An enraged Michael Jackson fan is suing the legendary singer's estate for allegedly tricking fans by releasing fake songs under his name. 



Michael Jackson Fan Sues Estate over Posthumous Album ‘Michael’, Claims Pop Icon Did Not Sing Lead Vocals...

As Fashion Times reports, the plaintiff, identified as Vera Sernova, has filed a class action suit in a Los Angeles court, claiming that three songs on the album, "Breaking News," "Monster" and "Keep Your Head Up," do not feature Michael's vocals, but rather a voice of an imitator.

Vera has also asked for the help of an audio expert, who backed her claims after a thorough analysis. Seeing that we have a class action suit at hand, if the accusations are proven to be truth in court, Jackson's estate will be ordered to pay everyone who had ever purchased the album, or any of the songs in question.


According to the same source, the Estate's attorney has claimed that Michael's vocals are featured throughout the album. Back in 2010, Jackson's children, Paris and Prince, have stated being "adamant" about Sony releasing fake music under their father's name.

Meanwhile, in 2010, prior to the release of the album-which included 10-12 never-before-heard songs from the late pop star - MJ's kids, Paris and Prince, have alleged that the songs Sony will be releasing are fake versions. They claimed that they were present while their father was recording many of the tracks and were "adamant" that the versions on the new album were performed by a sound-a-like, according to PerezHilton.

An insider reportedly claimed that five tracks in question were recorded at the home of producer Eddie Cascio in New Jersey, and Michael and his children stayed with him and his family for four months during recording in 2007.

Most musicians will cringe when thinking about the idea that the fine-tuning of their work could be taken over by software and automation. 

How can a code or algorithm adequately capture the nuances they envision in their work or understand the emotional impact an artistic creation can have on its beholder?

The truth is they can’t. But a computerized tool can get close, and close is sometimes good enough. The automatic editing filters on smartphone photo apps is an example: that picture of you and your sister having a snowball fight in the back yard may not have been the kind of subject matter the great Ansel Adams would have spent time capturing, but thanks to your pic editing suite you can make it look just like his work.

Out of Montreal, Canada, comes MixGenius, a 30-person firm offering a similar but more subtle product for audio. In late March the company emerged with a product called Landr, which allows musicians or audio engineers to master songs or audio files in minutes. The company snagged the Technovation Award at Canadian Music Week this year and is looking to raise growth capital soon.

Mastering is an important and sometimes time-consuming part of making music. It’s the process of taking the many strands of recorded sound, tweaking and optimizing them to be listened to in a mix together, and then creating a final version of the song or music from which high-quality copies can be made. The effort takes a lot of intense listening and sound manipulation by professionals.


According to MixGenius, the long wait-time and expense of mastering can be skipped altogether. Says CEO Pascal Pilon: “The bulk of the invention is figuring out the properties of the sound and understanding what needs to be done to it based on the eurythmics that sound engineers would apply.” The Landr algorithm is based on data, Pilon explains, and the company had to study how many different songs have been mastered, and picked up on patterns based on genre.

The product comes in large part from MixGenius co-founder and CTO, Stuart Mansbridge, who’d worked on automated music production at Queen Mary University in London—a school that had studied the sound mixing space since 2007. Customers upload their music or audio files to the company’s cloud where it is run through the mastering suite, then delivered back to the customer.

“We’re targeting musicians,” Pilon says, equating his company’s offering to auto-focus for cameras. Over 95% of songs that are recorded by amateur musicians never get mastered, he says. “People don’t have the money to do that. Nowadays mastering is an elitist process that only a few can manage to pay for. And it’s way too complicated for most people as well.”

As it stands, the company has about 10,000 users in 115 countries, 5% of which have paid to use the service. Costwise, 192 kilobyte-per-second(kps) Mp3 mastering is free, $9 a month allow for four tracks of .wav files plus unlimited 328 kbs mp3s, $19 allows for the mastering of unlimited .wav files. Separate mixes can be made on Landr optimized for headphones, for streaming or for playing in clubs. Pilon says MixGenius’s run rate should see the company pulling in $100,000 in revenue per month by year’s end.

Pro audio engineer and musician Gary Levitt, of New York-based Young Love Studio, was dubious at first, but came away from his first test of Landr with positive results. “It’s pretty amazing, and scary at the same time,” he said. Levitt ran songs from his own band, Setting Sun, through MixGenius, comparing the program’s mastering results to his own. “It does do a really good job for a computer. Not as good as a human, of course.”


