1. An article about writing and recording music while
on vacation with minimal digital set up.
stock business music
2. Recently a friend of mine and myself decided to take some time out and
head up to the mountains for some rest and recuperation  The
pressures of city life are only too obvious these days and the desire to get
away from the office and computers were main motivating factors  We
planned to do some hill walking, relaxing, eating and drinking  Both
being musicians it only seemed right that we take a few instruments with
us to help us wile away the nights  It had to be on an acoustic basis so
I took my flamenco guitar and my friend took his little Ukulele  Just
before setting out on what would be a five hour journey we pondered on
whether we should take my friends Apple laptop After thirty seconds of
weak resistance we caved in and decided to take it
3. Â As my friend picked up his Apple laptop I noticed his little USB
audio/midi interface sat next to the laptop  He looked at me and smiled
“well there’s plenty of room in the car might as well take the C1000
and the SM58, just in case we record anything, we can improvise some
stands if needed Â… oh this little slim line two octave midi keyboard
might be good too ” He did not even mention the headphones; they just
went straight in the bag So there it was; a small sports bag with a
portable recording studio inside it “What music software do you have
on there?” I asked as we drove away from the seemingly unending
urban sprawl that is London
4. “Not much really, Garage Band is on there though… Not really
checked it out yet  We can always have a bit of a play with that, let’s
try not to get too geeky …… ” My friend replied We did not even
bother plugging in the laptop for the first couple of days and really
enjoyed just jamming with the guitar and uke  If you have not got a
Ukulele then I can heartily recommend that you buy one  They are such
great fun, easy to play, cheap to buy, and easy to carry around with you
5. I think it was the third night when we decided to try to record an idea that
we had been playing around with  Setting everything up was a breeze
as the USB audio/midi interface and USB midi keyboard needed no
external power units to make them work so we just plugged them straight
into the Apple laptop  We used the USB audio/midi interface as the
Garage Band audio inputs and the laptops internal sound card for the
Garage Band audio output  Normally we would not have needed to use
the onboard sound but we had forgotten our quarter inch mono jacks to
phono leads  Luckily we did have a 3 5mm stereo jack to phono lead
(very useful cable to have lying around!!)
6. Â To record without using the stereo hifiÂ’s speakers we just plugged the
stock business music head phones into the hifiÂ’s headphone socket At
first we had a quick dabble to see how it all worked and we soon found
that Garage Band has some very usable midi instruments available Â
We were getting maybe 8-10 milliseconds of latency using the midi
keyboard and one of Garage Bands on board piano sounds  This was
more than acceptable  Using the phantom power on the USB
audio/midi interface enabled us to record the flamenco guitar and ukulele
with the C1000 and we were both surprised by the quality of the recorded
sound  Another massive bonus was that the apple laptop was so quiet
7. We found Garage Band to be a very useful piece of software  It is
great for throwing ideas together and if you really went at it you could
probably create something of note using just garage band and live
instruments  You have to be careful as there are some very tired
sounding drum loops in there but they are useful to sketch ideas with and
the time stretch facility works quite well  If you want to piece together a
John Bonhamesque drum track it should not take you long in Garage
Band  All the built in midi sounds are a little too manicured for my liking
but having said that they fit in well and I particularly like the electric piano
sounds  My only real gripes are the transport and locator features; after
using Cubase for years it feels quite restricting in how you drop in and out
and navigate around your little projectÂ…
8. They need to sort this out In the end we used Garage Band to record a
kind of Eastern European polka type instrumental which featured just the
flamenco guitar and ukulele  We obviously used a click track to record
and did play around with several midi instruments to experiment with the
piece  In the end, though, it seemed quite apt that the piece that
became known as should remain a simple instrumental duo of guitar and
ukulele I was that pleased with the piece that I put it on my website,
9. Â I like the fact that you can hear the acoustics of the room, while it does
not have a polished sound it does have character and I find it, ultimately,
a believable piece  The simple recording set up we used helped us
concentrate on just the music as we wiled away our evenings  Top
marks to Garage Band and the little set up we used  It now really
fascinates me that one can get away from it all, travelling relatively light,
and still have all the marvels of the digital age at oneÂ’s finger tips to help
the creative process  I am already dreaming of stating in a cottage in
the Tuscan HillsÂ…Â… with my guitar and laptop Article Tags: ,
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