I'm a Sweet Transvestite!

Hi, folks! Welcome to another post in Designer Ear. This week's topic: 

             EXPERIMENTING WITH MIDI
Garage band. A program that allows one to create an original work or upload, and recreate another.

Garage band has many options. You can choose between many instruments. You can equalize the sound, pan the sound, distort the sound, cut the sound, etc. I think you get the point.

In short, Garage Band is really fun to use when you're in the mood to experiment on music.

Personally, I am not very experienced in Garage Band but I know that experimenting with things one knows little of is the only way to learn.

For this project, I chose "Sweet Transvestite" (MIDI) from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Going into this project, I knew I wanted something with a hard-hitting sound. What better to use than a rock song?

The Garage Band I used was provided on a lab computer at my university. Sadly, it did not contain as many instrument options as I would have enjoyed. I had little to work with in a sense.

I must have changed instruments a hundred times.
In the picture above, you can see I made a list of items I changed. (I learned this is VERY important.)

When uploading the selected MIDI to Garage Band, I lost a lot of original instrumentation (because the program I used didn't have all of the options available). Finding the right sound was stressful. Nothing really pleased me. I truly ended up settling on some of the instruments.

However, using a little bit of panning in my guitars and tonewheel organ, I was able to adjust the initial ear busting volumes. I also made use of the individual volume controls and master control (You never want it in the red).
The EQ was a struggle. however, the more you use it, the more you notice the difference it makes. It softened my guitars for me!


In my final note,
I will say this: Working in any musical software program has its challenges. Something may work one day but won't the next day. That's just how it works (reference: Kevin Williams).

I started out not knowing much of anything in Garage Band. Now I have a little bit tighter of a grip on it.