Using GarageBand to transpose music tracks

My fellow liblogarian, Von Totanes, aka Filipino Librarian emailed me to ask if I knew how to use GarageBand to transpose an imported MP3 from F key to E key. He’s new to GarageBand and said he tried searching for help but couldn’t “make heads or tails of what’s being said”.

I’m curious what were the instructions that he has referred to

Von, I know of two ways to do it in GarageBand: using the “AUPitch” effect or the “Vocal Transformer” effect.

My GB version is iLife ‘08. If you’re using a later version, the user interface may be slightly different but the effects should be the same.

BTW, I presume you’ve already imported the MP3 to GarageBand. Once that’s done, select that track and apply either one (but not both) of these effects:

#1 – Using the “AUPitch” effect

[I don't think the numbers represent the pitch, because how much you adjust depends on your original pitch. So you'll have to experiment. Like, play a note on the piano or a song with a known pitch.]

#2- Using the “Vocal Transformer” effect

Let me know if this helps, Von.

[28 Aug 09] Update: To access the above panels, open up your Track Info panel, i.e. TRACK > SHOW TRACK INFO. Then click on the Details.

Collaborative Creative Commons music album: “2009 Twilight Under Velveteen Skies”

I’m pleased to share this music album with the world. A collaborative effort, featuring three other very talented and very cool people I befriended at ccMixter. It includes an original 4-way collaborative track, pieced together without having met one another.

Album cover adapted from “Leo Rising Over Trees, November 2002“, originally uploaded by alexpgp/ CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Album: “2009 Twilight Under The Velveteen Skies”.
By Ivan Chew and ccMixter friends:

• Mikael Hansson aka colab – www.myspace.com/colabtoronto
• teru – terumusic.blogspot.com
• narva9 – narva9.blogspot.com

2009 Twilight Under Velveteen Skies by Ivan Chew & ccMixter Friends is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Singapore License.

Download the album at www.archive.org/details/2009TwilightUnderVelveteenSkies.

Here’s the title track, Under The Velveteen Skies

If you liked it, check out the rest of the tracks below.

TRACKS

1. Under The Velveteen Skies (6.06MB). Credits: Mikael Hansson, teru, Ivan Chew, narva9. Mixed by teru. Also posted at ccMixter (with more links to the samples created for the track).
2. Lady of Shalott (4.81MB). Credits: Ivan Chew, narva9. Mixed by Ivan Chew. Originally posted at ccMixter.
3. Twilight PeaceMix (4.39MB).Credits: teru, Mikael Hansson, Ivan Chew. Mixed by Ivan Chew. Originally posted at ccMixter.
4. Twilight Falling (6.26MB). Credits: Ivan, Mikael. Mixed by Ivan Chew. Originally posted at ccMixter.
5. Twilight Rock (4.12MB – this is where the Twilight Sample came from). Credits: Ivan Chew. Mixed by Ivan Chew. Originaly posted at StarfishStories.
6. Twilight Myxtery (3.43MB). Credits: teru, narva9, Mikael Hansson, Ivan Chew. Mixed by teru. Originally posted at ccMixter.

The coolest part for me was the entire process. Here’s the sequence of events that led to the album:

• Nov 11, 2008: I published Twilight (2008), a rock instrumental, at my band blog.

• Nov 16, 2008: I uploaded the flute sample, from the rock instrumental, as Twilight (2008) Basic melody at ccMixter.org.

• Dec 22, 2008: Received a notification from ccMixter that Teru remixed my Twilight basic melody, along with samples from narva9 and colab, to produce Twilight Myxtery. That was also how I discovered all three ccMixter users.

• Jan 11, 2009: I liked Teru’s and colab’s samples alot, so I remixed and posted Twilight 2009 Peacemix.

• Feb 16, 2009: As part of the ccMixter Secret Remix #5, I was coincidentally paired up with colab. I decided to use his Fall To Pieces sample and posted this track Twilight Falling.

• Between Feb 16 to 23, 2009: Somehow it dawned upon me that there were enough remixes based on the Twilight melody, that I could publish an online album with it. Since the tracks are all released under various Creative Common licenses, I could publish the album by just giving the proper credits the the creators. I didn’t have to ask permission from them to publish the compilation. But I thought the four of us could work on an original song. No harm asking.

• Feb 22, 2009: I completed a remix, Lady Of Shallot,with help from narva9.

• Feb 23, 2009: Emailed narva9, teru and colab (aka Mikael). In essence, I said I intended to publish an online album based on the Twilight remixes. A list of songs had been shortlisted, and these were already published in ccMixter. But I wondered if the four of us could produce a totally original track for this album.

