The iPad Musician

Apogee Jam

2011-12-18T03:30:00.000-08:00

I finally got round to buying an Apogee Jam to let me connect my electric instruments to the iPad.

I've been dithering about buying one ever since it was announced in April - first of all they were difficult to get hold of in the UK, then there were reports of problems with the early versions. I had been put of buying the cheaper alternative, an iRig, because of reading about how noisy the input was. The other compelling reason to choose the Jam is that it connects to both iPad and Mac. So on a recent trip to the US, I saw one in the Apple store and bought it ($99), and I'm very pleased with it.

It's very simple to use - just plug it in and it is recognised by both the iPad and Mac versions of Garageband. It is supplied with two cables - one to plug into the Mac USB port, and one to plug into the iPad dock connector. You can (fairly obviously) only use one at a time. The other input is a standard 1/4" jack for an electric guitar/bass/whatever. It has just one control on the device itself, to adjust the gain (as you can see in the image above).

I'm no expert on such things, but the sound quality is really pretty good. Most of the electric instruments on my Reptiles tracks were recorded using the Jam plugged into the Mac. The sample below is a very quick version of one of those tracks recorded on my iPad. It has three electric bouzouki tracks, all recorded with the Jam.

Reptiles

2011-12-01T12:37:00.001-08:00

I've finally got round to finishing a set of tracks of been working on for a while, called "Reptiles". It's nothing to do with iPad music really, because it was all recorded using the Mac version of Garageband, but I'm quite pleased with the results, so here it is.

Reptiles by richardhughes

SoundCloud and the iPad

2011-11-07T12:40:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog, I was looking for a way to put music online in a way that would play on desktop web browsers, and on the iPad. It would have been pretty silly to have an iPad music blog and for the music not to play on an iPad.

I was amazed about how difficult this was. Although there were many cross-platform video players, doing it for just audio was really hard. So I ended up adding the music tracks to a still image in iMovie, and loading the resulting video to YouTube.

SoundCloud would have been the ideal place to put the music, but their player widget required Flash. Well, no more. A week or two ago, they changed their widget to make it iPad-friendly HTML5. So all the music on this blog has now moved to SoundCloud. If you're interested in how to use the HTML5 widget, the details are here. And you can find all the music on this blog directly on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com/richardhughes.

Fabulous iPad Garageband recording by George Lambro

2011-05-27T02:01:00.001-07:00

via Mashable

Recording in the garden #3

2011-04-24T02:35:00.001-07:00

Another tune from yesterday's session in the garden.

In 2003, I worked for a couple of weeks in Istanbul, and just down the road from where I was working there were several music shops. On my last visit, I went in and bought a baglama saz; it was ridiculously cheap for such a beautiful instrument.

I remain confused about the correct tuning for a baglama. It has 7 strings, arranged in three courses. There are all sorts of contradictory pages on the web recommending tunings like (low to high) AA-GG-DDD or GG-DD-AAA. But when I bought mine, I was told CC-BbBb-FFF and I've always liked the way it sounds, so kept it like that.

Somewhat ironically, the main melody for this tune was written on my bouzouki (the Irish bouzouki, of course, being originally derived from the traditional Greek instrument), but it has a sort of Turkish feel to it, and I think the baglama complements it quite well. I normally play the main melody on an electric bouzouki, but it sounds quite nice on acoustic instruments too. It's never had a proper name, and I'm not sure whether I consider this a tune in its own right, or part of something else. Anyway, I called this outdoor version "Turkish Country Garden".

Blue Snowball mic

2011-04-24T01:40:00.001-07:00

One of the most pleasant surprises I've had from iPad Garageband is that it works perfectly with my Blue Snowball mic. I bought it a couple of months ago (about £70 from Amazon) for recording acoustic instruments in Mac Garageband, and for recording video voiceovers for work.

Something that took me a while to work out is that the best setting to use for acoustic instruments is not actually the one the manual suggests. There are three different settings, described here:

I found that I get by far the best sound from instruments by using the third setting, presumably because it captures the full resonance of the sound in the room. Using this setting when recording in the garden also picks up all sorts of nice ambient sound.

For the videos voiceovers I record for work, I use the first setting. You can hear an example of that here.

To plug the Snowball into the iPad, you need the camera connection kit, one of whose adaptors adds a USB port to the iPad. The kit has come in for a lot of criticism since Apple reduced the power output delivered to USB devices in iOS 4. But the Snowball consumes very little power, and has no problem.

Recording in the garden #2

2011-04-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

Another beautiful morning for setting up an iPad recording studio in the garden today. I've been working for a while on a tune which my son named "The Snake". It's noisy and electric in its original form, but I haven't quite worked out how to arrange it, or how it ends. But it's also quite fun to play on acoustic instruments, and it seemed appropriate to call this outdoor, less venomous version "The Grass Snake".

