fling93 loves fishies

My Stunning Rendition of "Ordinary Day"

Well, Return of the King for the PS2 didn’t take as long as I thought it would. I was a bit disappointed by the game, but I’ll save that for my full review.

Meanwhile, I’ve still been fiddling around with GarageBand, but now with my new toys: a Tascam US-122 USB Audio/MIDI Interface combined with a Shure SM57 dynamic microphone. The SM57 is supposedly pretty legendary and ubiquitous in recording studios (now I recognize them sometimes in music videos) and is, of course, the microphone that even the President uses. It also got a pretty good review from mojo pie’s Steve Langer. They also have a neat article from Dan Richards about building a mic cabinet which says it’s a pretty good microphone to start out with — and it costs less than $100 (see what I mean by lowered barriers to entry?). Eventually I’ll probably add a low-end condenser microphone.

As for the $200 Tascam US-122, there are cheaper audio to USB interfaces out there, but one of the real draws for me was that it had phantom power XLR inputs required by condenser mics. Plus several people on the forums seemed to have good experiences with it, including Ben Whitehouse, who also has an excellent piece on building a home studio. And plus, the local Guitar Center had a returned model for $40 cheaper.

Setup wasn’t too bad. I needed to download the latest driver from Tascam’s website to get it working with my Mac OS X version 10.3.2 iBook. Then I had to switch GarageBand’s audio input to use the US-122, and I was in business! Of course, the thing with audio over USB is that there is a noticeable latency (now I’m wondering whether I should’ve gotten a PowerBook with an audio input), but this can be reduced somewhat by reducing the US-122’s buffer size using the supplied US-122 Manager software.

And when I fired it up, the first thing I found out is that my singing voice sounds a lot better in my head than in an actual recording. Oh well, I don’t plan on doing this for a living. Anyway, no I didn’t write this song. I just wanted to play around with the microphone, and I have lotsa sheet music that I enjoy playing and singing. I had trouble with the tempo variations in all the Tori Amos songs I have (GarageBand doesn’t support tempo changes, so I have to completely ignore the metronome and vary it myself, but I tend to rush in my piano playing, so it wasn’t coming out very good), so instead I went with a cover of Vanessa Carlton’s “Ordinary Day,” which is a pretty simple pop tune, but my favorite song off of her debut album, Be Not Nobody (although that and “A Thousand Miles” are really the only good songs on the album).

It’s just me and the piano (well, GarageBand’s piano, using MIDI). Still bit of a work in progress, especially the bridge, although I’m not sure how much more tinkering I’ll do with it, since it’s just a cover. I’m not really that great a singer, but I think I’m at least a step up from William Hung.

In 128 kbps MP3 format (3.4 MB): fling93 - Ordinary Day.mp3.

In 128 kbps AAC format (3.4 MB): fling93 - Ordinary Day.m4a.

I haven’t gotten around to encoding it to Ogg Vorbis, and I probably won’t bother unless somebody asks. I can’t really imagine anybody out there keeping this song in their collection anyway. I just figured maybe some of you would be interested and/or amused to hear what I sound like.

Again, this song (along with my first one, “Grasshopper,” which was first posted here along with my initial reactions of GarageBand) is also available at http://fling93.com/music/.

Update 9/28/04

Yes, I know I’m a bit out of tune in some parts. Ugh. I’ve long meant to go back and clean it up (and add a drum track), but my iBook’s hard drive’s currently full with Erika’s video footage from the March for Women’s Lives, and we’re having a bitch of a time trying to get iDVD to work. Maybe in a couple of months?