As an amateur musician I’ve always tried to find better and more practical ways to create my own music, so I use to take a look (I mean to buy, try and keep or discard) at the different apps and gadgets available in the market to see how has technology improved the way the artists create their stuff nowadays, specially on music because recording a song 20 years ago required years of study, loads of money, a recording studio and of course, good taste.  Today you just need to mix some samples and you’re pretty done, but the good taste is still up to you.

So the challenge was to put in practice everything I got after research.  I always noticed how the apps try to sell the idea of converting your iPad into a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) with a lot of features and samples to allow you creating a song by just dragging stuff with your fingers, however (and as expected), they still have the common compatibility issues that could add a little frustration on the way.  To avoid you having the same issues I’ll explain the Pros/cons of every app and gadget used.  Here we go:

Software

 Music Studio 2

 Pros: The best multitrack app available; a simple interface, great MIDI instruments and fully compatible with other apps.
 Cons: Understanding the effects logic is a little bit tricky; there’s no way to bounce tracks.

Sample Tank for iOS

 Pros: Outstanding MIDI instruments in high resolution
 Cons: Complex interface, poor usability and compatibility conflicts.  What a shame.

 iSequence

 Pros: Nice instruments and good resolution, looks promising to use it as a MIDI controller
 Cons: Too hard to understand; maybe it could work for electronic music and sampling I guess, I just discarded it.

 Meteor

 Pros: Well designed interface, the Wave and MIDI editors are just great.  Huge potential.
 Cons: Poor and low res MIDI instruments, mapping issues and there’s no way to work in background so it does not receive signals from other apps.  I discarded it as well.

Hardware

Sonuus i2m Musicport - It converts your guitar/bass/keyboard/voice into MIDI signals.  it’s great for solo tracks but it doesn’t support polyphony.  I liked it anyway.

iRig - It allows you to connect your guitar or bass to the iPhone/iPad with a full set of options and effects through Amplitube or StudioTrack.  To be honest the recording quality is not what I expected but it’s enough for home recording I guess.

iRig MIDI – This is a Core MIDI interface, which means that you can import/export MIDI with your iPhone/iPad.  I use it to connect my drumset to the iPad and record percussion or drum tracks (hopefully through SampleTank one of these days).

Instruments

There’s nothing much to say about it, I’m still enjoying the mid-range instruments so I used an Epiphone SG Custom, a Warwick’s Rock Bass and a Roland HD-1.
And finally, after three 2-hours composing sessions this is what i got:

Cheers!