MW2005--The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus

Last evening we, along with a group of media members, were treated to a preshow visit with the band Spin Doctor and the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, a moblie digital media studio. The Bus is named after the Beatle John Lennon and it is outfitted to produce digital music with virtual instruments, to edit audio, to edit video and to produce DVDs. The Lennon Bus visits high schools and other institutions across the country where they take videos, produce a song and produce a DVD of the video and audio tracks in a contest that educates young people on the recording business. Here is it's schedule through April.

The Lennon Bus is set up in a corner of the exhibit hall and bands will play there during the day, the first up being the Spin Doctors. A new USB vitual guitar, i.e. it produces sound through software on a PowerBook from its USB connection, the iGuitar was demonstrated along with Roland virtual "drums". The virtual drums were also hooked up via USB to a PowerBook and both PowerBooks played back through large loud speakers. The latentcy, according to Patrick Cummings of Brian Moore Guitars, is down to 0.6 milliseconds as opposed to 3 milliseconds in a traditional midi-instrument. [Bill Fox]