okay, so this is how i did it.
i hooked up my mac powerbook (actually my wife's, which i have commandeered) to our yamaha clavinova via a special midi interface cable (which plugs into the usb port). as i may have mentioned previously, i am more a keyboard person than anything else.
then, i messed around with different guitar settings on garage band until i found something pretty nice... i felt it needed the sort of soft reverb feel, because if not, then because the input method was the keyboard, the "guitar" didn't have a realistic texture to it. so i chose "nylon shimmer." i listened to the radiohead clip posted previously, tried to copy some of what thom yorke plays (i believe it's him doing that). there are some really cool and subtle transitions he plays between notes that i wasn't able to emulate. at one point, you can hear my approximation, which is more a clunky chord... the way he does it, one note sort of blend/rises into the next in a really beautiful way.
the rhythm is hard to set for me in garage band. i gave up using the metronome; for one thing, i wasn't sure how to set it to the same tempo as the original radiohead song. for another, it seems to just interfere with the natural speed i set for the song; always, within a few measures, i am just off tempo enough to have to stop. so i just did the tempo by feel.
the trouble with the guitar was that it was a little off-rhythm, on the up-beat (i don't know if that's the right lingo, but...).
... yes, i DID try to do the percussion; that's actually something very distinct about the recent radiohead songs, they really emphasize the drums... but i CANNOT play his complex rhythms on the keyboard. i tried. maybe it's this old yamaha (some of the keys stick), but i couldn't rapidly hit a single key (set to the snare drum) to adequately capture the complex rhythms... so i just GAVE UP. i think if i ever DO try to enter percussion, it'd be best to get drum pads... or even actually record live drums (as if).
with just the guitar, things sounded pretty hollow, even with the guitar on "nylon shimmer." so i used some of the synth settings (there are MANY MANY settings on garage band). i chose something with a light atmospheric "filler" feel: "floating embers." and i determined a chord sequence to reinforce the guitar playing. the big trouble with this synth addition (and i'm sure you notice it) is that because it has an echo reverb sound (sometimes wonderfully complex), it tends to blur the chord sequences into a mild cacophany (which the generous listener will simply translate as "a rich field.") sort of like playing a chord sequence on a piano with the pedal held down. i tried to reduce this effect; actually, if you listen to the latter half (after the hard piano chords), the synth effect is reduced almost to nothing (because if i kept it, the whole cacophany effect would have sounded overwhelming).
the third voice to add was the hard piano chords that occur halfway through my clip. this was relatively simple, although it was hard to coordinate with the guitar (offbeat). my result definitely wasn't perfect, and i found i couldn't fine tune to the extent i would've liked. but- this was my first attempt.
last thing i added was my own voice. it was (i swear) like 2 am in the morning. i couldn't sing loud, because everyone was sleeping. also, my voice wasn't exactly fine tuned at that time, being scratched by frito lay chips and some unidentifiable carbonated drink...
(by the way, i TRIED to do falsetto once. it was TERRIBLE... i will never try that again. it's just too disrespectful to radiohead. and to ears in general.)
the voice settings were fun to play with. a lot had some sort of reverb atmospheric effect. some, like "diva" or "voice reflection" had so much reverb that it led to a similar problem to using the synth "floating embers" setting. so i opted for something with "atmosphere," but which retained a semblance of clarity: "live performance."
all in all, i would say that using garage band was a whole lot of fun. what i'm finding about a lot of mac software is that it was designed by people who knew exactly what someone would WANT to do with it (i.e., someone who actually WAS a video or music editor). my experience with much windows software has been quite the opposite: it was like a bunch of programmers who knew nothing about, say, video production, put together a set of rather clunky and incompatible features to meet some mediocre standard... thusfar, i'm sold on the whole mac mindset.
imagine: someone with little musical background (aside from a few years of compulsory piano lessons, and taiko drumming) could create these music clips in a matter of hours!
(you may be shaking your head, saying, yeah, it SOUNDS like someone with little musical background spent a few hours on it!)
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