Atlanta, GA- Full time Atlanta piano teacher Keith Phillips imagines the day when his New Age ambient piano creations will pay all the bills and composing and touring will be his daily duties.  “I love teaching, but the essence of music is to create and perform”, says Keith.  “I began creating New Age CDs in November 2002 with “Nightfall” and now am on my third CD “Sanctuary”(piano orchestrations aka Mannheim Steamroller),  released in December of 2005.  I sell the CDs and mp3s online, and have about 200 gift shops that sell them in different states.”

     “The thick ambient style I aim for is reminiscent of Enya and Yanni.  It takes many multiple layered tracks to create a sound big enough to surround the listener.  In Pro 7 I used 7.1 surround sound on many songs.  It’s a very powerful feature.  This is the direction my music has taken, and the addition of an imac G5 and Logic Pro 7 to my studio gave me the tools to go ‘loud and large’.  The two are a powerful contribution to my studio now and will be for quite awhile.”

    There were many features of the new equipment duo that helped complete the “Sanctuary”project in record time.  “My last project took 18 months “(in and out of other studios),  but “Sanctuary” only took six months.  My goal for the next CD is three months!  With the upgrades there were a lot of fast, easy to use features, and they took me in any direction I needed to go.  The 1.8 Ghz imac G5 with 1 GB RAM gave me the processing power to keep the project running nonstop.  I would go up to 25-30 tracks on a single song at times, with lots of effects in the background, convolution reverb, compression on all the drums and bass,  overall effects, and multiple effects on guitars.

      Many parts on the project are mocked up with MIDI data and samples from the EXS24 sampler in Logic and other samplers.  “I use quantization a good deal to save time and line up all the parts precisely, but also record live instruments real time for a human feel.”  Some of the drums are sampled and some are real.

     “The huge bonus of working in my genre in  Logic Pro 7 was being able to bring in drum loops from the Apple Loop Browser.  I had a collection of 15,000 Apple loops (from  Garageband) to choose from and was able to use multiple drum loops on each song, pulling many potential nondestructive loops into the Arrange window and keeping the best ones for each situation.  Logic converted the loops to my tempos automatically.  On “Sanctuary” I was able to create fast, high energy songs quickly with a feel somewhere between Yanni and Mannheim Steamroller,.  Added to Apple drum loops were fills from the East West Storm Drums collection.  “I also used Roland XP-60 “rave” drums in the background.  Sometimes I had four drum kits playing simultaneously at different volumes so it sounded nice and full with plenty of compression.

      The speed Keith utilizes in Logic Pro 7  gives him confidence on cutting lead times for all future CDs. “Both of the last two CDs have been big productions, fully orchestrated,  but for the latest “Sanctuary” CD alone Logic Pro 7 fully sped up the process, cutting lead time by 300% over “Daydreams”.  “That’s important for an independent musician who must handle marketing and other aspects when not composing.  “I can’t go sell CDs in stores in other states if I’m tied down with slow and cumbersome equipment at home.”