I’ve probably 20 or more royalty free music tracks on my hard drive that are just about complete but have taken a bit of a back seat while I focus on sfx and also some updates to zapsplat.com, so I’ll be finding some time in the next couple of weeks to finish them off and upload them.
However, when I got my new Macbook Pro a couple of weeks ago, I was keen to have a play around with GarageBand, the music production software that comes packaged with it. I used it many years ago before upgrading to Logic, which is what I used when I did my music production degree back in 2005. However I am please to say that some really good updates to GarageBand’s instruments and also interface make it a useful and actually powerful production tool that’s good for beginners and above and for people like me who just want to make music quickly without messing around too much with settings and features. Well I tell a lie, I do actually enjoy doing that, but it’s equally nice just to have a play around with some simpler software sometimes, especially for music that doesn’t require lots of automation etc.
Milky Way
One of the first pieces of music I wrote when I first got the new Mac was ‘Milky Way’, a soft, ambience track with layered synthesised pads, warm piano and a cosmic, wondrous and panoramic feel… well that’s how I describe it anyway!
The track started with me simply keen to explore the range of new pads the software comes with and I literally just used the presets. I layered the chords up with other pads and played around with the interesting reverbs, delays and ambient parameters that are part of the presets for each.
Next I added the piano chords that bind the pads together and introduce the direction of the music. I enjoy slow moving and emotional music so this was right up my street as they say. Lastly I experimented with the synth lead presets and added some melodies over the pads in a fairly random yet deliberate sounding manner.
Check the track out and see what you think. It’s free to download and use in your films, commercials, games, apps etc.
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