PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Pre-buy iPad info wanted - what do I need? Memory, etc...

Thanks again for all this wonderful information.

I DL'd Garage Band and my first impression is that it looks like fun.

I do want to use my external MIDI modules so I'll be investigating the interfaces too.

I have a couple of synths, a half dozen sound modules, and a couple of hardware samplers and that gives me access to a few thousand instrument sounds. For example I can choose for guitars 335, tele front pup, tele rear pop, strat, les paul, and dozens more different guitar tones. I also have 18 different standard drum kits, that many jazz, brush, electric and other kits as well. I have B3 organ that the leslie speed is controlled from one of the continuous controllers. I don't mind adding new sounds, but on the other hand, I don't want to lose any either.

Things have slowed down for the weekend though. The oil pressure gauge went on in my van on the way home from the Gig on Friday, so I had to rent a van for Saturday. I have gigs on Tuesday and Thursday so hopefully the problem is minor and can be fixed on Monday - renting vans is expensive and time consuming - missing a gig is not an option.

All future suggestions are also appreciated.

Thanks again,
Bob

As most iPad apps are built to run on older devices and don't need to store much data the cheapest iPad you can buy that is current will work fine. For comparability purposes of cabling anything with a Lightning Cable should be new enough to run almost any modern Music applications.

I had an iPad but it was getting on. Updates were no longer available. I found with only 16 gig i was having to move stuff or think about what I wanted. A few months ago I bought a new one 128 gig. I use very little of it but I don’t have to worry about room etc. For the extra peace of mind the extra cost was worth it. (Only about $150 or so after complaining that a poor ole pensioner needs the tool and a discount). OK Garage band is a nice toy I thought I would be laid up for some time and it would keep me amused but nah it is not my style. I converted my mixed tracks to MP3 and put my tracks on the iPad and listened on a different device which was good I found some nuances I did not like so edited a lot of my stuff yet again.

If you are going to use external interfaces etc on it make sure they can work with it. There is only one sound port and one Apple port. You can get a camera kit to connect other interfaces. You may need to supply external power to drive some devices as the iPad might not provide enough power. (I don’t use the iPad this way). I understand the MIDI keyboard I have will work fine with the iPad and they even supply tools with it.

My main uses for the iPad are mail, internet and I use it largely for these forums. I can sit in my lounge chair, relax and watch tv and the forums.

Tony

Wow, this thread back from the dead (zombie?)

Since March of 2015 at my last post I bought an iPod Air and am both happy and a bit disappointed with it.

Disappointed because it is very difficult to transfer files from my PC to the iPod without installing iTunes.

It's more difficult to get any serious work done on it that it is with a laptop. I knew that, but I didn't know how much more difficult.

Happy because for couch surfing, it's superb. That's about all I use it for, but it's a good use.

When it dies (everything has an expiration date) I'll probably get another.

Insights and incites by Notes

You don't need an expensive iPad for that kind of thing. I bought an Amazon Fire HD 10 for $149 a few months ago mostly to use as a chart reader on gigs. There are several good ones for Android, I use Fakebook Pro that cost a whopping $3 along with iRealPro. Works great. When people say iPads have many more music apps than Android the question to ask is what kind of music apps are they talking about? Yes, Apple has many more synth and DAW apps plus controller apps for digital mixing boards and things like that but as far as your needs Notes, you don't care about that stuff. You have all your sounds and performance related stuff covered with your hardware. That leaves the basic tablet functions that makes IOS and Android equal.

Bob

Following

Thanks Bob. That can save me money.

I downloaded a number of music apps when I first got the iPad, and I admit, Garage Band was fun to play with for a while, then it got boring. The rest of the music apps I downloaded got perhaps 2-3 hours of play each at most. Some were too simple, some were just lame apps that begged for in-line purchases (not that I'm opposed to purchasing something I plan to use, but they were lame).

Leilani and I went to Australia this year and I took about 800 pictures. I wanted to move about 250 of them to the iPad to show to my family when we get together around Thanksgiving. I bought the Lightning to USB interface and found I still couldn't transfer the photos to the iPad.

With lots of googling I found I need iTunes to do this. I had iTunes when I had an iPod and really disliked it. So I searched for alternative methods, and they were not to my liking - too complicated or didn't work.

Solution, put a folder up on my web site, upload the pictures I wanted to transfer to the iPad (I found I had to shrink/resize them as +-6M hi-rez pictures take too long to upload/download), then go to each web page, one at a time, download and save to the camera roll in the iPad.

So what should have taken about 15 minutes unattended took many hours, 10 minutes here, 5 minutes there, and in about a month it was done.

It's enough to make me dislike Apple. Don't get me wrong, Apple makes good hardware but while everybody else goes to universal standards, Apple tries it's hardest to be non-compatible in order to keep Apple people from buying anything competitive. And they've been that way since my first Mac computer (Classic II) that you couldn't even get into the case without a tool that Apple only sold to authorized Apple repair centers.

OK, enough Apple Rant. For those who like them and don't want to use anything but Apple, they are fine.

On stage I use ThinkPad laptops, my 2002 XP ThinkPad still plays my backing tracks and displays words and/or music charts, my newer Win7 does the same thing (one of my 2002 ThinkPads had an accident that messed up the hinge).

I use the newer, more powerful ThinkPads at home. They are quite reliable.

I thought about switching the ThinkPads to tablets on stage, but I like having the separate keyboard. While one file is playing, I can Alt-Tab which brings up file explorer, type a couple of letters which highlights the next song to play, when the first one is done, hit Enter and the next one starts immediately. When the dance floor is full, immediate is good.

Since I got the iPad in 2015 I'm happy with the service it's giving me. Apple does build good hardware, and my iPad is still working well. When it dies (everything has an expiration date) I'll look at the other options.

Insights and incites by Notes