Wednesday, June 29, 2011

"Kids" music video (MGMT cover) - GarageBand on iPad 2 - by Nguyen-Anh Le

For my next Internet music video - here's a cover of the fun and catchy song "Kids" by MGMT!  I recorded and arranged it all on the iPad, using the GarageBand app.  I had just downloaded the app for $4.99 a few days ago.  Rather than just toying with it, I figured I should just do a full production with it.  Et voila, here it is!



Link to the recording on YouTube

GarageBand for iPad - The Good

My first impression of the iPad was that it was just a shiny new toy. Yeah, you can do fun stuff with it, but would the novelty go away? Then I saw a few music apps come out and realized there could be some promise. But even those apps are semi-toys too; it's hard to play something really well since they are limited instruments and the keys are so small. But GarageBand for iPad really put it over the top. You can do some serious music with this app!

GarageBand is perfect for the iPad. Why? Because you can record tracks directly on the iPad. If you've ever used GaragePad for Mac or any other desktop music studio software, you have two choices for recording: playing real instruments and feeding the sound to the computer, or tediously clicking your mouse to record each note. On the iPad, the iPad is both the studio and the instrument. I recorded half this song just sitting on the couch, with the TV on.

GarageBand's synth sounds are great. I own two "real" synths. I don't use my 88-key Korg workstation anymore because it's so big and clunky. I do use my 61-key Alesis, but it's still a pain to drag it out. The synth sounds on GarageBand have good enough quality and variety to play for real. This is quite an improvement even against the other synth apps available for the iPad. GarageBand also provides guitar, bass, and drum apps. They sound decent enough. Not close to the real thing, of course. But they'll work fine if you want to quickly lay down tracks for a song.

GarageBand for iPad - The Bad

There are some limitations to GarageBand for iPad. Since the iPad is an "all-in-one" device, there's currently no easy way to hook external inputs up to the iPad. This means you are stuck with the tiny built-in microphone on the iPad. My voice is bad enough as it is - and using this mic just makes it sound worse! Most vocalists and live recording artists use fancy condenser microphones - so iPad isn't ready for them just yet. There's hope though - companies like Apogee Electronics are making input products for the iPad.

Another shortcoming of Garageband for iPad is limited effects and processing capabilities. There are several knobs you can turn for each instrument. On analog synths, you can edit basic things like attack/decay, cutoff, resonance. The sound recorder lets you select from a few typical presets (large room, small room, chipmunk, etc). You can do some processing of most tracks like editing reverb, echo, compressor. But that's about it. You can't add typical effects like graphic equalizers, chorus, distortion, or even auto-tune (haha). And you can't fine tune your song with various envelopes.

These limitations are far from being showstoppers. If you want to do more with your song, you can export it into GarageBand for Mac. I did this with "Kids" so I can add a few more effects and do some fine tuning. This was only the second time I've used GarageBand at all (iPad or Mac), but you can see that the Mac version is a more powerful editing platform. But for most home users, you can won't need to do all this fancy stuff. Considering it just costs you $4.99, and you don't need any other instruments or gear, GarageBand for iPad is super easy for you to make some music.

Other Musings and Conclusion

Oh yeah, this was also my first time making a music video with fancy editing.  I tried out Sony Vegas - neat tool!  Doing this was lots of fun too. I am still quite the video newbie though. The biggest challenge was getting all the video clips to sync. A few clips got out of sync towards the end of the song - don't know how to fix them.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy the song. Recording it was lots of fun, as well as a great learning experience!  I'd love to hear any experiences you've had with music on the iPad.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Rome, Part Due


Let's go back to Rome.  There's so much to see and do in Rome, and you can't easily cover it all in a single article.  In my previous Rome article, I covered the major landmarks in central Rome, located on the east bank of the Tiber River.  Now we'll talk about the west bank.  The Vatican is located here.



Tiber River & Castel Sant'Angelo

From our apartment near the Piazza Navona, it was an easy 10-minute walk west to the Tiber River.  Legend has it that Rome was founded on the banks of this river.  Walking along the tree-lined riverfront is very pleasant.  It provides a peaceful respite from all the tourist-filled landmarks and piazzas.  Rome has built some beautiful bridges than span the Tiber.  The one pictured below (as well as in the photo at the top of this article) is the Ponte Sant'Angelo. 


