T-Pain is bent over an iPad, dancing
and tapping the screen to send glimmering electronic beats through huge
speakers and out into the hallway of his home. We’re down in T-Pain’s
basement studio, in a room filled with giant control boards, cases of
equipment, and everything you’d need to put together a radio hit. But
the only studio equipment T-Pain is using is his speakers — all the
better to blast out the music he’s putting together in GarageBand.
T-Pain works with Apple to promote GarageBand, and I'm here at his
house, just outside Atlanta, Georgia, to see what he can do with the
app’s latest iteration. He’s been playing around with an update to GarageBand
for the past week that few other people have access to. The new iPad
version adds an interface called Live Loops. It’s basically GarageBand's
take on a MIDI controller, and it should make getting started with
music creation much easier.
Speaking with T-Pain is kind of surreal. Though you'd know his
Auto-Tuned voice anywhere on the radio, you might not know his actual
voice: it's bright and jovial; he's quick to laugh at a joke and bounces
around from talking craft to making Game of Thrones references
and discussing new tech he's interested in. He’s filled the lower level
of his house with arcade games, colorful skateboard decks, and blown-up
magazine covers with his face on them. Even his studio is playfully
decorated, with bright red walls and light fixtures shaped like
microphones dangling above your head.