This tune presents two problems for iPad Garageband. Firstly, it has a middle section in 7/8, and of course you can't change time signatures mid-song in Garageband (even the Mac version). So I created a 7/8 drum loop, and as long as I keep the section to multiples of 8 bars of 7/8, everything comes back in sync at the end of the section.

The second problem is that the final section drops the tempo to about two thirds of the speed of the rest of the tune. This is possible in Mac Garageband (although unnecessarily fiddly, in my opinion), but not in iPad Garageband. So here I just cheat, and slow it down to half speed.

Another problem I encountered with this tune was reaching the 10 sections per song limit in iPad Garageband. Luckily, I found this while I was arranging the click track, so was able to merge some sections together without losing anything; I think I have been using sections which are too short on most recordings I've done with the iPad.

With 4 acoustic tracks (two bouzoukis, bass and accordian), there's plenty of ambient bird song picked up in the recording, making it far more laid back than my original, unfinished, noisy version.

MIDI input to iPad Garageband

2011-04-13T00:28:00.001-07:00

I've seen a few people asking about connecting MIDI controllers to iPad Garageband, so thought I would write about my experiences with it.

My MIDI controller is a Yamaha Clavinova CLP-170 which has a USB port. I connect the USB lead to the iPad camera connection kit, and connect that to the iPad, as you can see from the image in the video below.

The camera connection kit has come in for a lot of criticism because of the way Apple reduced the power output delivered through it in iOS 4. This prevented many unpowered USB devices working properly. But obviously the Clavinova has its own power supply, so there's no problem.

To demonstrate it, this is a section of another old tune called "Autumn Head". When messing around with the recording technology I always find it better to pick a tune I know how to play well, so I can concentrate on the recording not the music.

Another reason for choosing this is the style of piano playing in it. I've always been a bit suspicious about how accurate the timing is when recording via MIDI; I presume it's the recording software (and capability of the hardware it's running on) which makes the difference. I've often found that while simple sections like the first 8 bars of this are fine, more complicated piano playing often left me thinking "I'm sure I played it better than that". However, in this case, the timing seems spot-on, or at least, any timing errors are my own.

I still don't particularly like MIDI-recorded piano as it sounds so inferior to the real sound of my Clavinova (I don't feel it ever gets the use of the sustain pedal quite right), but at least the timing is correct.

All three tracks (piano, organ, bass) are recorded via MIDI, the latter showing that you can also control the Garageband "smart bass" via a MIDI keyboard. You can do the same with drums (which would make more sense from a drum controller than a keyboard, of course) and the "smart guitar" (although that sounded rather horrible).

After finding that it does work, the obvious question is "but why iPad Garageband instead of Mac Garageband for this?" My piano is sat right next to my iMac - I suppose that this would allow me to separate them, although I probably won't. But the setup you can see in the picture, with the iPad placed on the piano's music stand, is very easy to use - far better than twisting between computer and piano all the time.

Garageband review on Ars Technica

2011-04-11T02:17:00.001-07:00

A long and detailed review of iPad Garageband on Ars Technica. Pretty complete, except for failing to mention the inability to change time signature.

Recording in the garden

2011-04-10T09:06:00.001-07:00

Spring has sprung in Oxford, so I had chance to do something I've always wanted to do but never got round to - recording in the garden.

I'm lucky enough to live at the edge of a village, but sunny weekend days are still accompanied by a distant chorus of lawnmowers, barking dogs and shouty children. So I got out early this morning armed with iPad, mic, bouzouki, bass and concertina to record a very old tune called "Rope". The sound of the birds is picked up very nicely on the mic.

Polychord

2011-04-09T08:01:00.001-07:00

Around 20 years ago, I saw Daniel Lanois playing an omnichord, and I've always been intrigued by it, although never enough to go and buy one.

Since I first got my iPad, I've thought that it would be a great instrument to implement on an iPad. And that's pretty much what Polychord is.

On the left, you choose the chord to play, and on the right is the "strum bar". There's a nice demo of it here:

There are also preset bass and drum rhythms, but personally I find these rather horrible.

While the basic sound is nice, what makes Polychord really interesting is that you can use it as a MIDI over Wifi controller, so play Garageband & Logic instruments with it. Polychord's web site has a very good tutorial on how to set it up.

The next version of Polychord (not yet released) also has pitchbending enabling this rather entertaining video.

Verdict: I love the potential of Polychord, but just haven't quite worked out how to make best use of it yet.

Editing iPad Garageband songs on Mac

2011-04-05T05:51:00.001-07:00

The Mac Garageband update to enable iPad Garageband to be edited is available now. This is great news, but the whole sync-through-iTunes nonsense makes it far more complicated than it needs to be. Here's how you do it:

1. Send your iPad song to iTunes

2. Choose "Garageband" as the format to send to iTunes

3. Connect the iPad to the Mac and open iTunes

4. In the Apps tab, scroll down to the file sharing section, choose the song you want to copy to the Mac, and click "Save to..."

