I can safely say I am seldom dumbfounded. But this morning I had to smile.

My wife: Have you Messenger sent your latest song over to me?

Me: No. Why?

My wife: You said you sent it to K (our daughter) on Messenger yesterday.

Me: That was an older one from a few days ago. You ‘liked’ it on Facebook so I thought you’d heard it already.

I then play her the Messenger sent song on my daughter’s site.

My wife: Ah okay. It’s amazing what that music system can do isn’t it.

Me: Yes. Brilliant. But I still have to play the guitars, keyboards and sing.

My wife: You can’t play keyboards.

Me: What! It doesn’t do it for me! It may be one note stuff. But it’s me playing.

My wife: Oh!

I am now wondering if she possibly thought the new Apple GarageBand system is an Artificial Intelligence programme.

Which then led me to thinking. Someone I know from way back in the 1970/80s has now made 170 albums over the past few years. Sometimes producing two albums a week. I listened to a podcast where he spoke of using AI to write songs and then sang over the resulting music produced. How? Instructions of ‘Play a song in the style of The Beatles using the sound of South American Latin style instruments to the rhythm of a Ska beat. Then write a male/female mixed Gregorian choir choral effect sung in a cathedral setting as backing vocals’.

After the song is produced for listening, you then sing and record your own words and melody over it. Who knows!

The starting point of the glorious mess. Just a few synthesiser sounds, hand claps and finger snaps. Gets a bit overcrowded on the second one below.

Even though GarageBand isn’t AI at the level we believe it can achieve now. It still has to have tactile skills. It gives opportunity to replace a real brass TRUMPET with a synthetic trumpet. Breath control into the mouthpiece and three fingers in action for hitting multiple notes is far above the skills of me pressing a keyboard note to produce a brass ensemble. This is why I really don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of what the Apple Mac home recording system and the GarageBand or Logic Pro apps can offer. I am using what it offers to get insights as to what songs could sound like. But recording real musicians is where it can really capture decent sound results.

So yes, I do play bass, electric and acoustic six strings, sing and intend to record percussion and other instruments if I feel I can give some justice to the results. All into microphones too.

Above? The preference of headphones were used on the recording. I may get some decent speakers soon for listening to recording on the Akai midi system. It records directly into the computer so outside noise doesn’t affect the recording. But not when recording individual instruments and vocals on external microphones and amplifiers. Then of course the speakers as external noise aren’t compatible.

This above audio called ‘Chaos to Drums to Chaos’ is what happens when I mix playing my Fender Jazz Bass guitar, three six string electric guitars and then go ‘layering’ mad by using the Akai midi keyboard system and subsequently choosing many various instruments and percussion sounds from the GarageBand library. Start pressing the piano keys to make a little melodies of synthesised sound, finger snaps and hand claps over a 16 bar loop. Same repetitive groove. Over and over and over. Then choose one of the GarageBand drummers from the list of many and tweak the rhythms too. Result? In the wrong hands, aka Summers? A glorious chaotic mess evolves.

It was fun though.