According to Apple.com, Erykah Badu started mixing her new album New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) in GarageBand and created a demo video with PhotoBooth & iMovie. All 3 programs GarageBand, PhotoBooth, & iMovie (and more) are part of iLife ’08 – on sale for just $79.
Even though Erykah had never used GarageBand, she was able to open up the program, get started and begin building her songs easily – learning everything by trial and error and without reading any of the instructions.
Big drum & retro guitar samples, recorded vocals, effects and complex layering all done right on her MacBook.
She saved her songs as mp3 files and shared them with her producer directly in iChat. They sent tracks back and forth until the music was almost perfect. That’s when Badu’s producer and engineer polished the album using Logic and Pro Tools.
Creating A Music Video With iMovie
Creating the “feel” of the music videos was also easy for Badu – she shot hundreds of photos of herself with Photo Booth and imported them into iMovie. Now she was able to create a stop-motion, music video to describe how all of the music videos would look.
How Does The Album Sound?
I decided to take a listen and see just how good the album sounds… Amazing. The clarity and quality of the music is excellent. Deep, smooth bass with ultra crisp vocals and wicked effects, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) absolutely sounds like a big-budget record, produced in a million dollar studio.
Yes, the album was probably finished in a million dollar studio, but you’d never guess it began in GarageBand.
According to the iTunes store, the single Honey is wildly popular and I can see why. Most of the album is a slower pace, but Honey is the track that forces you to turn up the volume.
Links:
Erykah Badu Profile at Apple.com
Listen to Erykah Badu – New Amerykah, Pt. 1 (4th World War) on iTunes
Get iLife ’08 for just $79 at Apple.com with Free Shipping (Includes GarageBand, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto & iWeb)
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Do you have an opinion on what sort of music does better on Garage Band, what it’s most useful for, or not so hot for?
Hi Jack,
I haven’t used GarageBand very much. Just for creating a ringtone for the iPhone and mixing some terrible recordings into a Flash animation – which was fantastic.