Hollin Jones
Apple’s new baby has a lot of potential, but for some musicians, is hamstrung by lack of hardware input, at least for now.
Apparently, Apple has released something called the iPad, not that I’d heard about it. Okay that’s not entirely true, we’ve all been saturated with news, reviews and opinions about it for weeks now, despite the fact that at the time of writing it had only just been released in the US and not yet in the UK. A broad cross-section of sensible opinion seems to suggest that while it’s not quite the game-changer that the iPhone was on launch, it’s still pretty darn impressive. People who have used one suggest that more than any of Apple’s other devices, it’s all about the apps. The hardware is a blank canvas – it’s what you run on it that matters.
Why is this relevant to musicians? Well as I have noted before, audio production is right up there with the most heavyweight tasks you can throw at any computer. The iPad’s hardware is good, but on paper not up to the levels we are used to needing to make music. I admit it’s not quite an apples-with-apples comparison (no pun intended), but it has a 1GHz processor and 256MB Ram – very broadly what you might have got as standard on a desktop Mac around the turn of the century. The storage is decent enough, with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB flash memory, and the touchscreen is great. The problem at the moment for anyone wanting to use it for music creation is the lack of expandability and inputs, the ‘closed ecosystem’ and hidden file system that would make content creation like multitracking audio rather more difficult than it should be.
If you have followed the coverage, you will know that Apple isn’t marketing the iPad as a music-making machine. I don’t think even Steve Jobs’ legendary powers of reality distortion could convince us that it could replace a Mac for music, at least not yet. But then it didn’t market the iPhone as one either, and there are hundreds of music-based apps for that, even if most of them aren’t all that useful on such a small screen. Most rely on sequencing pre-created loops, drum hits, phrases or melodies. There are tiny virtual keyboards, guitar strings, beat boxes and turntables, some more usable than others and some admittedly great fun. You can multitrack audio with apps like FourTrack and there are external microphone accessories that you can add too, since relying on the iPhone’s built-in mic for professional recording is a bit of a non-starter. If you do manage it though, the recordings are at least technically in CD quality, even if they might feature lots of room noise and be highly directional thanks to the design of the microphone.
Perhaps more interesting than the slew of novelty iPhone apps is the upcoming app/hardware combo from guitar bods Line 6, called the Midi Mobilizer. From the previews this looks pretty handy, letting you record from any Midi keyboard’s Midi outputs into the app on your iPhone, saving the data and allowing you to then email it in SMF format, the standard for Midi files. You can also back up settings and download them into Midi-capable devices. Of course Midi data isn’t sound: it’s a series of instructions to tell other software what notes to play, how hard and in what order. Midi data must be connected to a sound source to generate any noise. As such, this isn’t a studio replacement by any means, but still interesting.
Which brings us back to the question of the iPad as a viable music-making device, given that the way you interact with it is much the same as the iPhone, and with the caveat that it’s brand new and hands-on experience has been limited so far. It’s probably helpful to be a bit clearer about the phrase ‘music making’. You can break this down into at least three categories: music generation, audio recording and music production. The iPhone, and by extension the iPad, aren’t bad at music generation, as this can often be achieved using synthesis through the CPU or fairly simple algorithms to randomise pre-created content like beats. Audio recording is hampered by the lack of any kind of really usable audio input that isn’t a tiny and relatively fragile mini jack connector. Music production: editing and using effects to create songs in a way you could on a Mac, is still something of a pipe dream. For all the marketing speak surrounding the apps and as much fun as they are, you’re not going to replace a digital audio workstation (DAW) on a Mac with an iPad or iPhone until some of these limitations are overcome either by Apple or some revolutionary hardware/software product from a third-party manufacturer.
All is not lost, though. The will is there and for a device that’s so new to market there are quite a few music apps appearing, which do take advantage of the best bits of the iPad. Multitrack, GrooveMaker, Looptastic and other catchily-titled apps to name but a few. Sonoma’s StudioTrack (sonomawireworks.com) is relatively costly at $40 (about £26), but still much cheaper than desktop software. It’s remarkably slick and looks almost like something Apple might have made. It supports eight tracks of audio recording (funny how things come full circle), mute and solo, built-in effects, bounce down for added tracks and wifi sync among other rather cool features. The problem is that it only works with the iPad’s built-in audio hardware and this is, I imagine, what will seriously hamper the chances of it being used in any really professional setting.
It’s difficult to imagine using the iPad as it stands for anything really serious to do with music. Beyond the hype, the excitement and hyperbole, it’s still a musical sketch pad until Apple opens up the system or developers port versions of their DAW to the platform. One thing it is good for though, and in a professional context too, is controlling conventional DAW running on Macs. People have already made iPhone apps for this, but the large screen of the iPad is perfect for remote control. There are plenty of protocols out there already for controlling playback and mixing without touching the mouse or keyboard, and these are being tapped into already by developers to make software like MidiPad, TrixMix 2 and Entrackment, which is designed to control GarageBand.
This really is something that professionals can get their teeth into, and compared to the alternatives, things like the excellent but pricey JazzMutant Lemur, a basic wifi only iPad, with an app costing under a tenner or thereabouts is an attractive proposition. Would I buy one just for that? Probably not at the moment, but I know many pros who would once they’d seen it working. Recording in one room but playing in another? No problem – do it yourself with a dedicated app. In fact, other live performance controllers could be built in much the same way. Lights, VJing, DJing, and so on.
I will eventually buy an iPad – maybe a second or third generation one, when like the iPhone, the feature set has matured sufficiently. I can’t see it becoming a serious recording or production tool in itself just yet, but the potential is definitely there, and as a DAW controller, it already seems to be pretty advanced. Let’s hope that the hunger from musicians to make it even better keeps the pressure on Apple to do just that.
