BJ Leiderman, National Public Radio composer, told MacCentral that he writes all his music on the Mac. He formed his first band in elementary school — “The Lively Sound Dimension,” with his classmate, Chicago actor David Lively — and played in various regional bands in Virginia during college.
And that’s just the first of today’s music-related Mac sightings.
According to info on his Web site, it was while he was playing in one of these bands that he began writing jingles. In the Leiderman’s jingle demo tapes in his possession at the time that NPR was developing plans for a new morning news show. Then-NPR president Frank Mankiewicz heard the demo and commissioned Leiderman to write music for the new program, which debuted in 1979 under the name, “Morning Edition.”
His professional credits include jingles and soundtrack packages for several corporate and broadcast accounts, and music for many familiar public radio programs — including “Marketplace,” “Weekend Edition” and “Car Talk.” In addition, Leiderman has worked as a copywriter for such clients as “Nickelodeon,” “The Chris Rock Show,” and “The Christian Broadcasting Network.”
Asa Hopkins recently attended a concert of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra called “Film-Harmonic” with films accompanying live music. One of the short films was by Gus Van Zant (“Finding Forrester”, “Good Will Hunting”), called “Smoking Man,” accompanying John Adams’s “The Chairman Dances” from the 1987 opera, “Nixon in China.” And in the “Portland Oregonian” before the concert, Van Sant was quoted as saying that he had shot the video himself, then put together the movie with the video software that came on his Mac (i.e., iMovie), Hopkins reported.
In other music news, guitarist Stephen St. Croix, who knows a lot about cleaning up sound, thinks he can find out what was on the “18 1/2 minute gap” on the Watergate tapes by using his software and his Mac G3, according to a New York Times article. Thanks to Matt Gallagher for the heads-up on this one.
Local Toronto band, Promonium Jesters, use Macs, including, we’re told, a Power Mac G4, iBooks, and iMacs.
DJ Logic, the leader of Project Logic, uses an iMac. In fact, it was a Christmas present, reports Timothy Braun.
On the Web site of the band, Can, you can see one of the members of the band working on a PowerBook.
And the Dave Mathews Band uses iMacs, PowerBooks, and AirPort for on the road intranet. For details check out this Network Computing article.
The new A*Teens video, “Upside Down,” prominently features a G4 Cube, said Dave Zikovitz.
(If you’ve sent us an item for our Famous People column, please be patient. It will appear, but we’ve been swamped with entries. If you know of a famous person using the Mac, send it to Yours Truly at dsellers@maccentral.com. If you want credit for your “Mac spotting,” be sure to include your full name.)