Gillies » GarageBand

Acoustic FourTrack with Effects

Gillies — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:31:51 +0000

I added effects to my recent FourTrack creation. Fun!

Yes, I Believe It’s Music

Gillies — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:48:01 +0000

I tricked out my first experiment with FourTrack, an iPhone app that is hooking me right now. On top of the four vocal tracks of yours truly (loaded into GB as WAVE files via FourTrack), I put on one bass track, two GarageBand drum tracks, some GB Lunar Strings, and some guest vox from FBdN son #1.

It’s a close call, but I think this qualifies as music, as in “the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.”

Musical Microblogging: Tricked Out Grid Number 8

Gillies — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:57:24 +0000

I feel like I’m running a bit out of steam with using SoundGrid as a jumping off point for musical microblogging. Perhaps the thing to do is to learn how to use the app for real.

Anyway, here’s Grid Number 8.

On top of the SoundGrid noises, I added one “lunar strings” part in GarageBand, along with two guitar tracks. For the solo part, I used the “Jazz Club” effect settings. “Dreamy Texture” was what I put on the other one.

Tricked Out Grid #6

Gillies — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:58:56 +0000

Here’s Grid #6, with a couple of tracks layered on in GarageBand: two bass parts one guitar part, one piano part, and one recording that I made while riding up the escalator out of a Metro station.

On top of the SoundGrid track, I layered on GarageBand’s “Wave Bass” effect. I also made use of the “Filter Bass” and “Seventies Bass” effects on the bass tracks, along with the “Lowdown Blues” set up for the guitar part.

Back in the Saddle with the MBox

Gillies — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:09:34 +0000

This announcement at Digidesign.com freaked me out a bit:

The newly released Pro Tools 8.0.1 software will be the last version of Pro Tools to support the original Mbox (Mbox 1). Future versions of Pro Tools software will no longer support the Mbox.

I somehow took that to mean that my Mbox wouldn’t work anymore at all. But since I’m not using Pro Tools, there’s not really a problem. All I needed to do was upgrade the driver for Digi Core Audio Manager. Then I was back in business with the MBox and GarageBand.

So I added a guitar track to my recent SoundGrid creation.

Musical Microblogging: Grid Number 5

Gillies — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:05:22 +0000

This is a bit of a better outing with SoundGrid, I think.

The way this happened: first, I recorded 20 seconds using the SoundGrid app. Then, like last night, I pulled it into GarageBand, only this time I tricked out the MP3 file with a GarageBand delay effect. Then I layered on the GarageBand sounds, including some Jazz Organ and one of my favorites, Lunar Strings.

Musical Microblogging with SoundGrid and GarageBand

Gillies — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 02:14:57 +0000

This morning, SoundCloud sent out a tweet touting its integration with SoundGrid, an iPhone app that lets you create music. Well, I got all excited and dropped three bucks for the app. Then on the bus, I fiddled around.

Let’s just say I have a long way to go with all this. Here’s the bus fiddling (the higher pitched noise) with some GarageBand flailing layered on top. I can’t wait until I can start plugging my guitar into the computer again.

Transit Sounds

Gillies — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:52:51 +0000

Two items this evening.

That interview with Andy Partridge may or may not send me on an XTC Bender. I’ve just imported “Nonsuch” into my iTunes collection. There’s a record I listened to quite a bit back in college, and here, courtesy of Chalkhills, is probably all you’ll ever need to know about it.

I’ve been seriously neglecting my musical microblogging. Part of that is that I can’t hook up my MBox to the computer because of operating system issues. This evening, however, I went ahead and put together something. First, I recorded about a minute’s worth of Washington Metro sounds. Then I fooled around a bit with GarageBand. The bass track in here is an Apple loop, by the way. I wish I could play bass like that.

GarageBand: Close but No Guitar

Gillies — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:18:48 +0000

I picked up my copy of Snow Leopard on Friday and also sprung for the iLife and iWork upgrades.

The new software all seems nice, GarageBand in particular. The only bummer, as I was alerted to by MPomy, is that it looks like Avid M-Audio products don’t work yet with OS X 10.6. I fiddled around anyway, sort of hoping the software gods would somehow permit my M-Box to work with the shiny new GarageBand ’09. Nope. Not happening.

So, as a consolation prize, I bought myself a GarageBand guitar lesson, the one with Sting teaching “Message in Bottle.” Hope it’s worth the five bucks and the 699 MB file size .

UPDATE: It was worth the five bucks.

World Premiere: FBdN’s 072709

Gillies — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:59:57 +0000

This one could probably use more work, but sometimes you have to just let it rip.

The novelty for me here was hooking up my Boss ME-50 multi-effects pedal to the Yamaha keyboard. That made for some fun, I-wish-I-was-Matt-Holford style noodling. The Yamaha comes out pretty faint in this project, but it’s there. Oh yes, it’s there.