Garage Band Magic

[kbeartx]

Late last night / early this morning, I was playing around w/ Garage Band 08, which has a nifty feature called MagicGarageBand wherein you select a style of music and can choose among several options for the instruments in your 'band', and some of the instruments have options as well.  Anywho, after messing w/ the choices for a few minutes I had a groove I felt was workable, then moved it into 'GB proper' so I could play w/ it some more.  

The end result, well more like the first public beta, can be heard here [at least it worked fine for me: Firefox offered to d/l the file and play it in iTunes; I clicked 'OK' and those things happened].  

I consider it a Work in Progress, there are several specific changes I want to make, but I am pretty damn impressed by the sophistication and musicality provided by the software to get to this point.  So far all I have done is changed some of the instrumentation, which has changed the sound [and 'feel'] of the music, and to some extent the style of playing but not the basic musical parts, added a couple more percussion tracks [also 'automated'], and adjusted the levels of several instruments in the mix.

Very very cool, IMO.

One Caveat:  the track is long, close to twelve minutes right now; I'm pretty sure that I will make it more concise as it evolves, but I wanted plenty of time to try different things w/o having to keep starting it over.

Please check it out; first to verify that it's acessible to others, and second to hear the music [for your own enjoyment/edification/amazement].  I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on any and all aspects of the music, the 'recording', the sound quality*, the process of 'getting to it', etc.

TIA,

KB

* As an experiment, I've 'shared' this track at 64kps b/c of its size [normally, I would not use less than 128kbs, but had I done that the file would have topped 11 MB!]  So far, I'm pleasantly surprised by the resulting 'fidelity' - could be b/c of my high-end hearing loss as a result of playing all those rock-and-roll gigs in my twenties, thirties, and forties

Latin Combo

PS - one mo' tidbit: my desire to share this tune got me motivated to finally setup the little personal webspace provided by my ISP.  Nothing fancy right now, just a directory to put tunes and share their URLs w/ select friends.

[krissel]

First time I clicked on the second link I got a window with the code loading and I had to force quit the app. Seems Camino does not handle the transfer to iTunes. Firefox worked OK and it asked to open iTunes and started to play.

Music sounds good to me, but then I have a tin ear for sound fidelity.

I like it but it needs to be shortened or more variety introduced.\



Now, should I duck...?  

[kbeartx]

QUOTE(krissel @ Aug 30 2008, 03:14 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Now, should I duck...?

Why a duck?

Thanks for chicken it out.

Yes it's boring and repetitive now

Yes it's boring and repetitive now

 - KB

[Xairbusdriver]

First of all, very interesting! Very listenable. Keep expecting Xavier Cugat to start 'singing' in his unforgettable voice!

QUOTE

after messing w/ the choices for a few minutes I had a groove I felt was workable, then moved it into 'GB proper' so I could play w/ it some more.

My use of GB is extremely limited. I use it to add background music, manually ducked, to a sermon intro for our pastor's three sermons each week. They are then uploaded to iTunes.

Anyway, I've always been interested in music since being 'removed' from 'band' after Jr. High by my parents. I'm sure I wold now be in some 'Hall of Fame' and have a house full of Gold Records and probably own several other Artists. Things didn't quite go that way, however. But GB looked like a way to get my feet (fingers) wet. I'm also known as the cheapest TSer around, so you can understand why I have no midi keyboard or other instruments. So...

How do you modify the trumpet loops to generate a melody? Or is that part of the "Magic?!" I think the 'groove' is the easiest part to create, even with the included 'loops.' But most people generally think of some kind of recognizable 'melody' when discussing 'music' (Rap excepted, of course!)...That's where I 'hit the wall!'

[kbeartx]

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Aug 31 2008, 04:13 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

How do you modify the trumpet loops to generate a melody? Or is that part of the "Magic?!"

Yes, that's the magic.  The basic parts were all generated automagically by my selecting Latin Lounge Combo [or something similar, I wasn't there long enough to remember] and it 'came' with a whole brass section, which I changed to the solo trumpet.  I also tryed-out several of the drum, bass, and keyboard options offered before settling on the ones I ended up with.  

Then I clicked the Save Project button and it moved everything into GB's standard editing window, where I lengthened each track by clicking and dragging [same as lengthening a loop] and added a few more percussion loops from the Loop Library.

While the parts are largely repetitive, I was surprised at how much musical variation was generated by the software.  It really sounds like an improvising trumpet player to a great degree, IMO.

 - KB

[Xairbusdriver]

OK! I'll have to take a look at it! Sounds like a "open box, place in microwave, heat at maximum for 1 minute,  eat" kind of operation! I'm fairly adept at those kinds of things! Assuming the box has an 'easy open' lid... Although I do, occasionally burn my tongue.