Image attribution http://www.flickr.com/photos/polytropia/ on Flickr
Up to now I haven’t been convinced by the Ipad 1 or 2 as being able to do anything but be a pretty browsing machine. All that changed in the last week.
I bought an Alesis IO Dock from West End Production to see if it was viable to make the music for the TeachMeet film I am beginning to spec out. I can’t afford to pay anyone to make the music so I’ll do it myself for the soundtrack. If you don’t know what the Alesis IO Dock is, then check it out – it is £139 at the time of writing.
Basically I can put a guitar, midi, XLR mikes, headphones and other controllers into the ipad and I can also use the ipad as a wireless controller for things like Ableton Live, Reason and other Mac and PC software. I have tested them all out and they all work well. A lot of the file outputs or “mixdowns” are WAV format so you can output to several platforms.
With things like the Auria 48 track DAW imminent – it means I have a full blown sound studio running off my iPad.
Here is a screenshot of just “some” of my Music Apps.
Music Apps for the iPad 2
Needless to say I’m very , very impressed. This would be a good addition to an electronic music making studio in a small or larger school.
Have a look at the playlist I have built up Music Apps and other software on YouTube below. I have been using Playlists on YouTube to curate resources like this for some time now.
I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on one of those Alesis IO docks. I know there were some problems with the early models, but maybe that is sorted out now.
From my experience it seems to do the job very well. I’m putting professional quality equipment in and it is handling it very well indeed.