By Garry Barker
WHILE my musical talents are mostly confined to knowing how to build a playlist in iTunes, I continue to be astonished at the breadth of music-related apps available for Apple's iDevices.
For example, the iTunes App Store was this month enriched by Murray Blair, an Edinburgh-born, now Melbourne-based audio expert, who has put up an iPhone app aimed at simplifying the apparently particularly difficult business of tuning one's bagpipes.
Garage Band on the iPad 2.Credit: AFP
Blair says the Bagpipe Tuner, which displays note frequency, waveform and other output from chanter and drones, makes listening more pleasant and playing more enjoyable. Sassenachs might consider the pleasure a touch constrained but, then, haggis and neeps are wasted on Sassenachs, too.
Apple's contribution to music-making on a computer is GarageBand, developed from Logic audio, by German company Emagic, which Apple bought in 2002. Emagic chief technologist Dr Gerhard Lengeling was hired to head the GarageBand team. The results have been impressive.
GarageBand was originally sold as part of the iLife software suite for the Mac that also included iMovie, iPhoto and iWeb. All are now offered separately on the Macintosh App Store and, given their power, are amazingly cheap. Even better, if you are registered for iCloud, one purchase brings the software to all your devices.
I have used GarageBand since it first appeared in 2004, mainly for creating podcasts on various Macs, both desktop and notebook, using Blue Snowball and Blue Yeti USB microphones. The set-up has been a snip to use.
GarageBand for iPad was announced, concurrently with release of the iPad 2, in March this year and became available on the iPhone and iPod touch last month. As an example of how to get great power and retain usability in an app on the iPhone, this version is remarkable.
The iPhone version requires iOS 4.3 or later and works on iPhone 4, 4S and the earlier iPhone 3GS as well as third- and fourth-generation iPod touches.
So, not only is it now possible while sitting in a cafe to make an iMovie from scratch on your iPad or iPhone but you can now write your own song on GarageBand to go with it. Same goes for Keynote on the iPhone.
All things considered, getting software as powerful as this - in effect an eight-track recording studio - onto a device as small as a mobile phone and as user-friendly and portable as an iPad is pretty amazing. My regret, which I hope will be assuaged in the next version, is that the iOS versions still lack a podcast feature.
As on the iPad, GarageBand on iPhone and iPod touch has a wide array of virtual instruments, from pianos to drums, synthesisers, guitars and so on. As on iPad and Mac, there are also smart versions of each instrument that play prefabricated chords. And, if you fancy yourself as a reincarnation of Pavarotti, there's the microphone to let you lay down a vocal track.
The limited screen acreage of the iPhone compared with the iPad has meant some modification of the user interface. Most controls work pretty much as they do on the iPad but some have knob icons on a separate screen reached by tapping in the toolbar. There is also only one keyboard size on the iPhone/iPod version and you need to be delicate about finger placement when playing a chord.
However, it would not be an iPhone/iPod/iPad event if it did not generate accessories. Look around the internet and you will find drumsticks, guitar picks and cables with which to connect a guitar to GarageBand on the iPhone or iPad.
It's all a bit like that fabled woman on the white horse at Banbury Cross but today she would have an iPhone rather than rings on her fingers and bells on her toes to provide music wherever she goes.