I’ve been a gigging musician for several years, playing in all sorts of venues. 90% of my gigs are just me singing and accompanying myself with a single guitar and keyboard, which has worked for me for a long time. But as of late, the artist in me has yearned to stretch his wings and produce a more sophisticated sound when I’m solo. It’s frustrating to play songs that have a lead in the middle of the song, and I’ve just got to strum along, or if it’s on the piano, I’ve just got to stick with the chart (I can’t improvise very well on the keys). So what to do?
Since I’ve made the switch to the Mac, I’ve discovered a wonderful little program called GarageBand that allows you to record music on your Mac. But interestingly enough, it also includes audio loops of all sorts of instruments, so you can literally create a song using just loops. The ramifications are clear: I finally have a way of easily creating song foundations for when I play solo. All I have to do is move the songs to my iPod! So begins my latest journey of creating song foundations. It’s very exciting to me because it’ll allow me to arrange songs for a wider genre of music than I’ve been playing. Talk about having a “band in the box.”
What inspired me to start doing this was seeing a guy at Downtown Disney a few months ago using an Akai MPC1000 Music Production Center for his background stuff, and playing guitar on top of his laid down tracks. I don’t have an extra $1000 to spend on something like that so it has been difficult getting started down this road. But with GarageBand, I should be able to lay down tracks really easily. Oooh I’m excited!
Guitar Gear 