But today I read a review of GarageBand by Benjamin Jackson on his 90WPM blog:

My iPad is now a guitar, piano, synthesizer, drum kit, and track editor all in one. It’s like walking through Sam Ash with Steve Jobs’ AmEx. I can hook in a mic and whatever instruments I want. I could compose an album while sipping mojitos in a chaise lounge in Cozumel.

Benjamin provides a thorough review of the strengths and the weaknesses of GarageBand, and the result is that he has convinced me that I have to load it on my iPad immediately.

Thanks to John Gruber for pointing out this review on his Daring Fireball site.

Once I had configured iTunes on my MacBook Pro to enable sharing, I discovered that I had to go to Settings -> Music on my iPod touch and enter my Apple ID and password to enable sharing. After these configuration steps, I was able to access my entire iTunes library, including movies and television shows (but not audiobooks from audible.com), from my iOS devices.

More information about using Home Sharing is available from ilounge.com.

A few weeks ago I purchased Sound of Silver, the band’s second album. Sound of Silver is highly rated by metacritic.com and many users there, but people seem to either love the album or really dislike it. It cost only $7.99 on iTunes, seemingly a bargain; the iTunes store won’t let you buy individual songs off this album, so it was all or nothing.

At first, I hated this album. The first song, “Get Innocuous!” is brilliant for 4:12 but then is spoiled by Nancy Whang chanting brainless lyrics in the voice of a vacuous teenage girl.

The last song, “New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down,” is so dreadful that I deleted it from my computer within two days.

The rest of the album has fairly good yet simultaneously highly annoying tracks, with sections that I love and sections that I despise. The singing and lyrics are especially abominable, in my opinion.

The track “Sound of Silver” chants these lyrics five times at the beginning of the song:

Sound of silver talk to me / Makes you want to feel like a teenager / Until you remember the feelings of / A real life emotional teenager / Then you think again.

These stupid lyrics get drilled into my head until I can’t get them out. This introduction is followed by a long interlude without lyrics, a repeat of the lyrics, an interlude, two repeats of the lyrics, and a finale without lyrics that grows increasingly complex and fun. These horrible lyrics aren’t clever enough to be repeated eight times.

The track “All My Friends” is outstanding (five stars by my rating), and is widely acknowledged as one of the best songs of 2007. I also like the track “Someone Great,” although it’s not as good.

The other tracks I’ve rated three stars, which means I will probably delete them after listening to them a few more times.

LCD Soundsystem’s final album, This Is Happening, was released in 2010. Again, people either seem to love it or hate it. I’m not in a hurry to buy it, but I figure I’ll pick it up one of these days.

However, I was pleasantly surprised by today’s program, which was four listenable and beautifully played works, all written by composers closely associated with the Boston Symphony.

The first piece was Irving Fine’s Partita for Wind Quintet, which was composed in 1948 for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn. According to the program, this is a popular work, and I agree because I really enjoyed it.

The second piece was Lukas Foss’s For Aaron, written in tribute of Aaron Copland. The instruments included violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, and percussion. This work is richly melodic and almost sentimental in flavor.

After the intermission, we heard a new piece by Osvaldo Golijov, Zhuang Zhou’s Dream, written for two violins, viola, cello, double bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion, harp, and celesta. This quiet work was very relaxing.

Finally, we heard Plain Song, Fantastic Dances by Michael Gandolfi. This work was written for violin, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, bassoon, and horn. I enjoyed this piece greatly, too; it had a dynamic ending. Michael Gandolfi was seated in the audience and came up to the stage to take bows with the players.

The only work of the four that seems to be available as a recording is Fine’s Partita for Wind Quintet, which I have ordered. It’s a shame the other works aren’t available because I would like to hear them all again. However, this concert introduced me to four composers I wasn’t familiar with, and I will explore their other works.