Aside from better-than-expected results, Levitt also gave the nod to the service’s price point. “It’s so inexpensive,” he said. “Normally to master one song would be $25 minimum. But when you hire a human you get revisions, you get custom-tailored output.”

Pilon agrees that pro-artists are unlikely to entrust their final mixes to an automated process, rather will find a customer base among amateurs. “Those individuals will always prefer to sit next to the master engineer and jointly try to be creative at the mastering stage.”

On the horizon is an a la carte offering, as well as a basic music mixing platform that will be launched next year. By September MixGenius expects to emerge with a social sharing platform for music.

Pilon, who headed device testing firm Averna before its sale in 2013, took the reins last year after participating in MixGenius’s seed round alongside early stage investor TandemLaunch. “I gathered a number of tech entrepreneurs from Montreal, along with a well known VC fund here called Real Ventures and we raised a total of $4 million—or $3.5 million, excluding the pre-seed investment that was done by TandemLaunch.”

The company will be looking for capital again within the next 10 months, Pilon says, and has its sights set on attracting $5 million from U.S. venture capital investors.

If you want to see or hear Stevie Ray Vaughan playing acoustic guitar, you have limited options.

There's his 1990 MTV Unplugged appearance, his posthumously released recording of "Life by the Drop," "Oreo Cookie Blues" (a 1985 Lonnie Mack recording) — and, well, maybe a few other dribs and draps here and there.




Which is why this recently posted clip of Vaughan — you never see his face in the video, but come on — playing 12-bar blues in E (of course, it's really in Eb) on a six-string acoustic guitar is pretty special. The clip is titled "Lost Acoustic Blues."


According to the info posted along with the video, the source is a 1987 French radio and TV interview. The clip was posted to YouTube in May 2013.

Sorry we didn't notice it till now!

[Courtesy Guitar World]

Peavey is giving comic book fans the chance to win a Spider-Man Rockmaster guitar as part of a new giveaway.


The Spider-Man Rockmaster guitar features a high gloss finish on a basswood body. It also comes with a maple neck and rosewood fret board for playing, plus sealed tuner gears and an adjustable bridge to help keep the guitar in tune.


The guitar is part of Peavey’s line of officially licensed Marvel Universe instruments. Available exclusively from Peavey, the products feature Captain America, Thor, Wolverine, X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk artwork on guitars, percussion instruments and accessories.

CONTEST RULES: Only one entry per user. No purchase necessary. Entrants must be eighteen (18) years of age or older with no prior criminal record. This promotion is open only to legal residents of the United States, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium, and Luxemburg. Entrants must be over the legal age of majority in their country of residence.

Visit the contest entry page for more information.

In this remarkable ensemble, 23 of New York's finest low brass musicians join forces to perform a bass-quaking cover of Game Of Thrones' rousing opening theme music. 

If you weren't already excited for tonight's season finale, this ought to do the trick. Seriously, give it a listen. This will give you chills...




The ensemble includes 11 bass trombones, 6 contrabass trombones, 6 tenor trombones, 6 tubas, and 3 cimbassos. According to tuba and cimbasso player Andrew Bove, the idea for the cover was born about a year ago, when a few New York City low brass players got to talking about how fun it would be to record an epic piece of music with an "extra low" brass section.

The Game of Thrones theme, they decided, would be perfect. The biggest challenge, however, would be getting the necessary players together. "The idea," Bove writes, "almost never got off the ground." But then,

Two weeks ago, with the current Game of Thrones season coming to a close and the deadline approaching to release this track, they realized there was actually a 90 minute timeslot on a random Tuesday afternoon when 6 contrabass trombone players were all going to be free at once. It was time to do it.


Once you get six contra players in one place, you either run away fast – or join in. Seventeen other top orchestral and commercial NYC low brass players joined them, bringing the ensemble to 23 players, and this is the result.

Said result is, if you own a subwoofer, quite literally, earthshaking. Really loving the incorporation of other instrumental themes from the show, most notably that of the White Walkers.

You'll want to listen to this one at as high a quality as you can (YouTube's audio quality corresponds to the resolution at which you watch the video.)

Turn up the bass on your home speakers, or listen through a good pair of bass-friendly headphones.

Arts degrees have inherited a reputation of lacking value beyond the graduation ceremony. Although the validity of this belief is not firmly set in stone, many would likely agree that the stigma exists.

This in mind, it’s probably unsurprising that a music degree — particularly one focused on performing — can fit the bill, to pay the bills.

