In My Garage, I Feel Angst

Ever since I had access to a computer, I've dabbled, made attempts at writing some music, mostly electronic, using various programs that were available at the time. I remember way, way back when, using MOD Editors to write the simplest of techno, using an editor, that, now that I think back on it, wasn't so bad, and not nearly as confusing as the stuff I look at today.

The stuff I look at today, mainly, is Garage Band, a program that's native to the Mac OSX, and is pretty powerful in terms of what it can do. But the shitter is, as I experiment around with it, there are hundreds, thousands maybe, of samples and loops available for use, and so many of them are either too complex or too unique to use in conjunction with basically anything else, at least as far as my limited creative instinct tells me. When I find a loop I like, it's not really a loop so much as a clip from a fully orchestrated song, which is completely useless to me because it makes me conform to the key, modality, instrumentals, and tempo of the clip in order to be able to use it. And what's worse, a lot of the tracks they have are like finished products that are 45 seconds long.

How on Earth is anyone supposed to use that stuff to actually write a song? And how would someone directly inputting anything to the computer via a real instrument use those things to do anything useful?

So I sit there staring at the screen, the part of me that wants more than anything to crap out the decade or so of music floating around in my head, and once again, I have no way to get it out. All I have are thousands of clips that sound really cool, but aren't what I'm thinking. No clip or package of pre-recorded clips could really ever be what's going on inside my head. So how do I get that? I'm lost for an answer now, because music writing programs aren't going to get simpler really. Some sort of direct input device, like a USB keyboard, would be useful, but what about drums? I don't mind using software to write a drum track, but I guess I haven't found that feature yet, or know if it even exists, to be able to just sit down and hammer it out.

Ugh, I dunno, I'm just frustrated. I've always wanted to write electronic music. But even when I do write something, it's always so simplistic, it never sounds like real techno, and I hate that feeling like I'm better off just humming it. I hate feeling like I'm a great listener, have a great imagination, but am incapable of writing anything of any real quality, or at least, that doesn't sound like something you wrote in your freshman year of high school for your music theory class.

So, for now, Garage Band gets my big ol' "3 gigs of frustration" seal of anxiety.