Journal: My duet with Jon Anderson

A little while ago, I suggested a simple little Garageband project for myself. Unlike a lot of projects I'd like to take on, this one actually came to pass.

Jon Anderson, singer of Yes, conducted a brief solo tour last winter. One of his shows was broadcast on XM Radio, and I was able to acquire a CD of it.

It contained a peppy little version of the Yes classic "Your Move," one of their greatest hits. Now ordinarily, I tend to skip that song, having heard it so many times at so many shows. But Jon's solo version, while nearly perfect and complete in itself, seemed to me to cry out to have the rest of the band's parts added to it.

So that's what I did.

I just dropped the file in apple's GarageBand, then started adding tracks. Bass and Drums at first, which are simple, monotone halfnote "thuds." Then came the synth-flutes. 5 tracks of vocals and two guitar tracks later, I had a new recording to show for my efforts, available here..

Now, while I am not a perfect musician, and there are plenty flaws of my own I'll gladly acknowledge, I do have a complaint about GB's performance. You may notice that about four of the "simple bass thuds" are a little late. Ordinarily I would chalk this up to my own error. But the fact is that I triggered the bass part and drum part separately, both using GB Software instruments. Yet, the bass and drums are in perfect sync -- with each other!

Though I am perfectly capable of making my own mistakes, the fact that this seemingly irregular mistake was repeated exactly, suggests to me that it is a technological glitch, somewhere between my midi interface, USB, mac hardware, OS X and GB. To be fair, I am running GB on an under-specced machine. GB system requirements define IIRC a 677 mhz G4 processor, while I am using it on a 450 mhz G4 (the Cube).

But, since I don't have hundreds to blow on a major sequencer package like ProTools or Performer, glitches or not, Garageband is now going to be my note processor of choice.

Enjoy the tune!