This was an assignment for my Digital Media 1 class at CU Boulder. For this assignment, we and to use GarageBand to recreate the sounds of a place we've been in the past, but can't revisit this semester. I chose a "Weird Al" Yankovic concert as the place because I've been to three of them and they are some of my fondest memories. I can't visit such a place THIS semester because he doesn't happen to be touring right now.

I used the software instruments (big electric lead guitar, rock drum kits an cheerful trance synth) and musical keyboard setting in GarageBand to recreate Al's Dire Straits parody "Money For Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies" because that one turned out to be the easiest one to recreate with the tools in GarageBand.

I taught myself this song completely by ear form memory. I also threw in some audio from both of Al's live concert tour DVDs and adjusted the reverb, master echo and EQ levels on every track I imported and created for added effect. I also adjusted the volume for a nice fade. This lent some authentic feel to the whole "memory" theme.

It should also be noted that the applause you hear is a loop, but NOT a "canned" loop that came with GarageBand. One of the stipulations of working with GarageBand was that we weren't allowed to use the pre canned loops that came with it. The audience applause was a piece of audio I edited together and imported and only then I looped.

Casey Killingsworth