Tag: Garageband

RPM Challenge – Day 2

I haven’t recorded any real instruments yet, but I’ve got a nice chunk of work done so far using my iPad and iPhone. Yesterday I wrote a bass riff in the shower, a little guitar/bass groove while sitting in the car before work, and a little guitar riff while on my lunch break. When I got home I wrote 3-4 phrases for another song, with all the parts but no actual arrangements yet. I then fleshed out the car-before-work idea with 3-4 more sections and all the pieces, but again no actual arrangement of those sections.

Today, to start day two, I did another set of phrases with all instruments but no arrangement. Count them up and you’ve got five songs in progress before 6:45am on day two. Not a bad start.

Now we just have to hope the ideas don’t suck. They probably do.

Here is the annual works-in-progress playlist, which currently holds nothing but cheesy GarageBand for iPad sounds.

You Had a Music Recording Project?

I pretty much forgot about this, but I had actually started a recording project back in March. Whoops. The idea was to take a bunch of songs from old projects and redo them with real bass guitar and real amplified electric guitar. Yeah.

So here are the first 8 songs I worked on. Now I just have to re-record every single sound you hear except for the drums… and even then I’m not so sure.

New Song that is Actually New

Here’s a song from the aborted album in a day I tried on the day that the bathroom remodeling project started. I mixed it with ear buds so I’m sure it sounds like dung.

I don’t like the lyrics and I don’t like the melody in the verses. What do you think, is the rest of it worthy of bringing to the band? I’m undecided.

New Old Song

Written in pieces in 1994 and put together and finished off sometime in 1995 during my “arrangements too complicated for people to actually play” phase.

Recorded in January 2015 during my “Ancient History Revisited Volume 2” phase.

Mixed in September 2015 during my “I have songs ready to mix?” phase.

I’m not terribly pleased with this recording. I might remix it. I might scrap big chunks of it (I’m looking at you guitar solo and vocal harmonies). Probably not. It’s done and done.

Prep Time

I just put new strings on the ES 335. I cleared a bit of space off of the MacBook Pro. All I have to do is clip my fingernails and then I’ll be ready for band practice.

For tonight’s recording, I need to lower the vocals on channel five, raise my mic on the PA, lower Mike’s bass on channel three, and raise Kevin’s drums WAY up on channels one and two. I think I’ll give the bass end on the drums a bit of a boost too. If all works well I’ll be sharing some music later this week.

More likely I’ll be listening to a recording with pretty much nothing but boomy drums.

Boy Does Robbie Need a Hobby

Two band practices ago I recorded the whole thing. I used the iTalk app on my iPhone and just pointed the mic in our general vicinity. It worked well but it sounded like sludge.

Last band practice I recorded the whole thing again. This time I brought my MacBook, my USB interface, and one microphone. It worked well. It sounded pretty bad, but 100 times better than the phone.

Now how do I one up myself? Let’s see. We have three vocal mics, a guitar amp, a bass amp, and a drum kit. Also the USB interface only has two outputs. I won’t be able to record each source onto it’s own track. The best I can do is record a stereo mix. So how do I get that stereo mix? Three mics for voices, two more for the two amps, and let’s say two overhead mics on the drums. Seven microphones. What to do, what to do……

Untitled

I haven’t used this puppy in four years or so. It is a dusty mess. If things come together I’ll need a lot of compressed air to get the channels clean. I just performed an experiment. I plugged Larry’s piano directly into channel one. I plugged a guitar directly into channel two. I plugged a mic into channel three. The piano panned left, the guitar panned right, and the mic straight up the middle. Now unfortunately the PA we’re using does not have channel outputs. Mr Mackie here does. So we’d have to plug the vocal mics into this, then direct out them into the PA. So to test that out I direct out’d the piano track into the little toyish Marshall amp. Next I plugged the board’s stereo outputs into the USB interface and plugged the interface into the MacBook and brought up GarageBand. I hit record and strummed with one hand, banged on the piano with the other, and gabbed into the mic.

Success.

A stereo recording in GarageBand with the guitar on one side, the piano on the other, and the mic in the middle, and the piano coming out of the little amp. Now the only thing left to do is try and clean out the channels because there was a lot of scratchy dust induced interference that needs to be eliminated. Then it’s just a matter of setting everything up and tweaking the mix to tape as we go, although that would be more of a week to week thing because I don’t plan on listening to play backs until after practice. It’ll do though. Even better, when the day comes when we buy a real power amp to use for PA, the board will already be in place and everything will be ready to go.

This is all upside, right?

I’m not alarmingly obsessed, right?

Right?

Oh did I mention though… I don’t have enough microphones to actually pull this off. To the music store we go!

Sure, Now it Works

One night last month I tried using the Logic Remote app to run GarageBand on my MacBook Pro.  It connected after seemingly endless struggle and then worked so poorly that I shut it off.

Tonight, while not up against a deadline, I tried it with my iMac.  It worked much better, though far from perfect. I give it a C overall.



The Last RPM Song!

That’s it kiddos, I’m done with RPM for another year! The last song has been mixed, the cover art is done and the running order is set. All I have left to do is burn a CD, print the cover, and drop it off at headquarters.

I’ll share a playlist with the final running order soon. Probably tomorrow. For now? Sleep!

13 Songs Finished

I mixed a song at lunch time today and it immediately went onto the cut list. I just don’t like it. So I am not posting it here. Then after playing karate chauffeur to the kids all evening I mixed this one. It also probably belongs on the cut list, but it isn’t so bad.