“iLife ’04 (for the Mac OS X operating system) also includes a new program called GarageBand. It’s designed to let people with even the feeblest musical talent, or even musical interest, create professional-sounding digital recordings. It puts at least as much power into amateur hands as its i-predecessors; all it lacks is the traditional first initial,” David Pogue writes for The New York Times.
“You can build a song using three distinct tools. First, GarageBand comes with 1,100 loops: snippets recorded by studio musicians (bass, drums, guitars, strings, keyboards, mallet instruments, horn and string sections, and synthesized choirs). You can drag these snippets into a sequence as though they’re tiles, stretch the blocks on the screen to make them play over and over, and layer one instrument upon another. It’s a lot of instant gratification, even if you don’t know a quarter note from a quarter-pounder,” Pogue writes.
“The loops almost always sound good together – even when you layer Island Reggae Drums 03 with Nordic Fiddle 01. That’s because all of the loops play essentially the same, unchanging chord. (Of course, these days, building a song whose harmony never changes is no barrier to commercial success, as Pink demonstrated with “Get the Party Started.”),” Pogue writes.
“You can transpose these loops, making them play higher or lower, and even change their tempo. (Indeed, that’s one of GarageBand’s most impressive bits of magic; how can software make a digital recording play in a different key, or at a different tempo, without distorting it?) Still, that’s not quite the same thing as complete freedom to choose chords or melodies. In terms of compositional choices, nonmusicians are pretty much limited to fooling around with when various instruments play, not what,” Pogue writes. “…even in version 1.0, GarageBand is an exciting breakthrough. Not so much for established musicians (although even they may find it useful for practicing, experimenting with arrangements, and rough-draft composing), but for musicians who are yet to be established.”
“In the ‘American Idol’ era, it’s clear that commercial talent, if not great musical talent, is always out there, untapped and undiscovered. How can a gifted singer or talented play-by-ear instrumentalist reach what could be a grateful audience? Not by mailing out demo tapes recorded with the church accompanist, that’s for sure,” Pogue writes. “It won’t be long before the GarageBand creations of no-name singers and players start popping up on Web sites – indeed, it won’t be long before Web sites start popping up just to accommodate them – bypassing the talent scouts and gatekeepers of the American recording industry. GarageBand and the Internet give tomorrow’s stars their own democratic recording and distribution channels.”
Pogue writes, “That prospect of new artists growing from grass roots is probably what inspired Apple to name the software GarageBand, abandoning its lowercase i naming tradition. But when you consider both the fledgling state of the 1.0 version of this program and the immense musical and commercial forces it could one day unleash, you might conclude that there is, after all, an i-name that might have suited this remarkable software: iPotential.”
Full article here.