How to get your song titles recognised in iTunes

Getting your titles recognised in iTunes is independent of which digital distribution/aggregator you use. iTunes gets its information from GraceNote.  You don't need to use CD Baby or any of the other service

1. You put your CD master in your computer and when iTunes kicks in and show you Track 1 Track 2 etc. - do NOT import into iTunes
2. Use File / Get Info to edit the titles of your tracks yet again, of course adding Artist information etc. 
3. When all this is done choose Advanced / Submit CD Track Names. 
4. There is a bit more to fill in the dialogue box - and this depends on the cross referencing with the Info you already completed. Gracenote does, for example, have a different categorisation of music genre than iTunes itself. 
5.  After you submit it, it takes 1 or 2 days to be accepted into the Gracenotes database. Next time you put your CD in, you should see it with the correct titles - and in case you think its remembered from when you edited on your computer, then try it on a different computer and you will see it really did work. 

You can register with Gracenotes http://www.gracenote.com/ but I actually don't think that registration is used at all in the process.

Buying Microphones on Ebay

I have now bought SM58 microphones twice on e-bay and twice refunded because they were fake. The conclusion to me is that if there is a new bargain on Shure SM58's the only thing you can be 'sure' of is that they are dodgy. Shure maintain a pricing policy in the USA, not legally maintainable in the UK but I am certain they will have their methods. 
The good thing about buying on e-bay and paying with PayPal is the buyers protection. In the first case I had bought 3 SM58s that turned out to be fake. There are plenty of websites that advise how to identify a fake SM58. The weight, the numbering on the pins of the XLR plug (often no numbers on the pins of the fakes) etc. PayPals conclusion was that I got a refund and must destroy the fake mics.
On the 2nd occasion, after winning the bid and paying, I noticed the same seller had sold a number of SM58s saying it was hardly used and to all intents and purposes a cut and paste. He used 2 different photos but the wording was identical on all. I then asked if he was sure they were genuine Shure product and related my previous experience - of course highlighting the destroyed mics. I had a refund by morning.
In fact the fake mic problem is not just the Shure SM58 but also the SM57 and a number of Sennheiser mics and earphones. These come fully branded, boxed and with all the paperwork - but they are still fake. If you fall victim to this you have full legal rights to get a refund but potentially could also have both the police and customs and excise on the case - though they probably would not be interested in small quantity counterfeit products.
With these microphones, probably if the price is too good to be true (50% - 70% of the new price) then it's wrong. 

Nord Electro 2

I recently updated my Nord Electro 2 samples - the organ sounds have always been great but I always hated the Swedish grand piano samples. Updating the samples from the Nord website (http://www.clavia.se) was something I never had time to do. When I did I got a bit of a fright as the downloadable software to do the update does not work on the latest operating system of either Mac OS or Windows. Fortunately I had a Mac server with an older operating system and did the updates from that. I now have the wonderful stereo sampled Steinway.

Lesson learned though: don't delay getting to know the downloads section for your instruments and synths.

Now to look at my Nord Lead rack - ah nothing - it's all analogue. Original patch set can be reloaded by SYSEX though. SYSEX uploads via MIDI are really old school but if you have old synths you will still need to stay with the ability to do this - another blog on that soon