Creating the First Instrumental Food Music Album on iPad and GarageBand
I remember the early years when I was forcibly told to learn the Yamaha electone organ, something which I dreaded every weekend when my music teacher came to my house to haunt me with unrelenting musical homework.
Funny thing is, over the years as I look back on those times, I appreciate just how valuable those lessons have proven to me now.
Fast forward to June 2011, and now we live in a world where gadgets dominate every part of our lives. Apple, Andriod, iOS, iPhone and iPads are used almost everywhere, from work to play to news and information.
I have never been a talented musician, nor close to being a decent one. And I know purists would frown on using technology to perform music of any order, but the stark truth is that technology can enable even the most humble of musicians to perform more than just adequately.
And this is what I have discovered with the iPad. Using multi-touch and beautiful graphics to depict real musical instruments, you can be a virtual one man band on a mobile device.
But beyond that, Apple's GarageBand can actually let you record, sequence and edit your music, all on the go. Maybe Steve Jobs is right, it is 'magical' in a sense that it can bring music creation back to the masses.
While you do require some basic music knowledge to make even decent music on the iPad, it does not require you to be a very proficient one. Instead, it challenges you to create the music that you think you can always make, but never have the ability to do so on real musical instruments.
A couple of weeks ago, I set out to do an entire instrumental music album using only GarageBand on the iPad, without any other external instruments. I thought I would take a month or two, instead it only took me literally 6 days.
Part of the speed in accomplishing this was simply I was able to compose on the go, and never losing that one moment of inspiration when you are outside and having to rush back home to a piano to get that melody that you are so afraid to lose .
I also wanted to do something unique, thematically, as I am an avid food blogger, and thus I decided to compose themes and tunes based on food and cuisine. I call it Silverfish, and each track is supposed to reflect on the food and also, some of its cultural background which I attempted to replicate musically.
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