Blog of Jon Wright

Nice to see BBC director Peter Fincham grovelling this morning on TV.

He was in the stocks because he'd shown journalists a trailer of a documentary about the Queen and at one point said our Lizzy had walked out in a huff. One sequence showed the queen apparently leaving the room when in actual fact, she was entering. Apparently the film was edited the wrong way round…huh!

He won't resign of course, cushy job, big salary and it'll all die down in a couple of days. Unlike her Majesty, these jumped up, pompous, self important buffoon's don't have an ounce of dignity in their bodies.

Off with his head!!

Many years ago when Garageband was in its early stages of development i wrote many an article about it and even some tutorials before i lost interest.

Many years later after i got rid of my 24 track recording studio and all the hardware to go with it, i started playing around with this app to see if it had evolved into something worth using. I have to say that i am stunned by the quality of the samples and software instruments and its ease of use.

When i think how i used to tie myself in knots trying to get to grips with MOTU's Digital Performer which is a great product by the way, but for me its just too feature rich and complex. Add 24 channels of ADAT through a Mackie desk and various racks of reverb, noise gates etc..and by the time you have the whole thing set up you can't be bothered to be creative. 

In the early days i just used to plug my fuzz box and old drum machine through a Yamaha MT8 X 8 track tape recorder, again a doddle to use, and get creative. 

Now coupled with my original Pod from Line 6, my Gordon Smith and a few midi samples i am back enjoying writing little ditties again. One project i have been doing lately is some Black Sabbath tribute work. Neon Knights (click on link to listen) is the first track on Heaven & Hell and is a nice up tempo number which i have replicated using Garageband. The track took no time to do, i just simply found a midi sample of the song on the net, imported into Garageband by dragging into the main window, tweaked about with the notes, plugged my guitar directly into Garageband via my Pod and that's it. Simple, effective and does the job nicely.

What i'd really like to do now is collaborate with other Mac using musicians and do some garageband file swopping creating a few tracks for fun. If your interested drop me an email at jonwright[@]mac.com