As you cross the Ponte Sant'Angelo, you come to the immense Castel Sant'Angelo.  This castle was actually originally built as the tomb for the Roman Emperor Hadrian and his family.  It was upgraded to a castle in the 14th Century by the Popes.  They even built a tunnel from St. Peter's Basilica to the castle, so people could seek refuge there (kinda like in the book/movie "Angels and Demons" haha). 


The Vatican

The Vatican is the main attraction on the west bank of the Tiber.  Vatican City is a city-state - a sovereign nation independent of Italy.  It's a tiny country.  Its lands are fully contained within the city walls, and under 1000 people officially live there.  The Holy See, the "government" of the Roman Catholic Church, operates from the Vatican (but it is technically independent from the Vatican City state).  The Vatican is a theocracy.  The Pope is its monarch, a head-of-state just like the American President or the British Prime Minister.  The only other people in the world who also have this dual role of religious leader and head of state are the leaders of Islamic states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan; as well as the Dalai Lama of Tibet.


Although the Vatican is the seat of a 2000 year old religion and is filled with a wealth of relics and history, Vatican City is ironically a young nation.  It was founded only in 1929.  48 of the U.S. States (except Alaska and Hawaii) are older than Vatican City.  For many centuries, the Papal States was a much larger nation, occupying much of central Italy, from which the Holy See ruled.  Since the fall of the Roman Empire, the Italian peninsula was divided into several nations, including the Papal States (and this division was in flux all the time).  In the 1800's, Italy went through a reunification phase.  I don't know much about this history, but here's what I have read.  The various nations of the Italian peninsula (Venice, Piedmont, Lombardy, Sicily, Naples, etc.) fought outside conquerors (like the Spanish and the Austrians), as well as each other.  After a few wars, the emerging consolidated Kingdom of Italy (led by the Piedmonts) eventually declared war on the Papal States, who opposed the unification.  In 1870, the Kingdom of Italy besieged Rome for a bit, then it annexed Rome.  This ended the Papal States' millennium-long era of being a sovereign nation.  In spite of this huge loss, the Pope and his leadership remained defiant and retreated behind the walls of the Vatican.  The Italian government did not want to attack the Vatican itself and did not care to interfere with the operations of the Catholic Church.  This stalemate, known in Italian history as the Roman Question, lasted for almost 60 years.  It finally ended with a compromise in 1929 - the Lateran Treaty.  This treaty established the Vatican City as a sovereign nation for the Popes, and made Roman Catholicism the official religion of Italy.


The focal point of the Vatican is St. Peter's Square.  A large boulevard leads from the Tiber River to this square.  St. Peter's Basilica is located at the top of the square.  The Pope conducts large public masses in the square.

As I had mentioned earlier, we were in Rome on the weekend of Pope John Paul II's Beatification ceremony.  This ceremony marks step 3 of 4 in becoming a Saint of the Catholic Church - a BIG deal.  As a result, hordes of believers (especially from Poland, where that Pope came from) came to the Vatican for the ceremony.  Officials set up large screens, speakers, and crowd control measures everywhere.  We escaped from town on the main day of the ceremony (Saturday).  But even on Sunday, the Vatican was crowded, because they allowed visitors to view the Pope's casket in St. Peter's Basilica.



St. Peter's Basilica is an immense church of Renaissance architecture.  It's probably the largest all churches in the Christian kingdom, and it's one of the holiest.  Aside from being a huge space for performing religious services, St. Peter's is also well-known for its crypt.  Many Popes are buried there.  The crypt's most famous "resident" is St. Peter himself, the apostle of Jesus who became the first Pope.  Unfortunately, there was such a huge line to get in to the basilica, so we did not make it in :(  The photos above were from my previous trip to Italy.

Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel



The Vatican Museum is a ginormous museum that houses the collection of artwork gathered by the Catholic Church over the millenia.  It is one of Rome's top tourist attractions.  It is so popular that you usually have to wait an hour or two to get in.  I highly recommend buying a tour, which allows you to get in a special tour group entrance.  When we went, however, everyone was going to St. Peter's Square to see the Pope festivities, so there was hardly any line for the museum.


The museum as a great variety of art work.  There's a lot of Roman art, especially sculpture.  There's a lot of Renaissance and Early Modern Italian art - though mostly portraits of stuffy old people or religious scenes.  What is really impressive is all the art painted directly painted on the ceilings and walls.  Since my last trip, they have also added an entire wing of modern art too.  I think we spent 4 or 5 hours at this museum.  You can probably spend even more time there!



Museums are often cool not just for their artwork, but also for their architecture.  My favorite architectural highlight from the Vatican Museum is its spiral staircase entrance.


At the end of the museum, you are led to its masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel.  We've all probably heard of the wonders of this place.  It's ironic though - when you first walk in, you just notice how small and dark it is.  And it's crowded - hundreds of tourists are always stuffed in here.  But when you look up and see every inch of wall covered by Michelangelo's handiwork, wow, it's pretty amazing.  For some silly reason, they don't let you take any pictures in here.  I'm not sure how this photo got here :)



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Friday, June 17, 2011

A quick excursion to Italy's Amalfi Coast


My blogging rate has slowed to a crawl. Sorry! Back to Italy...

Italy's big cities of Rome, Venice, and Florence are excellent destinations for tourists.  But the smaller towns are also amazing, in their own way.  We tried to balance big and small on our trip.

From our base in Rome, we took a day trip south to the Amalfi Coast. That area is quite a bit different than most places in Italy. It's full of small coastal towns built on hills.  We are also motivated to flee from Rome that day, since millions of believers converged on the Vatican to see Pope John Paul II's Beatification ceremony. 


The Amalfi Coast is a peninsula that sticks out to the Mediterranean Sea.  It's southeast of Naples, which is south of Rome.  There are a bunch of towns on the coast.  We visited Positano, Amalfi, and Ravello.  You may also have heard of Sorrento.  Other sights in the general area include Mt. Vesuvius, Pompeii, and Capri.

Usually travelers spend at least a few days in the Amalfi Coast.  It's the best way to appreciate the beautiful and chill atmosphere.  But we didn't have the time, so it ended up just being a day trip.  That meant waking up at the crack of dawn and taking a 1.5h high-speed train to Naples.  Btw, the Pope followers were already flocking to the Vatican at 5am!! 

Naples


I passed through Naples on my last trip (photos above are from that trip).  There is some charm to this city.  Great coastline, nice view of Mt. Vesuvius... This time around, however, Naples was just darn ugly.  The city streets where pretty ghetto everywhere.  There was construction all along the major boulevard, making it a pain to get around.  And they have had this seemingly perpetual trash worker strike problem, so everyone was just dumping trash in large piles at street corners. 


We had a bad transit experience in Naples as well.  We walked from the train station to the docks, expecting to hop on a ferry to the Amalfi Coast.  Turns out that there was no ferry service to the Amalfi Coast that day (May 1).  It wasn't posted anywhere, not even on their website, and no one cared to be helpful.  Things got a little stressful amongst our crew, I think.  But luckily, we found a Hertz car rental place nearby and rented a van.  Returning the van was messy too. All the construction and traffic made it really difficult to drive in the city. We barely returned the car on time and made it out on the last train back to Rome - with just a couple minutes to spare!


Once we got out of Naples, it was all good. Driving down to the coast was a most enjoyable experience. In fact, I am glad we drove, because we could see so much and just stop anywhere. The drive involved a lot of mountain passes, windy roads, and amazing views of towns and valleys.  The photo above is of the infamous Mt. Vesuvius (left, in the distance), the volcano that entombed the town of Pompeii in 79 CE. 

Positano


The first town we visited in the Amalfi Coast was Positano.  Wow.  It is one of the most picturesque towns I have ever seen.  Positano is built on a hill that drops right into the sea.  There are only a couple roads in town.  The roads wind back and forth, up and down the hill.  From afar, it looks like the buildings are built on top of each other.


