October 03, 2005

Completion! for now...

After three whole days of moving, rearranging and carrying super heavy stuffs without breaking my back, my place finally took shape.

The new Final Cut Pro studio is finally tied-in to my MIDI system along with all the audio gadgets. And I have finally gotten the video camera in the vocal booth working so I can monitor the voice talent from my studio upstairs.

The next few days will be spent tuning the acoustics of the room and generally finding ways to keep sound from straying out of my place. I am probably the noisiest house in the whole area, so keeping the dBm low is key to peaceful living in my neighbourhood.

Anyhow, the above picture shows a small part of the room, here you'll see my PowerBook, the PowerMac G4 Cube, a Juno 60 keyboard controller, the Akai sampler, loads of sound modules and the classic Roland R8 drum machine, along with my Joemeek tube microphone pre-amp.

Call me hardcore, but this set up is modest among professional musicians.

....................................................................

Today I finally put GarageBand to a test in a real world scenario: while working on 7's audio project, I decided to give the software instruments a try. With the latest drivers installed, GarageBand detected my Tascam 224 as a 2 in/2 out MIDI interface, so, I gave it a go with the music arrangement.

Though I prefer my Akai Grand Piano samples over GrageBand's built-in offerings, the voicing was respectable. Tones and timbres are rich and I could get away with simpler arrangements without using pads to cover up sample flaws.

On the project, I recorded multiple tracks of vocals and I attempted to comp them into one nice track, this, I find an extremely difficult task to complete in GarageBand: compared to other software such as MOTU Figital Performer or Digidesign ProTools, both of whith I've used extensively.

For an entry level software, it's a pleasant surprise when I noticed the inclusion of pitch corrections. To have this feature in ProTools, you'll need to buy a plug-in, but the feature is a built-in function, so, it'll be super easy for you to create the Cher trademarked "Believe" effect in GarageBand.

Just make sure you sing as well as she does.


But then again, God is fair, isn't it?

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