MIDI Controller

In all this time (about two years now) that I've been playing with GarageBand, I've never really used a regular piano-style keyboard to input musical notes. The little "piano" graphic window you can use the mouse with in GB is fundamentally useless, but the "musical typing" window is just useful enough that I went with it.

I'm pretty sure I could use my fancy, expensive Roland keyboard as a MIDI trigger source instead, but I don't think I ever have. The instruction manual for that thing is endless, even after three years I find it a bit daunting. When I want to use the Roland, I run it in as an *audio* source, not a *MIDI* source. I just don't want to have to keep another USB connector around and figure out which device to turn on first and all that crap. (My brain is oddly Luddite about such things.)

What I've wanted for a long time is a MIDI input keyboard. I saw one at about the same time that one of my professional colleagues gave me my first introduction to GarageBand (he raved about how good it was; I'd been assuming it must be a toy).

But every time I looked at the price tag on a MIDI keyboard, versus what I thought I needed to accomplish, I kept convincing myself it wasn't really going to be worth it. I could hack along with the "musical typing" function and then drag the notes around in the program window if the timing was off. Which it always is, I'm far from a great keyboard player.

A recent conversation with Shannon Grady convinced me to give the M-Audio product line another look. What could be simpler than walking into an Apple Store and just getting a two-octave MIDI keyboard?

I really really should have done this long ago. My compositions just took another little quantum jump.

Here's the thing. I've gotten much more fluid about using looping to rehearse draft ideas for songs and then lay them down. But although the Roland can loop, if the major part of the song is in GB and then I have to attach the Roland to start practicing keyboard parts on top of that ... too many steps for my Luddite brain.

I mean, frankly, the programming interface on the Roland is just clunky. Compared to a full fledged GUI like GarageBand. I know there are GUI tools for the Roland (I've even loaded them, once, in the distant past, despite being a Luddite) but my dim recollection is that GB is still superior.

So here I am with my new toy and it makes it EVER so much easier to rehearse keyboard lines and then record them RIGHT into the program when basically satisfied. The only drawback (and it is a real one) is that I can only trigger the sounds native to GB. The Roland does have 768 nice sounds, about 150 of which I think I actually LIKE. So there is more to do with the interface.

But the M-Audio unit has semi-weighted keys (which the Roland does NOT), and it collects genuine MIDI attack and aftertouch information (which the Roland does, but then it dumps it to that little information window which is SO difficult to use fluidly).

I got a great deal more done just yesterday than I have in a while.

******

Now it may be time for a little more discipline.

Part of the reason I'm doing all this composing at home is that rehearsing a band is time consuming. When we go into the studio, it quickly becomes apparent that even *I* don't recall all the chord changes and melody lines for my songs perfectly, and I live with the things much more fully than my sidemen do. It takes time to get everyone rehearsed, work things out, make choices about parts, and so on.

Meanwhile, although my creative burst from circa late March and April has been tailing off a little, the juices are still flowing. So I keep coming up with new song bits.

In addition to the two songs I blogged about last week and the week before (which now carry the titles "Monday Morning" and "Sun Breaks Through") I've got a couple more things in the crucible .... another one generated out of looping some fumbly acoustic guitar arpeggiating, like "MM" and "SBT"--and that one has some draft lyrics--and then a pure, simple synthpop song in a vaguely Gary Numan tradition, which is 100% an artifact of this new MIDI keyboard, which allows me to compose that kind of shit EVEN faster than before.

Thing is, I could speed up the process of band rehearsals if I didn't spend QUITE so much time hacking at new songs.

Ryan has come up with some great ideas for lead guitar parts, but that said, it's obviously a bit of a slog for him at times, and I think it's partly because I'm not giving enough guidance. He came up with a descending figure in the verses of "Good Men" that made me wet myself with glee. I think he also repeats it basically the same each time he hauls it out. Perhaps, as the composer, it's up to me to step in and say "here are some variations I want you to make on your brilliant riff."

What I *ought* to do with this new MIDI controller is work on some of those ideas.

Same with Eric's bass lines. He's pulling out some GREAT stuff. It's also clear that I need to give him more time to rehearse, and a better beat to play with. Our rehearsal last week featured NO drummer--because I still haven't talked to Doug--and NO beat track--because I forgot my Nano with the beat tracks at home, heading out to the studio in a rush.

This is my gig. I have to be more prepared. Hacking away on new material is fabulous and great, but not if I set things up so that my sidemen don't get enough attention from my for the stuff I'm asking them to do.

So there's a bit of planning and preparation remaining to do.