Positano was once a small fishing village. It started getting some notoriety in the 1950's, starting with John Steinbeck. Now it's totally a resort town. You may have seen it in movies like "The Talented Mr. Ripley" or "Under the Tuscan Sun." At the base of the hill, the city center leads out to a relaxing rocky beach. There are all sorts of cozy restaurants, with great views of the town and the sea. The winding streets take you by dozens of shops, eager to lighten the wallets of tourists.


Here's a funky 180+ degree panaroma I took of Positano. Click on it for a full screen view (you can do this with any of the photos on this blog).


Amalfi


Amalfi is the main town in the Amalfi Coast region.  In the middle ages, Amalfi was the capital of the Duchy of Amalfi, which was an independent state.  Although parts of the town are built on a hill like Positano, the city center is bigger and flatter.  The piazza (below) is a great place to relax, drink some coffee, eat gelato, and shop.


Like most cities in Italy, there is a big church in the city center.  It looks magnificent with the afternoon sunlight shining on it.



Ravello


Ravello was the last town we visited in the Amalfi Coast.  Unlike the other two towns, Ravello is situated inland, high up in the hills.  You have a really nice view of the hills and valleys from Ravello.  Unfortunately, we needed to get back to Naples to catch the train, so we didn't have much time to spend in town.  Apparently we completely missed the seaside view from Ravello.  I didn't too my research well enough - oops.  But check out these photos from others on the Internet.  Holy amazing!

Ravello Photos
This photo of Ravello is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Summary

The Amalfi Coast is a beautiful, relaxing region of Italy.  I am very glad we went out of our way to see it.  I'm not sure I would travel back to Italy to see Rome, Florence, or Venice again.  But I could certainly see myself spending a few days wandering the hill towns of the Amalfi Coast.  The area really deserves several days of your attention (or weeks, if you're retired haha). I'd love to see the Cinque Terre again too.  Life may be short, but it should hopefully be long enough for a return visit!

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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Rome: Ancient capital of the world

Wow, it has almost been a month since I visited Italy. Time to get the blog articles going!


Rome was the first destination on our trip.  What a city!  So much history, so much culture. It's amazing to be able to visit and to take it all in. This was my second time to Rome; the experience was just as awesome as the first.

About 2000 years ago, Rome was the largest city on the earth, with 450,000 people.  It was the capital of perhaps the mightiest and most influential civilization in history (for more info, click here).  The Roman Empire spanned three continents, from northern Africa to Asia Minor to the British Isles.  The Romans left us with a great legacy, including language (Italian/Spanish/French/Portuguese) and engineering (paved roads, the arch, cement, water systems, stadiums, the dome).  Several of today's great cities were founded by the Romans: London, Paris, Istanbul, Barcelona, Budapest, and Cologne.

Ancient Rome

Perhaps the best symbol of the old Roman Empire is the Colosseum, aka the Flavian Amphitheater. It looks just like any other stadium from afar, but when you walk amongst the ruins, it comes alive. You can imagine being there in a toga and sandals, hearing the roar of the crowd, watching gladiators fight each other to the death. Now if only Russell Crowe were doing guided tours... 


As a photography dude, I especially enjoyed the opportunity to shoot the landmarks of Rome at night.  They are just beautiful lit up.  There's something rather Romantic about Rome :)


Travel tip: The line for tickets into the Colosseum can be very long. Best option is to buy a combination ticket at the Palatine Hill, which never has a line. Our luck with tickets was hit-or-miss this trip; the Palatine Hill was closed the day we went. We went with option 2, which was to buy the ticket-with-guided-tour at the Colosseum, which had a different and much shorter line. Click here for more detail on options.

The Roman Forum is located right next to the Colosseum.  Unfortunately, the Forum is a ruin site - just a bunch of columns and broken stone.  It's hard to tell what the actual buildings looked like.  But wandering through the ruins is a neat experience. It definitely puts some deep thoughts in your mind regarding how old the place was. You can get a good view of the Forum ruins from the Palatine Hill (see photo below-right, from my first trip). If you are interested, there is this neat project called Rome Reborn.  It has some pretty cool 3D models of what ancient Rome could have looked like.