• Mar 2, 2009: By now, I had received positive replies from the three of them. colab suggested I could be the executive producer of sorts, and assign roles. At that point, we didn’t have any idea of what or how the collaboration would develop. But everyone was pretty cordial and obliging.

• Mar 4 to 5, 2009: The challenge was that the four of us were only communicating via email. The starting point, I realised, had to be something for everyone to hear and comment. Like a throw-away code or prototype that can be discarded. So I sent a very rough mix to the group. colab replied on Mar 5 and suggested that we needed an owner to drive the direction and the decisions throughout the process. teru and narva9 agreed. So I said I’ll take the driver’s seat but essentially said no one was obligated to follow.

• Apr 3, 2009: We picked up the discussion from the last correspondence on Mar 5. I checked if the collaboration was still on, and if it was I suggested we could use this sample from colab as the starting point. colab replied that he was “actively thinking about something” but not quite working on it yet I suggested teru could add synth work, with narva9’s vocals as another “instrument” track. teru replied that he’ll play with colab’s sample and see what he can come up with. narva9 replied that she’ll wait for what we can come up with and then write words to it.

• Apr 7, 2009: teru mailed a MP3 file to the group. He and colab had been bouncing ideas between Apr 6 and 7, and they were able to come up with a re-engineered version that sounded totally original (colab’s piece was in 3/4 time signature, and teru turned that into a 4/4). teru asked if the ’sound sketch’ was in the right direction.

• Apr 8, 2009: “NICE!” was my reply. I added that if that was merely a sketch, I couldnt’ wait for the finished work. The sample from teru and colab boosted my spirits, not only because the tune had a calm and uplifting quality but also the fact that the collaboration was heading somewhere. I imported the MP3 to GarageBand, added a brief guitar lead, an Erhu part, and some drums. Then emailed back to the rest using the remix to discuss ideas for further refinements to the track. colab replied with comments and suggestions to my remix. He suggested, and we agreed, that we all send individual parts as WAV or AIF to teru, who’ll piece everything together (“because he is very, very good at that”). We exchanged a few more emails on Apr 8 itself.

• May 3, 2009: I didn’t hear anything from the rest since Apr 8/ 9. At that time, the H1N1 flu broke out. I emailed them to ask if everyone was OK. Also to ask if there were any updates on the collaboration. colab replied he had sent something to teru and now taking a break musically. narva9 replied that she now had teru’s Sketch #2 and would come up with some words in a week’s time.

• May 18, 2009: narva9 informed the three of us that she has the words almost ready to go and was learning how to sing the song properly. The demo would be ready for us in a week’s time.

• May 23, 2009: teru sent a Version2 with the “vocals + (lotsa) reverb, a beat and some light padding“. Added that the spacey feel might be due to his watching Star Trek the previous night. colab and I were wowed by the mix. We each gave suggestions for tweaking the arrangement (e.g. inserting a break, guitar part). teru then sends a Version1.5 without the drums and reverb. I listened to Versions 1.5 and 2. Decided to add an electric guitar part also a very brief Erhu at the intro and outro. Sent it off as Version3. colab gave his thumbs up for Version3.

• Jun 1, 2009: teru emailed everyone Version4 without drums and with my guitars. And he invited everyone to comment. colab summed it up best with his reply: “I like it very much. This is better than so much other work out there – really top notch production. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have been part of it.” My reply was essentially the same. colab and I also offered more suggestions for the mix. I think at that point, we were pretty comfortable with each other and could freely (and still cordially) give comments.

• Jun 6, 2009: teru reworked the track and came up with Version5. He incorporated the Erhu at the opening, guitar stereo-separated to mix in better, and first vocal chorus omitted. He added that this new mix really brought out everyone’s contributions, in his opinion. I was glad he felt that way. Version4 was nice. But Version5 was, as teru puts it, equally nice AND with a stronger statement from everyone’s contribution. colab wrote: “This is absolutely outstanding. And that’s all I have to say about that “

• Jun 7, 2009: With the collaborative track done, we exchanged a few emails that were more administrative in nature. We decided to adopt a CC-BY-NC license, discussed the album title, how to list the credits etc. In between the emails, teru’s computer crashed while he was trying to save his files. He didn’t have the final version saved, so the MP3 for Version5 is the only one of its kind. I suggested we name the track “Under The Velveteen Skies”, as per narva9’s refrain.

• Jul 10, 2009: Taking everyone’s comments into account, we managed to settle on the album name and credits.

• Jul 11 to Aug 1, 2009: I decided to re-adjust the sound levels for some of the tracks that I had mixed earlier (e.g. Lady of Shallot, Twilight rock instrumental).

