A Humble Beginning
As a highly trained professional, I know my tools and make sure that I am amply prepared for my work. e.g., if I am performing a specific procedure, I already know which instruments I will use, and in which order. I lay out the instruments in a convenient place, arrange a well-lit and organized work field, before starting.
When I was playing violin and piano > 20 years ago, besides the instruments, my tools included sheet music, music stands, and a metronome. The tools could fit into a small backpack.
Fast forward to present... Now I'm playing acoustic and electric guitars, and my list of tools has expanded rapidly. The MP3 player, a computer have become necessities. The number of music stores, from record shops to musical instrument outlets, has declined, but we are using more tools and technology than ever to make music. When I go to the mom-and-pop independent music stores, I get very little help, advice about the technical questions. Mostly the folks are familiar with analog ways of making music- the amplifiers, pedals. To my surprise, the most helpful person comes from the Apple Store. The guy teaching the GarageBand workshop at the Apple Store also composes music, and he teaches me all about audio interfaces, analog-digital recording.
I am frankly lost among all these different tools. I have been learning new vocab- DAW (digital audio workstation), sound card or audio interface, channel strips, plug-ins. I still have no idea how to set up channel strips...
For the past 6-7 months, while I was sorting out the tones coming from the electric guitar, I was shopping for various amps. I tried the very expensive but highly regarded Kemper Profiling Amp (KPA) to the less expensive modeling amps from the major amp makers (Marshall, Fender, Vox, Line 6, etc...) I eventually figured out that GarageBand (a free app) on the MacBook Pro had amp and effects modeling, in addition to MIDI. I decided to use GarageBand's guitar amps and effects for now since they were free and abundant. Then I spent another few months figuring out how to run decent sound output from the MacBook.
Today I finally have an alternative to using the 1/4" to 1/8" audio adapter for the audio output (headphone jack -> 1/4" to 1/8" adapter -> 1/4" audio cable -> amplifier/speaker) from my MacBook. A new audio interface has arrived in the mail, and now the audio output from the MacBook goes out through the Thunderbolt port to the audio interface, which then sends audio out to amplifier/speaker. It has only taken me 2-3 months to sort this out. (Originally posted on June 26, 2016 @ 2:06 AM)