I finally installed Garage Band (1.1) and played around with it. This simplistic and rough song fragment is the result. It’s just Em-D7 looped 3 times. The keyboard part is just a closed root position Em triad and then a D triad, each with the root note doubled an octave below. I used the “Silicon Strings” synth pad sound. The drum loop is “Exotic Beat 05″ which I think sounds pretty cool through the “Detailed Drums” kit. The bass line is a simple pentatonic ostinato played on my MTD 535 fretless bass with octave and stereo chorus effects. The bass melody line was improvised clean (no effects, so you can hear all my mistakes clearly) and was played on my Modulus 4-string bass. Based on the fact that it took me about 1 hour to do all this stuff, and most of the time was spent evolving the composition and refining performances, I guess GarageBand is pretty useful.

Download audio file (Em-D7_loop.mp3)

Chords fitting in the harmonic minor scale & phrygian mode in 7/8 time. The name comes from the beat which I made in Doggiebox in an attempt to come up with the most syncopated 7/8 beat I could – hence the name of the song. I played this on my Kramer guitar through heavy distortion and stereo chorus. This eventually became “Live Nude Girls”, which can be heard here.

Download audio file (impossible_7_mix.mp3)

Guitar-wanking over an easy rhythm part, 4/4 E to B. The drums on this are again performed by Doggiebox. I’ve grown to like some techno music but as a lover of over the top musicians (flailing shredding soloists & bands that play ultra difficult parts) I want to explore live instruments over synth beats / drum loops. This was an effort to see if I could keep things interesting over a very repetitive chord progression and a very straightforward beat. The bass part is played on a 4-string bass strung with the low 4 strings from a 5-string set, with a chorus effect added. The guitar is once again Kramer through heavy distortion and stereo chorus.

Download audio file (dance-ish_flail_mix2.mp3)