Here’s another song I put together using Ellatron HD and Badlion’s Garage Synth on my iPad. Pretty simple and has a few things that I need to change, but as a first draft I like it well enough to share it. The ending vocals were actually a bit of a mistake as I rerecorded a few ideas trying to figure out what would work. Hopefully I’ll be able to expand on this song and add another verse/chorus. I think some added instrumentation might be good too. Just a bunch of synthesized flutes is pretty awesome, but there is room to move forward with it as well.
father (first draft)
I put this song together in a similar fashion to my Beard song, coming up with a few sounds and a little melodic hook that I liked first. Once I had that set with the iPad, I added in the singing and the structure of the song. In this song the iPad hook that I came up with originally was at the beginning and a stand alone part with the singing being a different melody. When I wrote Beard, the melody that I figured out on the iPad also became the singing melody as well.
Truth be told, I’m having a hard time getting away from my iPad as I dream up songs and music. It is just too much fun with too many toys and ideas that can be played with at your fingertips. I did go back and find a little finger picking chord progression that I had thought up on my ukulele but done nothing with yet. I tried to work on it the other day and didn’t get very far, but hopefully I’ll have a little something from that soon.
It’s not really a home studio, but I wish it was. I’m moving in that direction, so hopefully someday I can call it a home studio with a little more reality to the statement. Here’s the gear breakdown:
Apple Computer – Intel Core 2 Duo Laptop that is more than good enough for the job, currently using Garageband
23″ LCD Monitor – Works well as my home studio monitor and gives me more real estate from my laptop
M-Audio Radium 49 Midi Keyboard – Got it cheap off of craigslist and works well with Garageband for midi sounds
M-Audio Studiofile AV 40 Speakers – These studio monitors are awesome. Great sound from my computer for playback, and also work really well with my PS3.
Tascam PortaStudio 4-track – I use it alone or as kind of an audio interface to get sound into the laptop. It’s pretty old school, but a lot of fun. I wish it didn’t have as many “pops” as it does when recording to tape.
Nady Starpower Dynamic Mic – Pretty nice for like $20. I use this and the built in mic on the laptop.
That’s the main gist of it. I have a bunch of random instruments, but the above list covers the main “home studio” part of it. If I could add to my home studio, I would get a quality USB interface with phantom power, and a nice condenser microphone. I’d also throw in Logic too. =)
Lyrics seem to be the hardest thing for me to get to a place where I’m happy with them. I enjoy working on the music, but sometimes the lyrics are such an integral part of a song that the music itself seems to falter unless you have good words to go with it. Fortunately, I seem to be getting little ideas here and there and have been jotting them down, so I have a nice little library of lyrical ideas I’m sitting on. Whether or not any of them will make it into a song yet I’m not sure, but it is nice to be on the other side of some of the writing challenges for once.
So I was fiddling with two new music apps (because I’m a sucker for music apps) the other day and came up with a little something. The iPad really shines in the spontaneous music creation department. Lots of fun.
beard
Recorded straight into Garageband. Used the Ellatron HD app on my iPad, and Badlion’s Garage Synth on my iPhone. Both apps can be used on the iPhone and the iPad. Maybe I’ll write up a little mini review on each later. It was rather simple to do and I recorded both apps simultaneously. Next time I would do them separately I guess, so I could mix the final product better. Then I recorded vocals over the top. It is a little quiet, but not too bad for a first take. I may revisit this song later and expand a bit, dunno.