GarageBand as sketch pad

Posted by on June 5, 2007 No comments

when i got my first laptop (a brick made by “twinhead” back in 1996) my dream was to be able to have a mobile studio. the kind of thing i could open up and just dive into. i had visions of realtime synthesis, recording, non-destructive editing and controlling midi devices. but at that time, it was difficult to get midi to sync over the serial bus as it was quite flakey. i needed to tweak IRQs and all that jazz. and windows 3.1 (i always thought 95 was crap!) wasn’t exactly overflowing with cool software. and audio interfaces? um. well, there was the minijack that went into some 16 bit thingy, but…

over the years my dream waxed and waned. then i got my powerbook. everything changed. i could do everything that i wanted to do on the go. my studio was anywhere with an outlet and some headphones. i had to bust my butt to get free software to work on it, but it was worth it. puredata was my miracle application. and it helped me make music for a long time.

but as time passed, i realized that i wanted something more integrated. i wanted to be a lazy user. i wanted to open up my laptop and start composing or mixing as easily as i would browse the web or send email. for the longest time i equated my desire with laziness. and then i realized that i was spending more time minding, researching and building tools than i was actually making music. and the bottom line is: that sucks.

my music requires tools. most art does. tools need to be maintained. they should be examined. workflows should be analyzed and adjusted from time to time. but tools should never come between the creator and the creation of new work.

as i stewed over this for about two weeks, i began to wake up to the fact that what i needed to get started on my latest project was something with a simple piano roll editor and the ability to run audio files along with it. the catch? i didn’t want to spend $700 to get it. i tried intuem with sketchy results. basically, i think it hates camel audio’s cameleon 5000 which is my AU synth of choice right now. i got random crashes, hangs on freezing audio, etc. i’m pretty sure, after an analysis of the crash logs, that it’s a disagreement between the sequencer and the AU that results in me losing all of my work with no crash recovery. so that didn’t work out. and that’s a shame because intuem is pretty tasty stuff. i’ll keep an eye on it though. and if cameleon gets updated, i’ll try it again. after all, i paid for it.

then i tried running a debian vm in parallels on my macbook. um. no. that got me MusE running on my macbook (which if i’m going to be honest is REALLY what i want) but it wasn’t stable, didn’t use my AU stuff and wasn’t the integrated “open and go” that i need to be productive. and bootcamp? no thanks. i don’t reboot on purpose.

i hacked up some things in puredata and almost went so far as to learn the GEM extensions to see what i could do with an interface there. i quickly assessed that as three weeks of coding and not really arriving at what i wanted. i searched the free applications and found some things here and there but nothing that really did what i wanted it to do. i thought my list of features was pretty simple. so easy, in fact, that i opened Xcode.

and then i closed Xcode.

finally, i did what i didn’t want to do: i opened GarageBand.

the iLife suite is amazing. i don’t think that one could spill enough ink about the coolness that things like iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD have brought to the table. it lets a moron like me take the red eye out of a photo without having to think about it. i can whip up a movie out of a set of stills and fool my family and friends into thinking that i have a gift for the visual arts. it has everything i could need to use my computer for what i want to do. it was even pre-installed on my machine. and that’s why i fear GarageBand. i’m afraid that it has the potential to be a creative crutch.

why don’t art photographers use point and shoot, autofocus cameras? because they rely on their tools for their art and they want control the results. and that’s why i stayed away from GarageBand for as long as i did. i was afraid of the loops and the auto-this and auto-that that might be buried in there were just waiting to take over my work and make me sound like every other mac nut who popped open iLife and built a “multimedia experience.”

but it wasn’t like that at all. i don’t use loops, so i didn’t bother with that. for people who want to do that sort of thing it’s there, though certainly not required. the piano roll editor does what i want it to do, though it’s lacking in some parameter controls that i’d like to see. it handles audio like a dream and is a rock solid AU host. and as for opening my macbook and getting to work? it’s never been easier and i’ve never been more productive. three songs in one week can’t be wrong!

the evil of it lies in the fact that i have to work in 44.1 kHz 16 bit format and can only export to m4a. but the billions of tools that i have lying around my HD can take care of some of that for me. i can even dump the output into ardour for further tweaking, though that hasn’t been my way of using GarageBand yet.

i’m treating it like a sketchpad. i can pop it open any time i like and be as detailed or abstract as i want. i can test out arrangements and mix things up for my ipod in minutes. and it makes my lunch hour incredibly productive. for a “serious” musician who has been conditioned to do things the hard and disciplined way, it makes getting things done even more efficient because all of the pre-thinking that was once done before using an environment like puredata or other more intense toolchains is coupled with an interface that makes executing those plans more like a gesture and less like programming.

this should not be underrated.

and it doesn’t mean that GarageBand, or any other piece of software i’ve met, is magic. it has a niche in my creative process where it really shines. i’m still looking, but not as feverishly as before. i have a tool that i can use to capture my ideas. i can use my myriad of other more sophisticated and nuanced tools later. but for a rough cut or sketch? GarageBand is a killer app.

ardour 2 released!

