New Quaverbox Site 2012

27 Nov 2011
This website is currently being reconstructed to include a new look, and a lot more resources! We hope to be ready in time for the New Year so come back early in 2012! read more...

Office Closed until 24 October

14 Oct 2011
We're closed from Fri 14 October to Mon 24 October. Any orders received will be shipped once business resumes. read more...

Attaching a Progression to a Melody

Jay asked, "I really want to find an easy way, if there is one. The question - If I have a melody, then how do I come up with interesting chord progressions for it?" read more...

Major and Minor

As musicians, we come across the terms 'major' and 'minor' everyday yet not many of us really know what they mean. read more...

How Much to Practise?

Most of us lead busy lives. If you're a student, there are exams and assignments. As an adult, it's even tougher - work commitments, raising children, etc read more...

Demystifying Diminished Chords

Basically, a diminished chord is a stack of minor 3rds. For those of you who have no idea what that means, you can work out a dim chord by starting at the root, counting up 3 semitones, playing that note, then count up another 3 semitones, and playing that note too. read more...

The Major 2nd Chord

In short, major 2nd chords are major triads with the major 2nd added, so a C2, for example, should be thought of as C E G + D. There are 4 inversions of this chord read more...
13.3" Macbook Pro and MobileMe

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Mac universe, the Macbook Pro (MBP) has been the flagship of the Mac laptops for some years now. Only recently though, the MBP has dropped significantly in price making it more accessible for students. Anytime one of my students mentions they're looking for a new laptop, I recommend the 13.3" MBP. From the moment you take it out of the box, everything just works! It comes with video and audio editing software, web design and photo management applications that is perfect for students wanting to create and record their own songs, make movies or create websites!

MobileMe is my personal computing "cloud" which in simple terms is my little 20GB share of some server somewhere where I can backup my files, share photo galleries, videos, etc. So for example, after a photoshoot, I can upload all the images to MobileMe for my clients to view and download. It's much more professional than loading up all the pics on Facebook! All the photos are of high resolution and downloadable too.

I'm allocated 20GB of server space for my files and images but a standard account also comes with 200GB data transfer bandwidth which means clients can download numerous large files from my account without exceeding any limits. I frequently share songs with students and edited videos with clients securely via MobileMe. All the videos on the Quaverbox site are hosted from my MobileMe server.

The real benefit of MobileMe though is that it synchs all my Mac hardware. Any changes to my calendar, contact list or emails that I make on my MBP are simultaneously updated on my iMac and my iPhone no matter where I am.

This is great for music teachers, keeping track of timetable changes, enquiries and student emails. The increase in my productivity and decrease in time wasted manually synchronising emails and calendar events far outweighs the A$10/month fee. I'd recommend the Macbook Pro to anybody who's serious about music, video and/or design work. And I'd recommend a MobileMe account to any Mac owner with more than one Mac in the house.

By the way, this entire site was designed and developed entirely on my 13.3" Macbook Pro.

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