Jose el Retardo

Must all media creation software be such a cumbersome burden?  Actually, no.  Recently,  I began farting around with something that makes creating music on the computer fun again.

Before I go any further,  I need to prepare those who know me for a bit of a shock: I now have an Apple iMac at home, and an iPhone 4 in my pocket. But. BUT. Before you all go ninja on my ass, I want to make it perfectly clear that I still hate Steve Jobs, and more than ever. Watching his recent bout with smugness during the laughable Apple press conference last week, I reveled in my disdain like a pig in slop; the former media darling has no idea what to do with the target the press has painted on his chest, he keeps wiping at it with a childish sense of disbelief. Steve Jobs is the dog that chased the bus, caught the bus, and now Steve has no idea what to do with the bus. Oh Steve, they all hate you when you reach the top. Didn’t you know that? Can you feel Bill Gates smiling, Steve? I bet you could use a friend right about now, someone who might know exactly how you feel. Too bad you’ve bad-mouthed Billy so badly. I’m sure he wants nothing to do with you.

But you can’t deny Apple software, people. You just can’t. Is it perfect? No, of course not. But it really does work pretty good—from the operating systems, to GarageBand…which leads us to the current topic. I recently tried out GarageBand for the first time last week, and without looking at any documentation at all, I was quickly making some fat ass beats with relative ease. It was—dare I even say it—fun.

If you’d like to listen to what I’ve come up with so far, press the play button in the box above. It needs more levels of sound, but I think for 4 or 5 hours worth of work, it’s pretty damn good.

I know what purists will say. You can’t make decent music on software like that. You need to put in hours after hours learning your software! You must suffer, staying up late at night, taking months to get the first track down, spending hours hunting down the solutions to even the most simple problems! Spend thousands of dollars on classes which may or may not teach you anything! This is computer software, goddamn it! You can’t just open it up and start MAKING THINGS!

Well, but you see, with this GarageBand stuff, it seems you can. And yes, I have used music recording software in the past, so yes I have a jump on things, but it really is simple. You can drag in beats from the library, and then just type in notes from your computer’s QWERTY keyboard if you want. Or, if you want to be more sophisticated, you can automate everything from your volume levels to your pans, adjust your input levels, use any midi controller you choose (thanks KTray, for the keyboard, which works very well right out of the box with GarageBand), and even plug in your guitar—either through your computer sound card or through a usb preamp—and take advantage of myriad effects that ship with the software. If you tire of them, go look for more on the internet. There’s a bunch to buy.

And yes, you can plug in a mike and sing.

I think I’d like all of you to challenge me. Start sending in subjects, and I’ll make it into a song using this GarageBand shit. That’s how easy all of this is. Go on, I dare you!

Oh, and BTW, about Steve and Bill…this is pretty funny: CLICK HERE.