Overhere a great video of Qui Robinez showing how to use an ipad in combination with a keyboard. (Kronos)




Here is another one...






This is my favorite app, it is named TouchOSC. You can create a whole interface by yourself that controlls midi CCs. Creating your knobs and sliders and buttons to controll your keyboard..




So lets make this a nice topic, showing off how we and others use the ipad to really add something to your setup..

With these two apps you turn your ipad into a multiprocessing daw...

Someone just did an experiment of controling vArranger with an iPhone, iPad or Android device and the TouchOSC application
The feedback is working too ! This is very nice

An Ipad cannot do anything for me - I don't own one. However, tonight at the marina gig, I watched as a player stumbled through his I-pad trying to find Piano Man, which he said he had stored on the phone. He spent the better part of five to six minutes trying to find it, during which time the audience was on the border of getting up and leaving. I found the song on my laptop in two seconds, but he also needed the chords to play it on his guitar. I couldn't help him with those because they're in my head. He was a reader. I could have gone online and clicked on Chordie and got what he needed in about 20 seconds, which to most audiences is considered a lifetime.

Gary

Gary, this says everything about the player and nothing about the ipad, on my ipad inselect artist (billy joel) and then song piano man... I can do that trick in few secconds for 1) midi 2) text 3) musical notes/chords 4) mp3

Its called preperation, and offcourse musical knowledge... However i can also browse easilly dor pArt of the title If i dont know the artist... But theb in geberal if indont know the artist the song is not on my phone

Chordie is browser based and works just as well on iphone, ioad or an android device .. I can even make an icon on my phone that makes the ipad open chordie just like any app. I tested it and took me 15 secconds once inhad created the shortcut on my page

So blame the person and not the ipad....

Dan, there is also Emulator Pro for windows which does the same.



However, where the iupad app costs €5, the windows program costs €150 and in the end both are just as usefull...

For Varranger you can have your ipad taped to your midi controller, giving you an extra controll surface, directly at hand... not only for Varranger, but also for anything else you can controll over midi... like VST's or your note reasder program. In the end the Ipad is much more mobile then your big PC screen..

Keep in mind however, that having a master keyboard with many buttons, sliders, pads and knobs will allways be the preferred way of input for most of us.... I as a player would allways want to have my most important functions placed on physical elements.. but adding TouchOSC on an ipad or android tablet adds so many possibiliities on top of that...

As i said, it is my favourite ipad app... a good example is a surface that controlls a sequencer... it has 4 main buttons.... and functions like the chord sequencer of my Tyros 5.. RECORD, PlAY (1 time), LOOP, SAVE, (and 8 save positions to recall.. and a clean button)... in the end its just a trick, the save positions are not really save positions, but they are tracks in the sequencer. so if i want to save a project, it actually needs to be done in the sequencer. However, i can open a fresh project from a button on the ipad..

So basically its very very simple to create stuff..

Yes, you create your own control surface, depending on your need.

The good thing with TouchOSC, is that you can do it wireless

For a guitar or accordion player, you can control vArranger from your iPhone at 10 meters, to start the next song or change volumes...

Ummm, I guess it's just me, but it just seems to be getting more and more about the technology and less and less about the music. I just can't imagine a professional entertainer standing in front of an audience scrolling through an iphone looking for a song for five minutes.....or even two minutes. I know some people try to be prepared for any request but I don't think that's realistic (although some pro's have amazing repertories). If you don't know the tune well enough to fake it, 'fess up and move on. I know it's different with a band, but we always had a list of (@200) tunes that we could play 'cold', and if a request wasn't on that list, we would just say no and offer a substitute. I guess the public (or the club owners) are more demanding these days.

Here's another idea; post a sign on the bandstand stating "WE DON'T TAKE REQUESTS".

chas

What point are you rrying to make.... That using ipads on stage makes you a bad player?

A good musician indeed does not require an ipad, when he gets a request, he selects a drumbeat and a sound... And starts playing..

But if you would have taken the time to watch the first video, you would have seen that it was about a top knotch musician using an ipad as an extensions to his instrument to overcome the shortcommings of his instrument...

But then its seems that using technollogy in an innovative performance is way beyound what many of the arranger players will ever archieve, creating music is much more then replaying the tunes one remembers from his youth, if you think using the ipad as an MP3 player is acceptable on a live stage, you are so wrong.. This post about the ipad is all about being creative with music and creating orriginal music and compositions..

And not about using it as an MP3 player or a textreader..


There is a reason workstations and arrangers started loosing sales numbers....... They stopped being innovative.... The true innovation in music is happening on devices that have no onboard keys...

Not at all. Only YOU can make you a bad player. To me, standing on stage scrolling through an iphone (in Gary's example) for five minutes, is more detrimental to a performance than just saying "we don't have that song prepared, could we do another for you" or something like that. JMO. Don't get upset.

chas