gimme gimme

Earlier, I mentioned how easy it was to put a song together using the parts that are included as “sound loops” with Apple’s GarageBand. In other words, you don’t need to know how to play a “real” instrument, in the traditional sense.

For your listening pleasure: “Gimme Gimme” (mp3, 1.4M), which I made completely from prefab parts. (See if you can identify where the loops repeat themselves: drums, guitars, cymbals — each is a separate loop.)

There’s a longer entry in here somewhere about creativity, composition, and working with chunks of information, but I don’t have time to write it now. Hopefully later. The 3X5 cards I’m laying out on my desk as I revise this article remind me of the little round-edged rectangles GarageBand uses to represent the different components of a song. I’m trying to work out some useful parallels. I love reworking these songs. I hate rewriting. I’m hoping to achieve some kind of crossover effect, however.

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6 thoughts on “gimme gimme

  1. I was expecting an old Black Flag song. But I guess that’s three Gimme’s.
    I figured out a while back that procrastination and destraction are just natural parts of the writing process. Still, knowing this doesn’t much assuage the guilt or distress. I always imagine other writers as being super focused machines just pounding away.

  2. Joe, I think it’s best not to imagine what others are doing as you try to do what you do. You’ll always assume others are more motivated, hardworking, smart, successful, etc… than you are. (Or at least, I tend to assume these things.) Better just to stick to your own process and your own progress. Or, as my mom would say, “Hoe your own row.”
    You have to do fun things, or else you’ll go crazy. You cannot work 24/7. (Or at least, I cannot.)
    In the spirit of collaboration, I need someone to create a DRM-free audio file of Zell Miller’s speech at the RNC convention. I’m working on an “Angry Chicken” remix of the above-mentioned “Gimme Gimme” (see Michael Berube on Zell’s anger). I downloaded it from iTunes, but they’ve DRM’ed it, which seems fishy given that just about everyone who speaks at these conventions is a figure on the public payroll. Why should their speeches be copy-protected?

  3. Also, check out Moby and Public Enemy’s “Make Love Fuck War” acapella version. Just the lyrics – no music. I have found a number of garage band remixes of it.
    Email me and I will give ya more info…

  4. Thanks, Randy. I’ll have to look to look into those GarageBand classes.
    I tried to burn the RNC speeches to CD, but the restrictions built into them do not even allow that!

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