• Aug 2, 2009: Created the album cover from this image. Keyed in the metadata for each track. Finalised the track order; renamed the files. Uploaded to archive.org. Emailed teru, narva9 and Mikael that the album is finally up.

Again, my thanks to teru, narva9 and Mikael. Truly, the album wouldn’t be here without you folks.

Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 2)

From Part 1:

Layering Practice1

Layering Practice2

Layering Practice3

Photoshop Colouring Practice 1 – Fill w 20% Transparency

Photoshop Colouring Practice 2 – Overlay 2nd colour 85%Transparency

Photoshop Colouring Practice 3 – Add whiteBackgd Layer for actual colour tone

Photoshop Colouring Practice 4 – Recalling colours

Photoshop Colouring Practice 5 – Create own Colour Palette

Photoshop Colouring Practice 6 – Colour Palette w Whitebackground

Next: Part 3.

Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 1)

Back in 2007 (or was it 2006?), I picked up a copy of the Hellboy “Seed of Destruction” comic at Central Lending Public Library. And I was hooked. The illustrations and storylines simply blew me away. I was an instant fan.

There’s heavy use of shadows and contrast in Hellboy (lots of black).

At one page, I saw this particular panel and decided to use it as art practice. I took a digital photo for reference (From “Hell Boy: Seeds of Destruction” by Mike Mignola & John Byrne):

Sketched it on watercolour paper (not traced). It was a practice in observational skills:

When I was happy with the sketch, I proceeded to ink the outlines (alternating between Indian Ink applied with calligraphy pen, and a marker — in the end, I was happier with the Indian Ink as was more vibrant):

Here’s a shot of how I referred to the digital image (on a laptop) and inking on paper:

This is a scanned image of the completed outline in ink:

Then I filled in the spaces with more black:

Inking completed:

At this point, I wanted to apply watercolours, but I suddenly felt like doing the painting digitally. So I scanned in the image and retouched it in Photoshop by filling in with black and white (this definitely improved the picture in terms of smoothing out the uneven tones in the hand-coloured picture, and the black and white areas more defined):

Next: Part 2.

Technorati Tag: art practice, hellboy, photoshop, inking

Song: Slipping Underneath The Water (a CCmixter remix)

Inspired and impressed by Scomber’s (aka Gary) remix of my work, I decided to try out mixing stuff from CCmixter.

“Slipping Underneath The Water (a CCmixter remix)”

Listen/ download the higher quality versions at ARCHIVE.ORG. The song can also be accessed from CCmixter.org.

• An remixed composition, edited, arranged & mixed by: Ivan Chew.
• From the generosity of Kaer Trouz and oldDog.

It didn’t take me that much time to find suitable stuff in CCmixter. It was serendipitous really. First I stumbled upon oldDog’s beautiful piano piece titled “Too Quiet“. The moment I heard the first few bars, I said to myself “this was it”. Maybe I’ll just add a guitar track to it.

But then I found Kaer Trouz’s vocal sample. Wow, would I be able to mix both samples together? I’ve never tried it before.

So I fired up GarageBand, imported both tracks. Chose to set the song at 80 BPS. I don’t think that affected the tempo of the imported tracks… Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe the tweaking is already done by GarageBand.

Anyway when I played the piano track and the vocals together, things clicked immediately. And the rest was time spent editing and splicing.

The piano track was edited somewhat, as I wanted to insert pauses between transitions. Some parts of the vocals had to be spliced to fit into the tempo. The problem was some resulting clicks between splices (you can probably hear it). In the end, I decided it was the best that I could achieve from my abilities and equipment.

Took me about 24 hours to do this in total.

I was on leave from work. Nursing a cold.

Remixing this song cheered me up immensely!

Hat-tip to Scomber for showing me possibilities

Remixed: “Saying Goodnight”

So far I’ve uploaded 3 tracks to CCmixter and this loop seems to be the most popular.

Check out what Scomber did, by mixing this vocal track by GuestsOfNature, and my Saying Goodnight guitar track, to produce this song called: NOT ENOUGH (FOR ME):

Download the MP3 here.
Stream from here.

Very, very nice.

At first I thought Scomber sang the vocals. Then later realised it was a remixed vocal track (with additional guitars in the transitions and background). Amazing how it gels together (will email Scomber if any adjustments were done). BTW, I’ve never met or emailed Scomber until I received the CCmixter alert that my track was remixed.

Yet another example of the “Social” in social media.

Remix on!

Music Video: ONE WORLD (2008)

My second music video (here’s the first, btw):

Music Video: One World (2008) by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at starfishstories.wordpress.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://StarfishStories.wordpress.com.