5. Go to wherever you saved the song and open it. Garageband will start. The first time you do it, it will download another big update

That's it! The conversion seems pretty good, although I've only tested it on a fairly simple so far.

From what I can see, it insists on you saving a copy of the song when you open it, so presumably it's translating the formats in some way. I haven't worked out what this is all about yet.

Wild MorphWiz Thyme

2011-04-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

Wild Mountain Thyme, arranged for electric bouzouki and MorphWiz...

MorphWiz

2011-03-31T09:28:00.001-07:00

MorphWiz is exactly what I feel an iPad instrument should be - something that uses the touchscreen as a strength, rather than attempt to compensate for it in the emulation of a "real" instrument.

It's basically a synthesiser, with the pitch of the note changing as you move from left to right across the screen, and the timbre changing as you move up and down the screen. Sliding your finger around can create some very nice note bending effects, although there is a danger of always sounding like the incidental music from a 1980s episode of Doctor Who or Blake's 7.

It costs £6/$10, a price which reflects that it is definitely more than a toy. You can use this as a serious instrument.

Here's a video of the the inventor, Jordan Rudess playing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" on it.

My attempt at playing "Wild Mountain Thyme" on it in the next post.

Verdict: I love it, even if I don't completely understand it yet.

My first iPad Garageband tune

2011-03-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

My first iPad Garageband tune. It’s a rather silly little tune, called “Squeak Squeak Kaboom” but was created entirely in Garageband.

I sampled my children saying “squeak” and “kaboom” and then played them back with the keyboard. The drums are Garageband “smart drums”, and the acoustic guitar is one of the autoplay settings. The electric guitar melody was me playing the “roots rock” on-screen guitar.

What I found amazing about this is that the basic loop really only took us 5-10 minutes to record all the parts. It took me a little longer to work out how to create the arrangement of sections.

It also highlights some of the limitations of Garageband on the iPad:

one of the "kabooms" is a bit late, and I couldn't edit the recording to move it
some of the "squeaks" are bit quiet
no way of fading the track out at the end

Garageband

2011-03-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

There really is only one place to start any iPad music blog these days - Garageband. When Apple announced the iPad 2 with Garageband and iMovie I spent the next hour frantically trying to discovered whether Garageband would work on my original iPad. I didn’t care about cameras, smart covers or any of that stuff - but Garageband was something I had wanted on my iPad since I bought it.

The first two things that strike you about it are:

just how much has been crammed into a £3/$5 app
how easy it is to get started

As I’ve said before, I am not a big fan of guitar/keyboard apps on the iPad, but the Garageband instruments aren’t bad. The keyboard is big enough to be playable, and I do rather like the string-bending on the guitar. The sounds are pretty good too.

I like the way Garageband goes about song construction in a way that works on the small screen. You work on a section of the song at a time. Not great, perhaps, if you want to play your whole song in one take, but for sketching out ideas or playing around (which is what I guess most people will use it for) it works well.

It is, of course, not without its frustrations. My chief annoyances are:

you can’t play in anything other than 4/4 time
copying your song to Garageband on the Mac doesn’t work yet (I hear that this needs a software update that’s not available yet)
you can't edit anything you've recorded

However, two very nice surprises I have discovered:

My Blue Snowball mic works perfectly when plugged into the USB camera connection kit. Much has been written about how iOS 4 reduced the current available to USB devices, but the Snowball still works.
So does my Yamaha Clavinova - obviously that has its own power supply, but I was surprised to find Garageband supported Midi keyboards.See the next post for my first Garageband recording.

See the next post for my first Garageband recording.

About this blog

2011-03-24T15:08:00.000-07:00

A lot has been written about the potential of the iPad for creating and recording music. I agree with most of that, and there's no point repeating it all here. This blog is a collection of news, reviews and opinions about some of the many music apps now available for the iPad.

It seems that there are two main classes of people interested in music making on the iPad.

professional/semi-professional musicians looking for performance-quality apps
amateurs with little or no previous musical experience who just want to have a bit of fun with their iPad

I'm somewhere between the two - I'm professional technologist, and amateur musician. My house is littered with "real" instruments, of which my favourites are my three acoustic and electric Irish bouzoukis. So hopefully I can provide a balance between the two extremes of iPad musician.

I have to admit straight away, that I'm not especially keen on the recreation of real instruments on the iPad. Playing a piano or guitar on a touchscreen is fun for a few moments (maybe longer if you've never played the real thing), but ultimately a bit of a toy. Don't get me wrong, I love toys, but that means I know I toy when I see one. So yes, I will write about some of these, but my main interests fall into two categories:

apps to help recording, practicing and refining musicals
apps which turn the iPad into innovative new instruments, playing to its strength by using the touch screen as a new way to play music, rather than a poor substitute for a keyboard or fretboard.