Really great tutorial by the folks over at Create Digital Music. See how you can connect a midi interface to your iPad. You can then control your iPad with an external midi keyboard. You can also use the iPad to control your midi hardware.
I’m using a Micro X Korg as a midi controller for my iPad. Works great. Just connect the USB to the camera connection kit adapter and you’re good to go!
Video says prototype but this product is currently available. I saw it at Winter NAMM 2011. Very nice.
In many ways, the iPad is a terrific device for reading music, thanks to its slick design, light weight, and excellent battery life. However, one drawback has been the fact that you still need to use a finger to touch or swipe the screen to “turn” pages, which can be a distraction for musicians who need both hands to play their instruments.
At AirTurn, we’re developing a Bluetooth version of our wireless, hands free automatic page turner that will be compatible with computers equipped with Bluetooth, including the iPad. You’ll be able to turn pages by tapping a footswitch to turn pages forwards, and another one for turning pages backwards. Expected availability of the Bluetooth AirTurn is Q4 2010.
BUY AirTurn DUO
Performable. Recordable. Polychord 2. A musical instrument for experts and beginners alike. Write songs, play music, record and share.
Hit any of the chord circles to play a chord. Slide your fingers over the strum keys and play the notes. Go from Major to Minor. Switch Keys. Play a scale. Turn on auto accompany and play along to drums, bass, and an arpeggiator that has a whole range of time-signatures to choose from.
Turn on MIDI for any of the instruments in polychord, and use it as a powerful controller for your favorite audio programs.
Like chiptunes and 8-bit music? Polychord has bitshift effects, including detailed controls for the drums. Decimate and distort your sounds with full control over bits and bitrate.
polychord music app for iPad from gregory Wieber on Vimeo.
It can also be used as a MIDI controller via WiFi.
Ploychord
Check out my buddy Xander from Apple as he gives us a demo of the Garageband instruments.
Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later.
GarageBand turns your iPad into a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio — so you can make music anywhere you go. Use Multi-Touch gestures to play pianos, organs, guitars, drums, and basses on your iPad. They sound and play like their counterparts, but let you do things you could never do on a real instrument. Enjoy a full range of Smart Instruments that make you sound like a pro — even if you’ve never played a note before. Plug an electric guitar into your iPad and play through classic amps and stompbox effects. Use the built-in microphone or a guitar to record, or capture any performance. Then mix up to eight tracks to create a song you can share.
Play your iPad like a musical instrument.
• Perform on dozens of musical instruments on the innovative Multi-Touch keyboard.
• Tap out beats from the seat of acoustic and electronic drum kits.
• Recreate legendary guitar rigs on your iPad with 9 amps and 10 stompbox effects.
• Record your voice using the built-in microphone, and apply fun sound effects.
• Use the Sampler to create an instrument from sounds you record, then play them on a keyboard.
Sound like a virtuoso with Smart Instruments.
• Tap chords to instantly create keyboard grooves with the Smart Keyboard.
• Strum chords on acoustic and electric Smart Guitars, or trigger fingerpicking patterns for popular chords.
• Groove with an onscreen electric or upright Smart Bass by tapping on chords.
• Drag drum instruments onto a grid to create your own beats with the Smart Drums.
Create a song anywhere you go.
• Arrange and mix your song with up to eight tracks using Touch Instruments, audio recordings, and loops.
• Trim and place musical regions exactly where you want them to play.
• Use the Mixer to fine-tune each track’s volume — solo or mute any track, or adjust pan, reverb, and echo.
• Use over 250 professionally prerecorded loops as a backing band to your song.
Share your songs.
• Email songs right from your iPad (AAC).
• Export your song and add it to the iTunes library on your Mac or PC.
• Send a project to your Mac and open it in GarageBand to continue refining your song.
Crystal XT Synthesizer for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch
Crystal XT is a full featured semi-modular synthesizer, ideally suited to creating lush evolving soundscapes. Crystal VST has long been a popular synthesizer on the desktop. Crystal XT brings that same powerful synthesis engine to the iPad and iPhone. Crystal XT features MIDI keyboard input via the iPad’s camera adapter or any CoreMIDI-compatible MIDI interface such as the Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer and sharing of sounds with the desktop version of Crystal.
What’s New in Version 1.6
Multitasking – Use the Settings app to turn on the CrystalSynthXT Background Audio mode if you’d like Crystal to play audio when in the background, for example to play from a virtual midi controller app.
Note on Virtual MIDI: While this version works with controller apps like StepPolyArp and Genome, we’ve learned there are other controller apps with which it is incompatible. We will have an update with wider compatibility in just a few days.
Positive reviews are always welcome and encourage us to provide updates!
Browse through the included sounds and use the 2 octave keypad to trigger notes to produce evolving, rhythmic, or melodic sounds. Create your own sounds with a single button press using the breed feature. When using an iPad, you can delve into a tweaker’s dream by using the extensive editing features to sculpt sounds to your heart’s content (editing features are only available when used on an iPad).
Crystal features both subtractive synthesis and frequency modulation (FM) synthesis. It offers abundant modulation control with over 90 parameters which may be modulated, multi-stage envelopes with graphical editors, extensive tempo sync of envelopes/lfo rates/delay times, built-in effects for chorus/flanging/comb filtering/echoes, and a band splitter for effects processing by frequency band. Not only that, Crystal has wave sequencing and granular synthesis. The musical applications for Crystal are literally boundless.
With MIDI keyboard input, you can connect a MIDI keyboard to your iPad and play Crystal XT like a hardware synth. Or use a CoreMIDI-compatible MIDI interface such as the Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer and connect your MIDI keyboard to Crystal XT on an iPhone.
With patch sharing you can create sounds on your iPad or iPhone while away from the studio, then transfer them to the desktop Crystal when you get back to the studio to use in recording projects. Or, create banks of sounds on the desktop Crystal, then transfer them to the iPad/iPhone Crystal to use in a live performance for a truly portable rig. Use Audio copy/paste to record your performance on Crystal and transfer that performance to another app.
If you don’t need all the features of Crystal XT, try the basic version of Crystal, also available in the app store from Green Oak Software. With the basic version you can browse sounds, play notes, and create new sounds, taking advantage of its powerful semimodular synthesis engine. Crystal XT adds MIDI keyboard input via the iPad’s camera adapter and sharing of patches with the desktop version. Choose the app that is best for you!
Important note for iPhone and iPodTouch users: Crystal XT runs on both the iPad and the iPhone/iPod Touch. Because of the limited screen space on the iPhone however, the editing pages, which contain the edit controls, are not available when running on that device. But on the iPhone you can still browse sounds, play notes from the keypad, create new sounds with the Breed feature, modify patches with the Design feature, and share sounds with desktop Crystal VST.
Crystal Synth is available for $4.99
