i just saw a screenshot of garageband

i just saw a screenshot of garageband

it is so simple and full of just working-ness i want to puke. it looks like the perfect way to flood the interweb with stupid crap made from the same loops - which, to be honest, could be interesting if the right person did it, but most people are more like, "HURR I MAKE TEH DRUM KIT BLOCK." the first music software i used (other than wave editors) was sonic foundry acid with loops. this was FASCINATING to someone (me) who, back then, could not even bash a tambourine in time. however, i got bored of that approach within a week, and pirated fruity loops to start making my own loops. i got a shit korg keyboard to start playing them, mics to record weird noises from the tv speakers, and eventually realized that acid was a piece of shit and i should get something else. so i started using IT... then modplug... then I got Buzz and Reason... and i'll draw the line because i could write about this shit forever

anyways, if garageband were a lady, she would be a dumb blonde. she just works for you, to the point where it starts to get boring. then you realize that's all she does.

cubase sx, on the other hand, while not as immediate-access, is clever enough to keep you interested. cubase is something i feel i will never completely fathom. i have been using it for years, i can do just about anything i want in it, and i am STILL finding little oddiments and trinkets that i've never used before every now and then. i find it quite inspiring... a lot of my tracks are written because i got some new plugins, honestly.

anyways, yeah, i fear some god-awful new-litewave hiphop nyghtmare sensation will go on MTV on their first night of stardom and bellow WE DONE DID OUR ALBUMS IN DAT GARAGE BAND WIT DA CLICKY CLICKY and it will become part of their official bio, "the band ARTICULATeD DiRiGIBLE featuring nephew of ashley nicole simpson rocketed to stardom using only some instruments and an apple macintosh with garage band music software"

you can imagine the hysteria this would cause, and the amount of junk shit that would further clog myspace. the dusty old coldfusion grandpa running their servers would finally take a terminal dump under the load and thousands of juggalos would commit mass suicide. riots in the streets

in short, imagine an army of cardans, armed with guitars, 60hz hum, and 96kbit mp3 encoders

yeah i had to use this shit a few years back in my web design class in high school. the teach didnt know a thing about it and ended up teaching us video production. gawwwd awful class with those gawwwwd awful macs.

those are the classes where you spend your massive amounts of free time (after quickly completing easy assignments that have lots of time allotted to protect the self-esteem of the less swift amongst us) on ways to annoy the shit out of the teacher.

the good teachers i had usually let me go off and do my own thing - if i did the work first. this bargain was perfectly acceptable to me.

the bad teachers suffered. in 6th grade, i had to take a computer class that everyone had to - and i had already started on C at that point, so i was REALLY bored from the first class. early on the teacher asked, "Where does the computer store things so you can copy and paste them from one program to another?"

i raised my hand and answered "The RAM"

the teacher said, "No, it's the clipboard!! Now..."

this pissed me off royally. right then and there i realized i knew far more about computers than she did, and that she was going to be a bad one.

eventually, we had a hypercard project. many of the students shared my dislike for the teacher. once i'd figured it out myself, i went around and taught everyone how to include mac text to speech in their hypercard stacks. being that we were 6th graders, many of whom who had never heard the mac's "good news" singing voice, the room was shortly filled with two dozen macs trying to sing louder than each other. this continued the next five classes. then the teacher blew a fuse. she started yelling and demanding people turn it down and don't just play it over and over you're only allowed to use the text to speech here and here. so i introduced my classmates to the mac's microphone.

she retired that year

Garage Band comes from the same code as Logic, but there are a lot of restraints placed on it.

I still hate it, though.

  Braintree said:

Garage Band comes from the same code as Logic, but there are a lot of restraints placed on it.

 

I still hate it, though.

really? like the mixing/eq routines etc. from logic then a new interface over the top? weird! so people really could make very basic structured but well produced pop hits in this thing?! i'm kind of interested in what it can actually do but know no-one retarded enough to own both a mac and garageband.

oh i'm sure if you were clever enough you could haul ass in garage band

my point was it that it discourages people from experimenting

the first time i saw a screenshot of Reason i had a similar reaction

  Ghostbusters III said:

the first time i saw a screenshot of Reason i had a similar reaction

Wise words...

Hmmm, Reason is awesome as far as i am concerned. Back on topic though. Garageband dosen't look that interesting pretty good for a beginner i guess. With a little imagination i guess you do some cool stuff with it. I think that is the same for anything though. Everything has it's good and bad points.

