Thursday, January 8, 2009

Music makes the people come together

I love music. I love listening to it, and I love writing it.

A few years ago, Apple released a new program called GarageBand. When I saw the presentation during one of Steve Job's Keynote Addresses, I couldn't contain myself. It looked like the coolest program ever. My brother and I got it as soon as it was released, and we were both blown away by it. It lets you plug in a keyboard or guitar, or microphone, and record your own music, or put together an original composition using royalty-free tracks included with the program. And you could purchase more. We did. We both went nuts writing music. I actually created albums and released singles on MacBand.com.

Then I created a jukebox on my website. The jukebox has the current single, along with a B-side. Then it has the current album and past albums. So far, I've created eight studio albums and one greatest hits collection. I'm working on my ninth right now. It's called Reflections, and the current single is from the album.

You can visit my jukebox and take a listen at Jeff's Jukebox. I have a lot of fun writing the music. I'm not good enough to do it professionally, but Apple and their great iLife tools have made it possible to do it for fun at a really high level. GarageBand is still one of my favorite programs.