Details and credits, here.

Remixed!

This song of mine was used in this video.

Cool!

A new item in my guitar collection

Bought a Bass Guitar today. A Stagg “B300-BK“.

Standard “J” electric bass guitar – Pickups: 2 x JB – Controls: 2 x Volume + 1 x Tone – Body: solid Alder – Pickguard: White (BK/BL/SB) or Tortoiseshell (N/NS) – Neck: Hard Maple, bolt-on, 867 mm, (34.2 in.) – Fingerboard: Rosewood, 20 frets – Bridge: “JB” Classic – Machine heads: Standard “P”, nickel – Colour: Black.

Bought it from Zen Guitarwerks (they’re located at the basement of Peninsula Shopping Complex, at Coleman Street) for $310, including a $20 guitar bag.

Discussed with my wife if I should buy the bass guitar. Did a mental check so that I was sure I’d be using it and not buying it on a whim.

Didn’t really shop around to see if there were better deals. My budget was $500 or less. If the instrument was within my budget AND gave me the right feel, I was prepared to buy it there and then.

So I dropped by Peninsular Shopping Complex (which, in the last decade, has quietly become the guitar player shopping mecca in Singapore).

Zen Guitarwerks was the second shop I went into (the price range of the bass guitars at the first shop were beyond my budget). It’s a relatively tiny shop, and I’d almost missed it had my wife not pointed it out.

Within minutes of my scanning the price tags at the bass guitar section, the young girl manning the shop asked if I needed help. Her demeanor was friendly, and she seemed knowledgeable about the stuff in the shop.

Tried about four bass guitars from different price ranges. The one I bought was the lowest priced in the store, but somehow the feel and tone was nicer than the higher priced ones that I tested.

Final test was to tune the bass guitar, check the action for buzzing (none that I could tell), last intuitive feel of the weight and fret play.

I’ve reached a point where the sound generated from MIDI just isn’t good enough. Plus, I’m interested in learning more instruments. Admittedly, I was also encouraged after watching videos like these (now how’s that as an example of YouTube indirectly influencing a purchase decision?).

Technical skills-wise, I’m still going to focus on the guitar. But I decided to buy a bass guitar to try out some musical ideas I have in mind. I don’t expect it to drastically change my compositions but will see how it goes.

Will check out some online resources and books from the public libraries.

Nice to be trying out something new.

Changing to higher gauged strings & adjusting a floating guitar bridge

I’ve always used a set of 0.09mm electric guitar strings. Found them easier to play and bend. But lately, I found the lighter strings sounding too thin. Plus, I’ve stop harbouring any pretenses that lighter gauge strings would make me the guitar-shredder virtuoso, LOL.

I have a floating bridge, and changing to a set of higher gauge strings isn’t as straight-forward. You need to perform additional adjustments to the springs that connect to the floating bridge.

Apparently it’ll cost about $180 to $200 to have a professional change it (and a friend told me horror stories of how some “professionals” turned out to be amateurs).

I figured I might as well try learning how to do it. I had some idea how to do it. Besides, I wasn’t aiming for that good a sound and I might learn something in the process.

First, I removed the old strings and gave the guitar a wipe down and polish.

Next was to remove the access cover, to get to the springs that controlled the tension of the floating bridge.

Then I put on the new set of strings (this was a higher gauge; 0.10mm for the first string). The floating bridge no longer “floats”, since the strings have no tension.

After I tightened the strings (standard E tuning), it was clear that the tension is way too high. The bridge is raised to a level that far too high to play the guitar properly.

After this point, it was just pure “learn as I go”; a process of adjustments and experimenting. After twiddling for a bit, I realised I had to increase the tension of the floating bridge springs, so that it will bring down the bridge.

True enough, the bridge was lowered.

I continued to make adjustments to the bridge springs, and the string tension. The tricky bit about tuning a floating bridge is that any adjustment to a string tension affects the rest of the strings. So it was a process of repeatedly adjusting the tension, checking the tuning, re-adjusting and re-checking the tuning… eventually, you’ll get there.

Right now, there’s a slight buzz when I play the sixth string at the 12th fret. I was told I’d have to adjust the truss rod (a metal bar that reinforces the guitar neck) but I wasn’t brave enough to try that yet. I’ll let it go, until the buzz irritates me to further action!

OK, my guitar is still in one piece. And it’s playable. And the bridge works fine.

Total time taken to change the strings and adjust the bridge: Two hours.

Saved myself $100 plus dollars.

Not bad for a first attempt.

And the higher gauge strings sound real sweet.