Top 10: Creative tasks with an iPad

9: Music production

Damon Albarn caused a stir by recording Gorillaz’s latest album, The Fall, on his iPad. Head to http://thefall.gorillaz.com to see his list of apps and to stream the album. However, even if you’re not a renowned musical innovator, there are plenty of apps on the iPad that mere mortals can get to grips with.

One of Albarn’s favourites was Korg iElectribe (£13.99), a virtual incarnation of the Korg Electribe hardware groove machine. Its audio palette of gritty squelches, beats and burps sounds more digital than the hardware version, but the multi-touchscreen interface makes this a much more hands-on experience than software normally allows. There’s also an iElectribe Gorillaz Edition (£13.99), which lets you remix the album as well as come up with your own tracks.

iElectribe Gorillaz Edition is bristling with trendy noises

Another key app for the Gorillaz album was StudioMini XL (£6.99). This eight-track recorder couldn’t be much simpler. Each track must be recorded from the beginning of the project, and further editing is limited to setting relative levels. However, the ability to export individual tracks in WAV format makes this a useful musical sketchpad, with recordings transferred to Windows or Mac software for further work.

StudioMini XL is about as simple as music production gets, but it’s a useful musical sketchpad

Garageband (£2.99) was the app that brought iPad music production into the mainstream. Again, projects are limited to eight tracks, but these are pooled from a range of startlingly impressive built-in instruments: a virtual guitar, bass and drum kit, a guitar amp simulator for connecting a real guitar (see page 11), a drum machine, synth, sampler, ready-made loops and a live input. There’s a fully fledged sequencer for arranging performances, too. It’s great fun for messing around with and it’s polished enough for serious use, too.

VoiceJam (£2.99) carves an interesting niche for itself. It loops and layers live performances in real time, and its innovative interface falls somewhere between recording device and performance instrument. Head to tinyurl.com/voicejam to see what it’s capable of in the hands of a likeable yet slightly creepy man.

Who needs instruments when you’ve got your vocal chords and VoiceJam?

Another stand-out app is Yamaha TNR-i (£13.99). It’s based on the Yamaha Tenori-On, a futuristic electronic performance instrument that has achieved legendary status since its launch in 2005. Various apps have attempted to mimic it with limited success, so it’s great to see Yamaha step in and do the job properly. TNR-i uses its grid of 16-by-16 pulsating buttons to perform melodies, create short looped sequences, switch between its 256 sounds, layer up to 16 parts and lots more besides. The effect is mesmerising, both musically and visually.

Yamaha TNR-i looks and sounds like something from an art-house sci-fi film

One limitation for iPad music production is the quality of its built-in microphone and microphone input. They’re not terrible but they aren’t up to critical tasks. There are lots of other options, of course, but the product we’re most excited about is the Alesis iO Dock (£139 on pre-order from www.dv247.com). The iPad slots into this wedge-shaped box, which adds phantom-powered XLR microphone inputs, a high-impedance guitar input, balanced line outs, MIDI in and out and various other handy features. We’ve not yet tested it, but unless Alesis has fallen from its usual high standards, this will be a fantastic way to augment the iPad for music production.

The Alesis iO Dock raises the iPad’s standing as a serious recording device

It’s also worth noting that the USB port in the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit (£25) isn’t just for cameras. It can also accommodate a USB microphone. There are dozens of these on the market, with many coming from professional audio companies such as Blue, Rode and Samson.