Afternoon in New York by Geoff Peters
Listen:

Download the song (free): Mp3

It features a really simple hip-hop style bass drum/snare (thanks to the Garage Band Hip Hop Synthesized drum kit and a bit of dynamics compression), a synthesized choir patch from my Yamaha P90 keyboard, a soft pad from the Korg, a few notes of an acoustic piano patch from my Yamaha, and a lead synth line from my Korg (with a bit of cutoff filter controlled during the performance to vary the tone). I recorded all the tracks in layers, live & individually along with a metronome. I also used a Volume automation envelope to vary the volume of the lead line and the choir patch.

I don’t know very much about mastering, but the track sounded pretty good on my Macbook laptop speakers, my Behringer studio monitors, and my Creative Labs computer speakers.

Hope you enjoy it! And please let me know your comments, I would really appreciate them!

I used to think that Macintosh computers were “dumbed down” because they only have one mouse button. (Well admittedly, you can use a PC mouse with a Mac if you want to use a second button). I remember the days of 386′s and Windows 3.1 when the Three button mouse was the coolest thing.

I started using computers on the first Macintosh (and even a bit of Apple II+ before that). Then I switched to PC’s and never looked back (so I thought) until a few weeks ago when I realized that I couldn’t record music anymore with PC’s – their latest firewire drivers (Vista) don’t work very well with my fancy MOTU 8-Pre audio interface.

So I bought the White Macbook; it cost around $1300 including tax from London Drugs. It made a very good first impression – everything worked instantly and I was able to get up and running really fast. And I love the design of the laptop: how it looks and how it “feels” when I use it. I am quite happy using the single mouse button for casual things, and then plugging in my Zero Tension ergonomic mouse when I am going to do some more intense clicking.

iMovie is amazing; it makes video editing a breeze, and Logic is so much better than Cakewalk. Long live the Mac laptop!

Browsing the Apple site, I found an interesting article on how A.R. Rahman, the famous Indian movie composer, used Logic Pro to create the soundtrack for the movie Slumdog Millionaire.