Posted by on May 2, 2007 No comments

ardour 2 (http://ardour.org) is out now. this is exciting news. it’s the only DAW I would consider running as it has everything that I need and more. aside from non-destructive this and that, it has the most intuitive midi controller assignments I can imagine. point, click, move a knob or slider and you’re in business. the best part is that I can do a session on my debian box (with the good sound hardware) and then drop it onto my laptop for editing/mastering elsewhere (the coffee shoppe or living room). that’s a feature that is not to be underestimated.

the best new feature is undo/redo across program sessions. that is to say, I can make a bunch of changes, close ardour, open it again and still undo what I did last time. why don’t more programs do this? like tabbed browsing, that feels like a no-brainer.

aside from the updated look that comes with moving to the latest gtk stuff and a couple of new bells and/or whistles I don’t know that there is much to report to folks who have used ardour in the past. I do like that it launches jack if it isn’t already running. that’s a pretty slick feature for someone like me who forgets things from time to time. apparently it also has better VST support and all that jazz. I don’t do VST…i’m all about the AUs, so that doesn’t do much for me but I know a lot of people live and die by them.

if you aren’t running ardour (and you aren’t limited to windows) you should at least take it for a test drive. it’s free and Free. I can’t believe that anyone who is serious about recording on any scale wouldn’t give it a go. the learning curve isn’t any worse than any other product out there and there’s a lot to be gained with nothing to lose (aside from a little time).

I guess they’re hooked up with the google summer of code and will be supporting MIDI editing, etc as well. that looks promising. if they could jam a sequencer in there, i’d be much obliged! we’ll have to wait and see.

the relationship between the creator and the audience

Posted by on March 28, 2007 No comments

i find it thoroughly amusing, the way that something as silly as the finale to a show like battlestar galactica can set itself up as an example of the relationship between creator and audience. i remember talking with my master in conservatory about the world we create when we produce a piece of music. we set up rules and lead the audience through the piece based on those rules. if the audience is really listening, they are playing a guessing game throughout the piece. “what will happen next?” as melodies unfold and harmonies swell, the audience tries to figure out where it leads. sometimes, they are fulfilled and othertimes they are surprised.

what i have learned is that the ratio of surprises to fulfillment needs to be skewed in favor of the audience being fulfilled. too many correct guesses means that the music is predictable and boring. but too few leaves the audience feeling like they don’t understand the rules of the world that you have created. thus they are left with a feeling of not having “gotten it.”

this happens all the time in literature and film. and, unfortunately for me, sci-fi. how many episodes of star trek: the next generation ended with someone saying “of course! it was the hitherto unknown particle that everyone in the future would have learned about in high school but no one watching the show could ever have guessed that blocked the transmission! silly us!”? it’s when the creator of the universe we’re inhabiting breaks his own rules or adds to them arbitrarily that we begin to feel less of a kinship with characters and their plight. perhaps it’s because it all feels too random. too much like the real world. there’s nothing the mind hates more than being unable to find some pattern.

i think that’s part of the problem with the relationship between the audience and much of the art music created in the twentieth century. there was no common vocabulary. no way for someone who was new to the universe to grab hold and begin to enjoy the ride. there were no rules to identify with.

but i’ve stepped away from my main point: changing the rules of a piece is welcome, within a tolerance. to keep the audience engaged requires a firm set of rules that are layed out at the beginning of the work and adhered to as tightly as is possible without crushing the creative spirit. altering things too radically once a work has begun can create a feeling of betrayal on the part of the audience and destroy the relationship between creator and audience that provides for a satisfying experience for both parties.

in short, making col. tigh a cylon really, really pissed me off. consider that series off my list for next season. until SG tells me i don’t have a choice in the matter.

a great time to be a musician

Posted by on March 15, 2007 No comments

i want to take a second and mention that this is a great time to be an artist. with all of the free software out there and the great things that can be done with a little research and a modest amount of skill, i would have to say that the possibilities are endless for the individual.

i use tunecore to get my stuff on the iTunes store and without a label or so much as a hint of interference, i’m able to sell my music all over the world.

