Your laptop of the pops

There's no need to spend hours in the studio to record your hit pop tune, reports

JAKE BROWN

Bone idle: Music programs such as GarageBand could make studio engineers obsolete

Podcast Tips

GarageBand is also ideal for making your own podcasts. We asked David Lloyd, managing director - LBC 97.3FM - the London talk entertainment radio station that has won four gold awards this year, including one for its subscription podcasting system -for his top podcasting tips:

Like the best books, start with compelling sentences to build an appetite.
Use a good title so people know what to find.
Listen to your favourite podcasts and work out what makes them great.
Like the best LBC entertainers, don't 'read' the matenal, 'tell' the story.
Judge the duration and content well. Who will listen, why and where?

You don't need to be a musician to use iPod's new virtual studio GarageBand. It would be poisible to construct a song entirely out of tlie hundreds of loops carried in the software (plus more with add-ons called Jam Packs), add some basic effects and - Bob Dylan's your uncle - you'd have a song. This is just what its designers, Apple, intended - music-making program for be masses. GarageBand comes cheap as part of its home media package, iLife, vhich costs just £55. At that pice, it would have to be terrible not to represent value for money.
But I won't settle for using Apple's loops; I'm a musician, don't you know? 'I want to mix my acoustic guitar and vocal composition paying homage to package holidays - entitled Seven Nights In Cyprus - with GarageBand's electronically generated sounds.

The right keys
First I need drums. From the main editing screen, I open the Loop Browser window and scroll through a long list of drum loops until I find one that sounds about right. Then I click and drag the loop from the browser into the editor and it becomes a little 'sound wave' pattern sitting in what is now my drum track. Dragging on the right side of the wave duplicates it until I have about three minutes of a drumbeat. That's it, and I'm genuinely surprised at how easy it is. I set up my guitar by plugging the lead into the audio input of the Mac and play my guitar part over the drums. To record, one click creates a 'real instrument' track for me and away I go. Again, simple, although the guitar needed a pre-amp to get a strong signal, which my own mixer supplied.
Next, I set up a microphone (you need a decent mic) and record my not-so-lovely vocal tones on to a second 'real instrument' track. Now I have three tracks: drums, guitar and vocals. To record a bassline, I use a synthesizer to make a digital, or MIDI, track (which GarageBand simply calls a 'software instrument' track). Compatible synths can cost less than £100. I select a bass effect from the program and a monstrous. sub-bass sound comes out whenever I hit a key. As I re-play the song, banging along on the synth until I get an idea for the bass, I realise that this is great fun. It gets only better when I search for a horn-section effect and lay down a brass riff on the synth that will bring my opus to life. I'm having such fun, not only because GarageBand is easy to use, but also its digital instruments sound convincingly real. The program is so powerful that I can edit and add new effects in real time, as the song is playing.

In the mix
Now for the downside. GarageBand is so enormous that it takes every ounce out of my machine. My MacBook is brand new and virtually empty but, with five tracks down, it's struggling to add effects in real time and, sometimes, to play at all. Mixing is notoriously difficult for anyone who isn't a studio engineer but GarageBand supplies simple-to-use panning, reverb and equaliser functions. Better engineers than me would probably miss more finite controls. And there we have it, Seven Nights In Cyprus a decent enough tune - bit rough around the knocked out in a few hours. But I wonder how easy it would be to go that bit further. For example, when I want to find loops of drum rolls to drop into my beat and liven it up, the drum sound doesn't fit, despite being the same 'bar band' effect. Nevertheless, GarageBand is a fun, surprisingly versatile package and, of course, great value for money. Then again, it has to be cheap as I'd need to buy a top-of- the-range Mac to get the most out of it.
Find out more at www apple.com/uk/ Hear Jake's song at www metro.co.uk

Tried and Tested

Oono MinIDAB MD-ONE Price: £180
On paper, this device from Bitish company Oono is an iPod killer. Besides playing MP3s, it offers a DAB radio. You can record the radio as well as external sounds via a mic or stereo port. There's a 128MB internal memory and an SD card slot allowing infinite expansion of your listening library via removable memory cards. And it comes in black or white. Oh, there's also a built-in speaker. Phew! Yet, in the flesh, it's a slight disappointment, feeling a tad flimsy and with a design that's a bit last week. DAB radio is not always easy to pick up - although FM is also available - but the Oono cleverly uses its headphones as an aerial, oftenng very good reception. With so much going on, the display can get a bit complicated but it lets you pull such tricks as setting a timer to record radio shows. (By displaying the bit-rate of any DAB station you're tuned to, you're also all too aware of how poor quality some of these stations are.) Remarkably light and producing good-quality sound, for the price and the functions, this one gets a firm 'Oh, yes!' www.oono.co.uk

A music website that cuts out the Cowells

BY ROSS McGUINNESS

WATCH out Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh. A new website is giving unsigned bands and singers the chance to prove they have the 'iFactor'. The amazingtunes.com site allows anyone to promote and sell their songs online, cutting out record label middle- men and offering all-comers a shot at the big time.
Hailed as 'iTunes unsigned', it features thousands of tracks-by as-yet- unknown acts, all of which can be listened to for free on the site or downloaded for a small fee. - And, in a move likely to worry Cowell and other record company bosses, musicians get to keep 70 per cent of all payments.
The site, which hopes to revolutionise the music industry, combines the technical aspects of iTunes with the social networking possibilities of MySpace. As well as uploading their work, users are able to post their own profiles, review songs and even create their own radio shows.
But founder Paul Campbell says it is the site's ability to cutout record labels and earn unsigned musicians money which is its key to success. 'I want to challenge the idea that we need record companies at all,' he said. 'With this site there are no middle-men - just you, the music and a fair deal for everyone.'
The site is already creating. stars. Acid jazz producer Crusoe George is a l6-year-old who records tracks in his bedroom in Brighton. His song, Soulful Swing, is currently No.4 in the amazingtunes.com download chart. He said: 'I think it's completely different to what iTunes is. That's about selling what labels want to sell. Amazing-tunes is about showing what people can do.' Another artist proving a hit is 21-year-old April Start from New York. The waitress has been likened to Shania Twain and lists Celine Dion, Luther Vandross and Lisa Loeb among her influences. She says she is 'determined to share her sound and songs with the world - no matter what the cost'.
[METRO Sep24,2007]