Simple makes for a good introductory program. How many people jump straight into max/msp or supercollider?

i wonder how much vibert gets paid to blab about reason

thats like slagging off guitar music because people use guitars to make it. garageband's a tool just like logic or cubase, if anyone gets any recognition for making music in garageband then its more than likely because they've done something original or interesting. who cares what music's made with, as long as its decent? its a brilliant program for starting off, once you realise the limitations, and to be fair garagebands only simple on the surface, you'll probably move onto logic or something. if anything its accessibilty encourages experimentation.

Its a horrible thing yes...in lots of schools that own newer fancy macs the kids make stupid little tracks from the same loops and they're like "LOOK I MADE MUSICKZ" and funny enough, shows on tv use garageband loops all the time...I've used it before, and in a couple minutes I'd done everything possible to do. There are basically zero options for creative production. Also, the timing system is complete shit (doesn't go into decimals), especially if its based on the same engine as Logic.

part of it may be i am used to having enough options to give me vertigo at my fingertips, and that the sudden lack of any induces shock

  ieafs said:

  Salvatorin said:

i think it's more geared at bands and people who do actual performance based music... it's not necessarily designed for people who make hyper-edited electronic music that's very reliant on the actual production.

 

it's just a digital tape recorder... except with more than 4/8/16 tracks! and digital editing! and a basic sequencer! nuh uh, "zero possibilities" there :laughing:

I would agree, my uncle made some good demo tracks for his country band on it...

I dont see any problem. A program like Garageband can be empowering for people who have no knowledge on things such as audio production. The less barriers between someone and the music in their head, the better. Sure there will be a lot of people making music which is decidedly shit, but I'd rather have a society where everyone can speak in music than just the opposite. The more accessible it is the more people will get into it. The more musical input the better.

  hahathhat said:

i just saw a screenshot of garageband

 

 

 

 

anyways, if garageband were a lady, she would be a dumb blonde. she just works for you, to the point where it starts to get boring. then you realize that's all she does.

 

cubase sx, on the other hand, while not as immediate-access, is clever enough to keep you interested. cubase is something i feel i will never completely fathom. i have been using it for years, i can do just about anything i want in it, and i am STILL finding little oddiments and trinkets that i've never used before every now and then. i find it quite inspiring... a lot of my tracks are written because i got some new plugins, honestly.

agreed

  Ghostbusters III said:

the first time i saw a screenshot of Reason i had a similar reaction

agreed

i find your signature incredibly attractive and would much enjoy to be standing there, smoking a joint. it makes me happy.

anywhere is a good place to smoke a joint, so long as The Man isn't watching

How in the hell do you set the basic quantize value in the piano roll? I'm trying to help my little brother figure out the basics of Garage Band, but I can't for the life of me come to grips with the sequencer. Just opening the damn editor took more trial-and-error than it really should have. If they had broadband it would be sensible to go through the tutorials, but even still that's the kind of shit that really should appear very early in the manual. I suppose they assume most people will just be dragging loops around. Perhaps it's time to get Parallels installed so that the poor kid can get back to the Fruity Loops playset he's familiar with.

  Wall Bird said:

I dont see any problem. A program like Garageband can be empowering for people who have no knowledge on things such as audio production. The less barriers between someone and the music in their head, the better. Sure there will be a lot of people making music which is decidedly shit, but I'd rather have a society where everyone can speak in music than just the opposite. The more accessible it is the more people will get into it. The more musical input the better.

one could argue "MUSIC = LOOPZ" is an enormous barrier

did you chaps not learn anything from 1984? the structure and nature of the language you speak influences how you think, and even WHAT you think... what you are capable of thinking. garageband - doubleplus ungood.

if you know music, you can squeeze some life out of garageband, i'm sure... but that comes from previous experience. if garageband is your first music app, however, you're likely going to have serious blinders on.

put another way - i can find my way around my own house quite well in pitch black, but i'd be fucked in someone else's house.

sesame street doesn't keep you at the mental level you initially come at it with, it gets you started and then you grow without it. this looks like the same thing, chill the fuck out dude.

the first time i saw a screenshot of FLoops i had a similar reaction.

btw, the little pictures of instruments make want to run far away. just awful.

  taphead said:

sesame street doesn't keep you at the mental level you initially come at it with, it gets you started and then you grow without it. this looks like the same thing, chill the fuck out dude.

sesame street was supposed to eliminate illiteracy in ten years or some crap like that. it obviously failed, look at this message board... kids raised by parents tend to turn out better than kids raised by television.

sesame street, by and large, wound up being yet more mindless entertainment for kids with parents too lazy to actually raise their kids. i think you can see where this is going... garageband: for musicians too lazy to write music

also, by the way, i am totally chilled out. i just think this is an issue worthy of debate. i don't mean anything as a personal affront, except maybe to whoever wrote garageband.