Garage Band is Only Scratching the Surface
My recent experience in using Garage Band to create amateur(ish) music has shown how alarmingly easy it is to make professional-quality, multi-track recordings from the comfort of your own laptop. While the majority of Garage Band output thus far most likely falls in two categories -- faithful replication of historical genres (rock, blues, country) or the effects-heavy atonality of technoid dance music (house, urban, whatever) -- I'm wondering what hybridized, wholly novel forms will emerge once users get over their love-affair with the ability to "sound just like a real band!". Garage Band, in this light, ranks as one of the most ironic misnomers of the millenium: no garage band in history has had dual access to both such pro-quality sound and the freedom of nearly infinite tracks and push-button editing.
As a musician, I'm discovering just how easy it is to layer tracks, hop between genres, and juxtapose sounds in ways you once needed about $4000 in DJ equipment to even attempt. This flexibility will lend itself to a high rate of mutation, issuing in a whole new language of shifting musical meta-forms which could quite conceivably defy comprehension. Add one's personal live recording to the mix, and you've got the capacity for a personal custom orchestra pit at the touch of your fingers. Given music's ability to catalyze powerful emotions, it's a bit like putting guns in the hands of every third Mac user, isn't it? And the fact that it takes about 68 seconds to mixdown a track, convert it to mp3, and post it online is even more interesting: has anyone really acknowledged what a revolution this is? Forget blogging: what about democratized recording?
As a writer, I'm already drooling with the prospects offered by Garage Band. No longer interested in just "sounding like another band", I'm almost compelled to wonder: how could multi-tracked, meta-genre recording be used to tell a story? What if I made up a band and told their story through song? A blogger concept album? Prog-rock for Doctorow phreaks? What if you took on the characters of a whole new musical genre, overdubbed NPR-like commentary, and went wild with a hoaxed musical movement? What if you invented a fictional genre, posted it online, and spawned a dozen or more AUTHENTIC copy-cat bands?
Scratching the surface, I'm telling you.
As a musician, I'm discovering just how easy it is to layer tracks, hop between genres, and juxtapose sounds in ways you once needed about $4000 in DJ equipment to even attempt. This flexibility will lend itself to a high rate of mutation, issuing in a whole new language of shifting musical meta-forms which could quite conceivably defy comprehension. Add one's personal live recording to the mix, and you've got the capacity for a personal custom orchestra pit at the touch of your fingers. Given music's ability to catalyze powerful emotions, it's a bit like putting guns in the hands of every third Mac user, isn't it? And the fact that it takes about 68 seconds to mixdown a track, convert it to mp3, and post it online is even more interesting: has anyone really acknowledged what a revolution this is? Forget blogging: what about democratized recording?
As a writer, I'm already drooling with the prospects offered by Garage Band. No longer interested in just "sounding like another band", I'm almost compelled to wonder: how could multi-tracked, meta-genre recording be used to tell a story? What if I made up a band and told their story through song? A blogger concept album? Prog-rock for Doctorow phreaks? What if you took on the characters of a whole new musical genre, overdubbed NPR-like commentary, and went wild with a hoaxed musical movement? What if you invented a fictional genre, posted it online, and spawned a dozen or more AUTHENTIC copy-cat bands?
Scratching the surface, I'm telling you.
posted by Paul S. at
5:50 PM
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