Great skills, gadgets, musical instruments and the best digital audio workstations are the staple ingredients in creating your musical masterpiece. Just like the Philippines’ jazz icon, Boy Katindig, the coalescence of his God-given skills, recording gadgets, his piano and top digital audio softwares like Logic Pro 8 and Cakewalk Sonar 6 put him into the pedestal of our country’s love for jazz fusion. There is no doubt that Boy Katindig will put a shindig in your heart once you start playing his music.
Photo Courtesy: allaboutjazz
Who is Boy Katindig?
Boy Katindig hails from a family of true blue musicians who pioneered Latin Jazz in the Philippines. His father is Philippines’ jazz legend Romy Katindig. You probably know him if you’re already in your 60s.
In 1980, Mr.Katindig formed his own band, the “Boy Katindig Band”, who later became Best Jazz Group by the Aliw Awards Foundation consecutively for three years. Frankly, I was not born yet when he formed his band. But upon hearing his songs over Youtube, I can’t help buy say, “Wait..wait… wait – I think I’ve heard this one somewhere?!”. That, I believe, is what I call “the Boy-Katindig-Effect” – you’ve heard it somewhere but in its weirdest positive sense, you actually haven’t heard it yet. It’s an effect that somehow triggers the listener to simply love his music and listen to it over and over again. Try it!
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiH2C_t9k3s&feature=related[/youtube]
“What I Feel” (After Midnight Album)
Here’s a better idea! You can listen to him live on February 5, 2011, 8pm at Hard Rock Cafe Makati, Glorietta 3, Makati and get yourself a dose of the “Boy-Katindig-Effect”.
Some of Boy K’s famous songs include “I Will Always Stay In Love This Way”, “Capture the Changes” and “Away from You”. You can purchase his latest U.S. release via iTunes. Click the picture below to purchase it.
Lovers of music do not stop even at the time where things seem to be quite complicated. With the rise of digital audio mixing, which definitely did not exist during the 80s, Boy K did not stop in creating music and inspiring people in embracing its pleasantries. In a recent interview by RMB Events Management and Productions and Koolkat Productions Manila, Boy Katindig mentioned that Logic Pro 8 (Logic Studio 8) and Cakewalk Sonar 6 are the applications he is using in creating and mixing his music. These are the popular digital audio workstation applications for Mac and Windows respectively.
Logic Studio for Mac contains Logic Pro
Sonar 6 for Windows
With these applications, you can easily create music especially if you have pre-rendered or recorded MIDI or WAV tracks. If you are an Apple-fan, and mainly uses Mac as your primary (or probably ONLY) computer, there is no way but to pick Logic Studio, which contains Logic Pro. This application offers the easiest user-interface thus making it highly user-friendly compared to Cakewalk Sonar, which is only available for Microsoft Windows. Ease-of-use and user-friendliness have some drawbacks such as the absence of features like saving track templates and the ability to customize the depth of certain interface options, which basically helps users tweak the way they use the application and how they want to use it.
Logic Pro 8 UI
Cakewalk Sonar 6 UI
Both applications boast readily available MIDI and Loops to enliven your music. Cakewalk Sonar falls a bit short in this aspect as Logic Pro containt a whopping 40GB out-of-the-box available MIDI and loops.
The availability of plugins is also another consideration in being able to digitally create your music using the mentioned applications. If you’re picking Logic Pro, rest assured that the latter offers richer out-of-the-box plugins collection compared to Cakewalk Sonar. However, if you wish to add more plugins, Cakewalk Sonar can readily accept additional plugins that you either purchase or download for free over the internet. Logic Pro suffers in this aspect as it’s more difficult to look for additional plugins to enrich your compositions.
For a start, a number of cheaper and even free alternatives are available over the internet. If you want to start quite right and create music the cooler way, I highly recommend GarageBand that is included in iLife ’11. It is quite similar to Logic Pro but a lot easier to use. It definitely suits well for amateurs. It can even automatically fix your mixes and recorded loops, and can also teach you how to play several musical instruments.
Now, why don’t you grab that guitar and start recording? There is probably a Boy K sleeping inside you.
Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.
