Notes, to get midi in/out there are a couple of options:

1. You could go with an entire interface designed for the iPad - that has both audio and midi I/O. Here's one from Alesis that doesn't care if it's 30 pin old-school or lightning connection: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/iODockII

2. There's the smaller sized option of something like the Griffin stuff: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/StudioConLt

And then there are options that are a bit more tricky to get full functionality involving camera connection kits and whatnot.

The first music app I bought for my iPhone was Garageband. It's 5$. The drawbar organ and electric piano sounds are simply phenomenal - very very good and very likely better than any external sound modules you might have; particularly the drawbar organ. Now, when I was doing this I also bought an app which allowed MIDI control into Garageband so that I could use an Akai Synthstation 25 controller control the soft-synths inside. That app is called MIDI Bridge. I don't believe it's the case with the IO Dock.

The guitar amp simulation in Garageband for iOS is also remarkably good. If you want something other than that, you can use the freebie Amplitube stuff - there's a free Fender version - which if I remember correctly, there's black-face model in the free version; my favorite Fender Amp. I can't demonstrate any of this any longer because I no longer have my iPhone 4s.

iOS8 has a cool feature called Inter-App audio which acts like an internal digital patch bay, so you can use stuff like Amplitube simultaneously with Garageband and other audio apps.


But before you buy ANYTHING - if you have an Apple store nearby, take your favorite headphones over and fire up Garageband and pull up any of the keyboards (not the smart keyboards) and have a play. You'll be buying Garageband for 5$ after that, or just go ahead and buy it now, it's a fairly fun tool as a scratchpad DAW as well.

My Songs, photos, writing,etc.
My Sound Cloud