device.
But we’re too busy listening to the music that we can’t write properly because we’ve got so much gear we haven’t time to read the manuals for. So we can’t hear it. Totally ruins the sh…workflow.
Agree. The notion that the musician can be everything: all music, engineer, producer, marketing…something has to suffer, rather, each discipline suffers from dilution and improper attention. They used to hire a seperate guy to play the tamborine.
I speed read faster than I can be read to.
Side note. I used to work for an organization that recorded text books for blind kids. Many of the kids used to play back the text books at 2x even 4x - their equivalent of speed reading.
Tambourine. Very valuable instrument. The machine hasn’t been invented that will emulate it. Under-rated and heard all over the best music of the 20th century. One should ONLY use a separate guy to play it.
Only downside is it hasn’t got a manual to instruct the casual musician on the 8 + ways it can be played.
Years ago here in Oz, we played some shows with Bo Diddley and he had a ‘dedicated’ tambourine player he picked up travelling with him. She could’nt play for shite but was great looking, ‘was some sort of a ‘comfort’ thing for ol’ Bo on lonely nights… !
Totally ruins the sh…workflow.
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