In honor of the World Cup, I recently got GarageBand’s “World Music” expansion, and I love it. To drown out the vuvuzelas for today’s Brazil-Chile matchup, I thought I’d post a few recent efforts. These are sounding a bit less like TV theme songs than usual…I think I’m getting better at this! But mostly just having fun. 
Knowing the Futurismic submissions would be coming in this week, I spent a good chunk of the weekend finishing off a couple of GarageBand tunes, since I expect music will go on the backburner once I start editing again this week, not to mention entering the home stretch on the novel. (Holy smokes, four chapters to go!)
This weekend’s tunes felt particularly good so I thought I’d share them. And yes, I know it’s actually a rooster sound effect in “Jive Turkey” — forgive my limited effects library!
It’s good to have multiple projects going; when one project stalls, you can shift to another. I hit a plot snag in the novel last week and had to rework my outline, which kind of killed my momentum. I cleared my head by working on some new tunes, which I hereby inflict upon you.
“Marching Morons – The Series” is just goofy, silly creative loopery. I’m more excited about “Codebreakers,” wherein I finally escape from 4/4 time. There aren’t a lot of GarageBand loops that aren’t in 4/4 time, which forced me to play more of my own lines on this one, including some poor man’s keyboard solos. Anyway, hope you like ‘em!
Finishing up the Futurismic slushpile last month gave me the time to finish my second album of GarageBand tunes earlier this month, which I’m calling Syndication; that’s right, more theme songs for TV shows that don’t exist. I’m still having a blast with this stuff, even if the press of time and the limits of my abilities have slowed down the music-composing process a bit lately. Or maybe producing forty-one songs since November has emptied the well! I suspect the third album will take even longer to put together.
Below is the tracklist for Syndication. I’ve linked the songs that I’ve already referenced in earlier posts, and also uploaded a few new ones: “Groove-o-Matic,” “Scattershot,” and “Speak Easy” (my first song with “vocals”…er, sorta!).
(This post brought to you by the Department for Public Indulgence of Silly, Fun Hobbies.)
Like many folks these days, I’ve been trying to be frugal and over the past few months have been denying myself the usual, occasional splurge purchase – books, DVDs, and games being the most common offenders. But I couldn’t hold out forever, and a couple of weekends ago, on another errand entirely, I broke down and bought myself a present.
Jenn and I went to Fry’s Electronics in Woodland Hills to buy a little adapter for our computers. I took one step inside and my jaw dropped. Fry’s is a ridiculous dream world of consumer electronics, tech toys, software, discs and gadgets. I believe actually said “I want to see everything!” or something similarly childlike, because Jenn was laughing at me. Your average Best Buy is a meager substitute…wow, Fry’s FTW!
Anyway, I tried to exercise my usual restraint, but I just couldn’t do it, and ended up buying a GarageBand Jam Pack to flesh out my loop library. My first two “second wave” TV theme songs are included below — the first is an homage to my favorite Whose Line improv artist, and the second is my first “spinoff” theme. (Thanks, Mike!)
Enjoy! (Oh, and by the way…FRY’S!)
It’s that time again — more imaginary theme songs for imaginary television shows that only exist in the imagination of…the imaginer. (Ten points if you got that reference.) Look forward to your pitches in the comments, should you be so inclined. Hope you like these, and have a great weekend everybody!
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming — which is to say, the steady parade of reviews of obscure movies, to resume shortly — for another music post. Like last time, I’ve included a few tunes from the first album, plus a relatively new one from the second. Yep, I’m still slugging away at GarageBand in my spare moments, writing theme songs for TV shows that don’t exist. For example (as if it’s not obvious) “Junkyard Cats” is an imaginary animated 1970s comedy featuring the vocal stylings of Casey Kasem and Flip Wilson. Can you synopsize the other series?
Not much to report here, except that I’m on vacation for the first time in months, and boy does it feel good….
In the spirit of the holidays, I’m giving away more (not even remotely seasonal) GarageBand music. The first three are a few of my favorites from Episodic, and the fourth one is new.
Hope you enjoy the tunes, and I hope everyone is having a great December!
Episodic is complete! Or as complete as anything you compose on your computer can be…you know the old saying, “Writing is never finished, it is only abandoned…” I could probably tweak and modify and re-level these songs forever, if I wanted to improve them. But I’m determined not to turn a fun hobby into hard work, so the hell with that — they’re done!
Below is a downloadable sample tune, based around a particularly infectious GB3 bass loop and layered with groovy beats and effects:
I am having so much fun with this program, and with the whole song-building process. Both my music theory and my keyboarding skills are pretty basic, so I let the pre-programmed loops do a lot of the work. But I feel like I’m getting more adventurous with the melody lines and loops I’m playing myself, and then layering on copious amounts of percussion and texture to give it some personality. I also think some of these tunes have a pretty good sense of humor.
Episodic is a twenty-song collection of theme songs from TV shows that never existed. Here’s the tracklist:
Maybe I’ll post more songs later if people are interested. Hope you like “Soul Patch!”