For music students, it is a reality immediately acknowledged. “We kinda went in already knowing that we won’t be super loaded,” Lillian Liu, (a recent graduate of the University of British Columbia Music School), said, mentioning that one of her biggest anxieties is trying to find her place in the future. She also jokes that the question of “Why don’t you actually get a degree that’ll feed you?” is a common topic of conversation among her friends.

As if the lack of an ensured income is bad enough, Clare Yuan, a UBC PhD student in music, claimed that the commitment alone is tougher; the road to where she is now has been paved with fearful mentors, strong self-doubt and harsh competition at the Manhattan School of Music.


“After [graduating with] my degree, I was having trouble performing … going through two years of fear going to your lessons … you do anything wrong, your teacher’s like ‘Why are you even here? You should just never touch piano again.’ They’re not afraid to insult you.” Yuan also claimed that for a while after finishing her masters, it became physically difficult to perform due to the stress... I wasn’t even sure I would be able to perform again,” she said.

Liu has had her share of tribulations as an undergrad as well, mainly related to time management. “I think my longest session was about 14 hours. I felt like death afterwards.” At one point she had put herself out of commission for a few months due to the strain placed upon her fingers from playing piano.

Despite these reasonably scary risks, music students and grads settle on believing that performing in music provides something a lot deeper for them than money.

“Whether or not you could choose to do music later, you can still get a greater understanding of life from it,” Liu said. She also added that the stress of her work has helped her become a more disciplined person.

“If you keep the momentum going and strive to celebrate and share what you can do, then it’s isn’t useless because of what you give and get back in terms of reception — it’s really gonna drain you if you don’t think that this is all worth it.”

Yuan shared the same notion, but also notes that there are still many other options for people in the field who want a more secured position.


She also has some advice for those who have recently graduated with a music performance degree: “I recommend to perform as much as possible, get your name out there. Of course it’s also for your own experience as well.”

As for the thoughts of non-music students on the issue? Ashley Mao, a theatre student but also an avid music performer on the side, does not believe in any degree being more disadvantaged but rather dependent on the person. “If you think you have the ability to do something great, it doesn’t matter what degree you have,” said Mao

Thierry Bahuch, a political science student, also agrees that it’s a matter of perspective. “If you’re looking in terms of income, then obviously a music degree is not as valuable as commerce or engineering.”

Kimberly Wogan, a sociology student, thinks that music degrees do not provide much benefit for life pursuits outside their field but nevertheless, should not hinder their road to success. “I would define a successful musician as someone who manages to continue to pursue their love of music despite the hardships they encounter, [or] at least to always remember why they’re doing it,” Wogan said. “I feel as if people should pursue their passion in life. A life without doing what’s meaningful to you is empty.”

A band’s performance was cut short when the lead guitarist collapsed from a heart attack! 

But as luck would have it, a fan in the front row was also an emergency room nurse. 

Thursday was the first time Michael Tiffany, 61, and Stephanie Stubbings met since the night in April when a fan recording a favorite band found herself on stage trying to save a life.




“The last thing I remember is walking into the bar after I left the hotel room to go play,” he said. Michael is back playing the guitar after a gig that nearly ended his career and his life.

 “Basically they said, you were playing and you just went straight backwards just like if you were to cut down a tree,” he said. Amateur video shows Michael on the guitar as his band, the Andromeda Project, played at a Manteca nightclub. He finishes his solo strong, and then: “My knees didn’t buckle; it was just bam,” he said.

Stubbings met Tiffany for the first time in with him in an upright position. An ER nurse for 17 years, Stubbings was at the Islander Bar that night as a fan of the band. “I was holding my phone and filming it and I got his solo then as soon as he went back and I just turned it off,” she said.


Michael had avoided seeing the video of his fall until Thursday’s meeting. With no pulse, Stubbings started chest compressions amid the chaos on stage. Without CPR, it’s likely he would have died on the stage that night. The fire department arrived 12 minutes later and put him on an automatic defibrillator that shocked his heart back into rhythm.

 “There’s no doubt she saved my live,” Michael said. Now, with the rhythm of his heart back, he is grateful on that night he had a fan who knew what she was doing when she rushed on stage. “When you see somebody like that jump in there and knew what to do and is the reason I’m here it’s just really cool,” he said.

Michael says his doctor has given him the OK to play again on stage. He’s a little nervous, but he says he’s determined to finish that performance that was cut short. Stubbings says she’ll be there.