Black Dogs little improv.

[carlaz]

That Garage band thing sounds great to me. Is it versitile enough for you to programme what you want the Drums to do [ like a drum machine ] & Bass ? & can you get it to do keyboard sounds ?

GarageBand comes free with Apple machines (http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/), I believe. If for some reason you didn't have it preinstalled, GB is part of the iLife app bundle which retails for USD 50 or something.  No Windows version (not surprisingly).  

GB is excellent for quickly sketching out song ideas and rough demos -- probably not powerful enough for pro use (for which one would move up to  Logic, which is pro) but I don't know enough about audio engineering to make anything pro anyway :).  It's basically a hyper-friendly DAW interface, doing multitrack audio/MIDI recording with a bunch of basic presets for real instruments and vox, a host of "software instruments" (like soundfonts, basically), and a big raft of loops.  You can buy Apple or 3rd party add-ons to increase your options in these various categories.

GB's amp sims are a bit of a weak point.  There are some all-rightish presets and you can futz with the settings, but there's only so much to work with.  GB isn't really intended as a guitarist's toolkit, though, so one just has to find one's own solutions there.

You could, in theory, program your own custom MIDI drum parts right in GarageBand, though I think this would be a tedious pain in the @r$e :)  Easier to just use some basic drum loops when sketching things out; you can always program your own custom thing in something like Doggiebox later and import the audio files to GB (there's another app called iDrum that's supposed to integrate with GB in some way, but I haven't tried it).

I've got a bunch of half-arsed demos on my personal web site, some of which I've recorded recently using the quick-n-dirty technique of slapping down some drum loops and accepting the presets.  This is plenty good enough to get a song sketched out for one's bandmate's to learn from, though I'd need to program the drums properly and sort out the guitar amp/amp-sim situation (to start with!) for anything more polished.

Now that I've finished wibbling about GB ... nice track!  Would you be willing to divulge more of your GB amp settings? :)  I've kind of come to accept that they won't do in the long run, but in the meantime I've been pushing the settings and FX around on them in an effort to get something better out of them.

[fatbob]

I've gone and bought a few Santana albums. dunno where those phrases came from, considering I've never heard 'out by him other than "black magic woman"
Regarding 'Garageband' ...... I really wish I knew how to do this recording thing, esp. with computers!!! But it is a good free program to play with (even if i don't have a clue what i'm doing) Guitar sims are average, but there are a lot of editing options, which can be pretty flexable, if you have patience, and play away from computer. (noise)
Anyway, hope you all got an idea of how the "dogs" sound. Which to me is brilliant. Now saving for some Nailbombs for my Ibanez RG, and a H/S/S set (still undecided) for my Parker Nitefly.

[jt]

:D Thanx for the info Guys  :D

 :D  8)

[rinse_master]

Nice one Bob, sounding good.

I still haven't wired up my Black Dogs, yes, it has been ages, but this is gonna encourage me for sure.

[hunter]

This is a nice piece, the sound is well set, even sings nicely. Regarding your recording tool, I looked for the same, and compared a pod xt vs a vox tonelab. I ended up buying the tonelab and can't take my hands off it - since more than a year! It's a fantastic, simple design, even better with the editor, and the sounds are very dynamic and authentic.

You won't get so many outer space variations, but when it comes to pure tone for direct recording, I haven't heard or tried any better.

In the end, you will get more versatility than with GB, but especially a sound that is more dynamic, responsive and in ya face than what you have today.

By the way, I also swapped the stock Electro harmonix tube with a JJ 12AX7, which sounds rounder and fuller to my ears.

Waiting for my BlackDogs to arrive next week, will then post some clips to give an idea.

[carlaz]

I think almost any dedicated amp-modeller would sound better than GB's built in amp simulation -- heck the 10-year old COSM presets in my VS-1680 sound better than the GB presets -- but I think one can tweak up sounds in GB that are a marked improvement on the presets.  I see almost no online activity regarding user-made GB amp presets, I guess because most guitarists are mic'ing an amp or using a dedicated amp modeller like a Pod or Tonelab or whathaveyou.  It's only cheapskates like me mucking around with the GB amp sims ;)

That said, I've heard good things about both the Tonelab and PODs.  Both seem to have OS X editing software (the V-amps don't) and both probably do the job.  Neither have bass amps as well as guitar amps (only the Toneport/Gearbox package or Bass V-amps do that). The conventional wisdom I've read suggest that Pod and Tonelab each have their strengths and weaknesses (many people seem to suggest the Tonelab handles clean better, while the POD does good dirt).  I think I lean a little towards the POD just because the support for the product and its continued development seem very good, and I could stick a valve-pedal in front of it to warm things up a little ....  But I expect to keep thinking about this for some more months!

(I kinda wish the Johnson J-Station was still in production, though!)