I’ve been off on vacation, and was just killing some time at my friend Pete’s place… when I needed to write some music. I just really needed to. Problem One: I had no software with me. No worries – Mac OS X comes with Garageband. Second problem: there’s no MIDI setup there. Garageband has a little app where you can key things in with the normal 109-key typing keyboard. Problem three: No studio monitors.
Ok, problem three is a bit bigger. No studio monitors… no headphones available… no external speakers of any kind! Just the little tinny built-in mono speaker in the G5 tower. This is not really an easy thing to deal with. The bass lines were inaudible. I played them in a couple of octaves up, and trusted they’d sound ok in the final mix. Also, the kick drum was completely missing. I mixed it visually based on the meters.
After I got home and listened, it turned out pretty good!
I’ve been getting a lot of requests for these synth-based light… ‘compositions’, so I also did one of these. This is interesting in that I played it in at 150bpm, and then slowed it down to 68. Those layers of pedals get a little tedious at normal-speed.
Sometimes it is all about the challenge.