Making music on the iPad: the good, the bad and the boogie

We have the technology; we can rebuild him.

Making music on the iPad is a lot of fun. The iPad gives you access to hundreds of music apps, puts everything on the screen at the tips of your fingers and it’s small enough to take with you so you can work and boogie anywhere. These were the features that first drew me to using one. And now, these same features have led me to drop it as a serious music-making tool – at least for now.

Choice v. productivity

So, hundreds of apps: if you want to learn an instrument, choose one and master it. Picking up a violin one day, a trumpet the next and working your way through the entire orchestra day by day won’t help you learn how to play any of them properly. And this is the problem you face with the incredible choice of music production apps for the iPad.

Not only are there loads of them; at just a few bucks a shot, you can go crazy in the app store and still spend less than you would on a rainy afternoon in Starbucks. But by the time you’re done, you have an orchestra of synths, drum machines and sequencers all jumping up and down like the donkey in Shrek shrieking, “Pick me! Pick me!” I found picking one and sticking with it tough. 

Focus v. fun

I tried focusing on one app to begin with: ReBirth. It was fun. I got a massive nostalgia hit working with virtual 303s, 808s and 909s. And I could see how a ReBirth set would rock a party – it would be a trip back to the early 90s. But using it, I quickly got bored: it was simply too limiting.

Just to give you a quick example: creating a sound on one of the pair of 303s takes no time at all, but you won’t be creating anything new. And it’s all monophonic, so no pads or textures. And you can’t import sounds or samples from another iPad app to cross-fertilize your sound garden.

This isn’t just true of ReBirth. The iPad doesn’t have an internal filing system, so moving files (sounds or mixes) between apps can be a real pain. You have to use each individual app’s filing system, which is usually an external server or a site such as Soundcloud. It means you get stuck inside the app – and stuck with its limitations. In the end, it’s more like working with a groovebox than a DAW. And in the long-run, that takes away some of the fun.

Perhaps my biggest gripe, though, is that these apps are often based on old instruments (the Korg iMS20 and iElectribe) or old programmes (ReBirth) that remain faithful to a user interface designed for a completely different piece of hardware. Even the Animoog, which I really enjoy mucking about with, uses rotary knobs that look like something off Moog’s current analogue synth, the Little Phatty.

Rotation v. up/down

Rotary knobs! Think about it for a second. They make total sense in the real world; you can get a good grip and tweak away to your heart’s (and ear’s) content. But on a flat screen you end up covering up the knob as soon as you place your finger on it. The knob’s just an image on a screen, so you can’t feel it moving. You’re just sliding your finger around on a piece of glass. And the rotary movement is too fiddly to control with any precision. Most apps give you the option to switch to up/down sliding motion (so the app designers recognise the problem), but even that feels weird when you’ve got an image of a rotary knob in your head.

The obvious solution is a simple up/down slider. But that won’t look like a Moog synth. The same goes for the iMS20 and ReBirth. The nostalgic recreation of hardware synths makes them tricky and frustrating to use. For me, there’s just too much of a disconnect between what my eyes and finger-tips are telling me. And, in the end, it’s my ears that get confused.

iPad v. laptop

These are all details. But when you add them up, they result in a frustrating user experience. I love sound design and I want to get the sounds I craft into a full-scale production fast. There’s no reason why the iPad won’t eventually be able to deliver this. But for now, it can’t. Right now, there are some quirky synths, some retakes of old analogue gear, and a few grooveboxes that are fun to mess around with, but not good enough for a convincing production.

I wanted to get into producing music again after a long break and I thought the iPad would get me started. And, to be fair, it did. I enjoyed my nostalgia trips courtesy of the iMS20, iElectribe, Animoog and Rebirth. But unfortunately, I don’t have much time to spend on music every day. If want to get the best results I have to choose between using a laptop and the iPad: I don’t have time to use both.

So, I’ve chosen the laptop. Running Ableton Live. And, this decision marks the start of a new chapter in the rUbba nEck story.

Tags: iElectribe, iPad, iPad app, Korg, ReBirth