Monday, September 10, 2007

Fun With GarageBand

Like all converts, I'm a zealot for Apple products. But I have to confess, until recently, besides iTunes and iPhoto, I hadn't had much use for iLife. iDVD and iMovie aren't as useful as Toast, and iWeb doesn't hold a candle to a genuine web creation app like Dreamweaver or even a simple but powerful text editor like Taco.

Lately, though, I've been having fun with GarageBand. Despite the glaring omissions in its instrument library (um, solo violin? solo horns? banjo? glockenspiel?), the loop collection isn't bad, and it's a fun program to make music on.

I've made a couple of songs so far, and this is the one I'm happiest with -- a pastiche of Magnetic Fields/Mark Mothersbaugh electro-chamber pop. It's called "Orkney Street," after a friend who used to live there. Alas, it's in m4a, not mp3, but it'll play in iTunes just fine (ha ha). I hope you like it.

3 comments:

Brandon said...

Nice one! Reminds me a bit of The Books in the way the instrumentation shifts around.

Robin Sloan said...

I love it! Seriously -- really enjoyed that track. I kept half-expecting to hear from Tim Carmody vox kick in, though ;-)

Tim said...

Really, I can't sing. And I have no lyrics. But maybe someone can make a little movie scene for which "Orkney Street" could be the soundtrack...