Creating the First Instrumental Food Music Album on iPad and GarageBand

This article was originally published at Technorati in late June. It basically documented how I came about to using the iPad and GarageBand to create my first collection, Silverfish.

Seeing as this is the beginning of a new music blog for me, and also to give new readers a sense of what I have accomplished so far, I present you this article for your reading pleasure. There is also a newer article focusing on Sirloin Wine, my second album, which I will publish later.

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.

"Sauvignon", for example, is supposed to evoke a smooth, jazzy atmosphere, while "Sashimi" fused some traditional Japanese-like melody with a modern funky twist and bass line.

The idea to do this on the iPad seems to work almost perfectly. With its good range of musical instruments and smart instruments, you could literally lay down a bass and drum track in minutes.

I was then able also to put together chord structures and decide how the track would begin and end, and building the melodies and overlays on top of it was simply a breeze.

Yes, when you have multi-touch, everything becomes so much easier. I was never able to get into GarageBand on the Mac simply because it was still too laborious, and lack a certain 'human' aspect until the iPad's multi-touch interface came along.

Now with GarageBand on the iPad, hitting a 'live' drum set feels more realistic, and playing keyboards and piano allows you to play it with accent thanks to the built-in gyroscope.

Editing using multi-touch was equally simple and elegant , pinching and zooming in on specific parts of your track. Cutting, copying and pasting portions of the music have also never been easier.

But lest anyone thinks it is also over simplistic, GarageBand still requires you to take some time to learn the interface, and you will probably need a couple of days to fully get used to the sequencer and editing process.

The good thing is, once you learn the basics, you will be ready to make really high quality music and GarageBand allows you to email or publish to your iTunes. It will certainly make a great party conversational topic.

Is it perfect? Of course not. But it is certainly powerful and very user-friendly. I would like to see more instruments in future updates, and having a mixer would be just ideal.

Exporting AAC files in higher quality would also be nice, though there is a workaround now to export your GarageBand files/projects to the Mac version and continue working from there.

For now, GarageBand for the iPad is really one of the reasons the iPad is really so 'magical'.

Would-be musicians will rejoice at the ease of creating professional sounding music, whilst professionals will probably find this useful as a music sketchbook on the go.

Either way, those lessons so many years ago have really come through now. I leave you with my original album of music, dedicated to food - Silverfish.