As a musician, I’m more of a performer than a recorder. Although I have been in studios many times, I simply don’t have the patience and attention to detail that you need for making a good recording. A lot of the problem has been with the interface – too techie, too user-unfriendly, too time-consuming. But yesterday, as a reward to myself for having worked hard on The Beowulf Effect: Fossils, Evolution and the Human Condition (my forthcoming Enormotome for the University of Chicago Press) I found a USB cable and connected a keyboard to my iMac so I could play with GarageBand, Apple’s proprietary sound recording, composition and arranging device.
This was a revelation. Within a couple of hours I’d recorded this jazz-funk noodle, now entitled Theme from Cromer 5-0: Just click on the word ‘funkster’ and a track should come up on Soundcloud (with thanks to Mr J. McQ. of Hackney for the tech advice.):
If the embedding doesn’t work you can listen to it here. Don’t be cruel, it’s a ‘work in progress’.
What follows is the technical part, for geeks ricardipus Benoit those interested in that sort of thing. I triggered all the sounds over USB from my Korg TR61, but all the sounds came from the computer.
I used six tracks – bass drum, snare drum, electric bass, clavinet, jazz organ and lead synth. I modified the organ and the synth sounds to give the sounds a bit more welly, but I really didn’t need to – the quality of Apple’s in-house samples is astonishing (I know not the technicalities of these things, but I suspect that the sounds are modelled rather than sampled.)
The jazz kit and finger-style electric bass ‘breathed’ in a most lifelike way. The Hammond sounds as good as my Hammond XK-1 keyboard that I take to gigs. My only beef was that I couldn’t find a Leslie cabinet simulator anywhere. The clavinet sounds almost as good as the real thing. I have yet to hear a clav sound that authentically recreates the sproingy creaking sound of the mechanism, but the trade-off is fair – many years ago I ruptured a disc lifting a Clavinet/Pianet Duo into the back of a car, and the injury has since come back to haunt me. The synth sound – well, it sounds almost as good as Jan Hammer’s MiniMoog on one of my favourite albums, Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live.
I played all the tracks ‘live’ (rather than putting in note values stepwise) and managed to correct for timing really easily – like everything else with Apple, the GarageBand user interface really has a very shallow learning curve. You can look at each track either as a music score or a ‘piano roll’ and can edit, delete or move around each note with the mouse. Easy as peasy. Easier, in fact.
And it took no more than two clicks of a gnat’s semiquaver to load the thing onto iTunes at super-high quality, and hardly more fiddling than that to share my efforts with you. Isn’t technology wonderful?
Yes.
That’s the spirit.
I’ve been thinking Cromacrox is a king in terms of technology.
Nice. Love the fists full of clavinet.
And thanks for the GarageBand review – I’d heard good things about it before, but nothing recently. Jr. Ricardipus #1 is making his own movies these days and has pretty much exhausted my back catalogue for soundtrack music. So I’m mooting recording more, but definitely looking for a solution without all the faffle of MIDI cables and mixers and running audio and MIDI simultaneously etc. etc. etc. GarageBand sounds like it would do the trick nicely… I would, of course, need to buy a Mac though.
Not that that’s an impediment, of course. As long as you get through the screening process, that is.
If you don’t want to get a Mac, there is also a GarageBand app on the iPad and it’s the Mutt’s Nuts. The organ on that does have a Leslie simulator. I believe that you can get a dongle to connect a proper keyboard to it, too.
On the Mac version at least you can overdub real instruments, and on both versions you can plug in a guitar (not sure how) and use the virtual stomp boxes. What’s more you can make podcasts really easily and load them to iTunes.
@rpg – do you use GarageBand for the LabLit podcast?
Guitar can be plugged in direct (with a 1/4in-mini adapter), but sound is crap; There are cheap A/D converters that do a great job, or else digital outputs from amp simulators like the Line 6 doohickies)
Nice! Bringing recording to the masses. The old synths are particularly nice. I’ve been planning to plug in my Ultra Swede via my Line 6 X3 Live on the JCM900 Silver setting (techie enough?), but I’d have to justify the time to my grant writing/paper writing/family (not in that order). I did however use the DJ kit to assemble with preset patches these floor-thumpers (also works very much in embryogenesis): http://soundcloud.com/bbruneau/aceeed, http://soundcloud.com/bbruneau/supa-dupa
Stompin’ – I guess you’re the DJ for departmental club nights. I liked the analog synth textures in Supa Dupa.
Yes, your gear is far too techie for me. What’s a Super Swede?
Re stompin: thanks. I now use the iPad DJay app, which really is like having 2 technics turntables.
Re Hagstrom guitar; very nice quality Les Paul clone (Zappa played one), and conveniently comes in lefty (for me; not of a lot of choices in the electric guitar world for lefties). Super Swede is what I used to have; the Ultra Swede is a newer model; mine looks a bit like this http://www.hagstromguitars.de/fileadmin/_hagstrom/images/news/Start/UltraSwede_SM_Big2.jpg
actually more like this: http://www.performing-musician.com/pm/may09/images/hagstrom_2.jpg
Of course – it’s a guitar! Now the Line6 reference makes sense!
Indeed, yes.
Ah… it seems that Traverson might do the trick for me. And I’ve got a nice little A/D/A interface from my previous setup (an M-Audio Transit), so I’ve got the audio input sorted (providing, that is, that the updated drivers work).
And thanks for the SoundCloud tip, Henry (and Benoit). Looks like a very handy place to put some old (and new?) pieces.
Updated drivers! Ha! PC world nonsense. You do need a Mac, and you need it now. So does your F1, to edit movies properly. These are not the droids you are looking for.
Ricardipus – I’m with Benoit here. This isn’t just Mac prejudice. Having tried both sorts (country AND western) I can say that things are just so much easier with Macs. This may not matter if you have a fairly high tolerance for tech, though, which I don’t.
I’ve also been playing with the GarageBand on my iPad. If GarageBand on the Mac is impressive, GarageBand on the iPad is completely beyond teh awesomesauce. I’ve seen many things that promise a complete recording studio in a portable package, but they usually suffer from a fiddly interface. Not so GarageBand for the iPad. You really have to try it to appreciate it.
Benoit, Henry – thanks and yes, I’m sold on the idea of the Mac as both video and audio production tool (I am also old enough to remember when it completely dominated these areas… Cubase anyone?).
In the meantime I’ve
stolenborrowed your idea and SoundClouded myself with some ancient tracks (for now):http://soundcloud.com/tyn-lon
Plenty of soundtracky listening pleasure. Thank you, Ricardipus. Now I can haz Garageband, and Mr J. McQ. of Hackney has told me about Soundcloud, I can start work on an album to be released under creative commons around the time of my fiftieth birthday next spring. It’ll be called Songs in the Key of L.
News just in – Mr N. H. of Trunch alerts me to a plug-in for GarageBand that adds all sorts of effects and amp simulations – including a Leslie speaker simulator. Top man, Mr N. H.!
Bugger. “Traverso”, of course.
Sounds like something Stevie Wonder rejected ca. 1969
I’ve just used GarageBand to prepare an M4A podcast with images of slides, too. Really easy and intuitive. Bit slow to export though. Probably due to my using a MacBook Pro CoreDuo…
How do you get images into Garageband???
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