i know i’m not topping any charts, but that’s honestly not my goal. i want to produce music that people want to hear. i’d also like to make a modest amount of money from my work so that i can further support it. i would still compose and perform without it, but it sure does feel good to know that someone was willing to shell out a couple of bucks for my cd.

for everyone who has bought a copy, thank you. there’s more coming soon!

thoughts on a free digital audio workstation

Posted by on February 21, 2007 No comments

a recent thread on the LAU list got me thinking. there were some posts to different blogs along the lines of “gnome and kde are dying!” “linux on the desktop is dead!” “nothing is moving anymore!” this was brought up as off-topic on LAU and folks started to weigh in on what the slowing of development on GTK+ and all that meant for the desktop experience on gnu/linux and the odds of us ever having an audio distro that works “out of the box.”

i should pause for a second and qualify some things. first off, i’ve been a professional windows programmer for just over 10 years now. i’ve been running debian gnu/linux since 1998 or so and i’ve had a powerbook with os x for around 3 years. i use what works for what i need to have done. and i’m not looking for some kind of “experience.” my computers are tools and i expect them to perform given tasks efficiently and reliably, but not without some level of expertise on my part. simply picking up an instrument doesn’t make one a musician, right?

and that’s where our first and most destructive assumption about any kind of audio appication on any platform enters. if i were to plop “joe geetar” in front of a 64 channel mixer and a DAT recorder would he expect to be able to push a button and start recording his album? i doubt it. but because joe can check his email and type up his resume should he assume that he can now click a button on his computer screen and master an album? that’s quite a leap. why? because checking email and recording a song are two entirely different processes requiring entirely different knowledge bases and having enitrely different system requirements.

i understand that the majority of folks are looking to walk up to a computer, open an app, point something at a microphone and record for a bit. that’s great! and that SHOULD be a safe assumption. it’s certainly an assumption one can make with garageband on any os x box. but i’m talking about “state of the art” level audio work. to me this means: low latency multi-track recording with non-destructive editing and the maximum amount of digital magic that can be forced into an application and run comfortably on a modern (2 year old) piece of hardware.

someone who is serious about using a digital audio workstation (DAW) knows that the more a user wants from an application, the more the application wants from its environment. if one desires low latency recording, one needs to be sure that the given hardware can handle it. an onboard sound chip and an off-the-shelf harddisk with the system and audio data stored on it won’t handle that (in most situations). an experienced DAW user
would expect that on any platform. that user would also know all about the performance of disks, how to partition them, what filesystems to use and how to configure the OS to maximize performance. and that’s on any platform. that user will also know that audio hardware is key. superior converters with onboard dsp means that there is more room to move on the system. more RAM helps as well. the user would know that having two browsers, an email client and four IM conversations open while trying to record or edit could damage performance.

but how would this user know all of these things? because anyone who is serious about working with digital audio will take the time to do a little research regardless of platform or software package preferences. the would be engineer who runs out and buys whatever is on the shelf at the local music barn is courting disaster and will get exactly what is deserved. think about it, a musician doesn’t simply buy any guitar. she buys the guitar that sounds and feels the best for her for the money she can afford spend. why should a DAW be any different?

it’s not.

i understand that learning the internals of a kernel and figuring out how to patch and recompile is an enormous roadblock. but that’s clear now from what i can tell. it’s easy to get a distro installed and have jack up and running with ardour in an afternoon (likely the same amount of time it takes to install windows and crack the light version of protools that was “borrowed” from a friend). with debian, it’s an apt-get away. maybe it’s my conservatory training talking here but nothing that produces worthwhile results is ever easy. practicing is never easy. learning a new instrument isn’t a simple affair. getting that first gig or finding a well suited collaborator doesn’t usually just happen. it’s work!

i’m not naive. i understand that we expect our computers to do more than one thing. we want a machine that will meet our DAW needs and still check email, browse the web, edit documents, layout flyers and keep our
finances. it would be pretty sweet if copy and paste worked across applications too. and if we could expect the desktop to behave the same way in all environments that’d be keen. these are all excellent goals and in most respects total no-brainers. that said, anyone who is serious about recording will likely be willing to give a little to gain a lot in terms of achieving his goals. when automating mixes in ardour using my midi faderbox of choice i seldom find myself wishing that i had a weather widget on my task bar.

there will be those who will say that simply going to os x or windows will solve those issues and that a user can have it all right out of the box, but that’s not true. after the amount of cash that gets laid out there is still a pile of configuration and tweaking to be done. the hurdles have different names, but they still exist. getting results requires education and work.

at the end of the day, someone who is serious about using a computer for something like digital audio needs to do some research and become educated in the use of the tool that she is trying to acquire. this is true of most things in the world and i’m not sure why computers and software are supposed to be exempt.