In his recent Classic Rock presents ... Prog interview one of the things Alex Lifeson mentions being involved with during Rush's break from recording/touring is Apple's GarageBand software. GarageBand is a software application that allows users to create music or podcasts, and is included in all shipments of iLife. The most recent version of the software (iLife '09) includes music instruction, allowing users to buy instructional videos by several popular artists such as Sting, Norah Jones and Ben Folds. Alex Lifeson recently recorded some of these instructional videos for a few of Rush's hits as he described in the interview:

... "The Apple thing was fun", he says by way of explanation. "They have this new thing on the Garageband software [the mini-home studio affair that is part of Apple's iLife bundle] where songwriters and musicians teach people how to play their songs. It's great, you'll be able to download me. I went in and they filmed me for four days doing a song a day: Tom Sawyer, Limelight, The Spirit of Radio and Working Man. It's really comprehensive stuff and you can slow it down to really watch what I'm doing.

"It was odd, you realize how difficult it is to play some of those solos slowly, especially on something like Working Man."

We imagine it's quite difficult to master at its normal pace.

"I guess," and there's another laugh, "I'm not sure how much time I spent on that solo originally, I didn't know better, I was a kid when I wrote that. But I loved doing the Garageband stuff, though, and the end result is just great. When you're learning to play with just notation it's not the same - what the right hand is doing is so important and you never get to see that stuff. ...

I don't have any information as of yet on when Alex's videos will become available, but will let everyone know as soon as I do.

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