The other major ancient-era building in Rome is the Pantheon. It was originally built to pay homage to all the Roman gods. It was later turned into a Catholic church. It's an impressive structure, with large stone columns in front. Inside, you can see its huge concrete dome with a open oculus in the center.  Pretty amazing stuff for an intact, 2000-year-old building. I "prepared" myself for Rome by watching the movie "Angels and Demons" - the Pantheon is one of the first landmarks shown.



Early-Modern Era Rome

Although Rome is probably most well-known for its role in ancient history, central Rome is comprised mostly of buildings built in the last 400 years. One of the biggest landmarks is the Trevi Fountain.  It's a beautiful large fountain of Baroque design. It's named "Trevi" because it was once the intersection of three ancient Roman roads, or "tre vie." At this intersection, a simple fountain (not the one you see now) provided pure drinking water to travelers. The water was channeled by the aqueduct Aqua Virgo, from the hills outside of the city all the way to the fountain. This landmark is a testament to ancient Roman engineering.


The super fancy fountain you see now was built in the 1700's, by Salvi and then Pannini. The Trevi Fountain landmark area today is just a small piazza, but it's always mobbed with tourists. I don't think it's very enjoyable hanging out here (btw, watch out for pickpockets here). But a couple movies like "La Dolce Vita" and "Roman Holiday" have romanticized it for tourists. Not to mention some replicas of it at Disney World and Las Vegas. Everyone feels compelled to toss a coin over their shoulder, which means you'll return to Rome one day. Above, you can see that Chris and Kristine didn't coordinate their coin toss very well. I didn't throw a coin last time, but I came back anyways!


In my opinion, the best Roman landmark to chill at is the Spanish Steps (Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti). At the base of the steps is a nice Piazza di Spagna that leads to streets with fancy shops. At the top of the 138-staircase (the widest in Europe) is a church, the Trinità dei Monti. It's a beautiful and relaxing place, which I love with some late afternoon sunlight and gelato in my hands. There's no fancy history here; the steps were built in the 1700's.


Right next to the Colosseum and Forum, it's hard to miss the immense Vittorio Emanuele II Monument. It is a newer building - built in the early 1900's to honor the unification of Italy in 1896. I think it's a monstrosity. It's so big, it dominates the skyline of the Forum area. They even blew up part of the Capitoline Hill and some medieval structures to build this thing. I wish they could just have put a statue of the Vittorio dude in a piazza somewhere instead.


Rome, like the other great cities of Europe, is full of piazzas or town squares. The photo above and left shows the Piazza Navona. This piazza was also in "Angels and Demons" - though the fountains are way too shallow for Tom Hanks to jump in, haha. The photo above and right is the huge Piazza del Popolo. Rome has a lot of obelisks too, stolen from the Egyptians.


Accomodations in Rome

Rome is a large, modern city.  Only the Centro Storico, the historic center, is the tourist area.  Last time, I stayed way outside the Centro (not even shown on the map above).  It was a bit inconvient and expensive to hire a cab to take us to the city (btw, you don't want to drive in Rome!).  This time, Kristine rented an awesome apartment for the seven of us.


The location was perfect, halfway between the Colosseum/Forum area and the Tiber River/Vatican. It was just a couple blocks from the Piazza Navona - just a 15min walk east to most of the landmarks, or a 15min walk west to the Vatican. Travel tip: If you stay too close to the Colosseum/Forum, there isn't much to do in the evening. The Termini (train station) area is a little ghetto and lacks charm. But if you stay somewhere between the Piazza Navona (our apt) and the Spanish Steps, you'll be next to medieval streets and alleys, piazzas, and great food/drink/nightlife. The only drawbacks were the 4 flights of stairs to get to the apartment and the neighbors in the courtyard who threw a party all Saturday night (which I slept through haha).



To be continued...

Hmm, this blog post is getting long. I will have to leave off other Rome landmarks like the Vatican for another post.

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