!#44# Making and Recording Music on iPad: Cool Apps

!±8± Making and Recording Music on iPad: Cool Apps

There are a lot of great applications designed for iPad music fans. If you enjoy making music, composing it, recording and mixing, you might like to discover the following music apps for your iOS device.

I play in a rock band, and I am used to live instruments: guitars, keyboards, bass, and drums. With the launch of the iPad we decided to record a song using its applications.

Even though there are tons of music apps for iPad, not each application is great and useful for playing music. I found such apps as iCanBass, iGuitar Free, Guitar and the free version of WI Guitar Free pretty useless.

GarageBand, WI Guitar (full), easyGuitar HD and Piano HD Free (Pianolo) are the iPad music apps worth your time and money. They can really help you record your compositions.

GarageBand: All in One

GarageBand is a great paid application. It includes smart guitar, smart bass, virtual drums, voice and keyboard, and it lets you record an entire song on the iPad.

You can record each instrument one by one after choosing "New Song" in the up left corner of this music app. You can record drums to form your song's structure, and then add guitars, bass and keyboard.

You can delete or replace any instrument whenever you want to.

GarageBand iPad app allows you adjusting volume levels. Besides, each musical instrument has unique settings and autoplay rhythms. Drums and smart drums have 3 traditional kits and 3 drum machines. You can choose your song's tempo and major (new songs are recorded in C major by default).

This app is still not perfect. First of all, you are limited to 8 tracks only. Secondly, each instrument is touch-sensitive. This means you will sound louder if you tap hard. It is impossible to play with the same snare. You can do much better if you record your song using the smart instruments only.

You can add your vocals to the song using built-in mic or USB microphone, and mix your music by adjusting volume levels of each track and panning.

If you are not satisfied with your results, you can always finish mixing your song in your Mac's GarageBand app. There is one problem here. You are not able to import your song back to your iPad's GarageBand once you mixed it on your Mac.

WI Guitar and easyGuitar HD

If you want to record lead and solo guitars, you can use WI Guitar app for .99 and free easyGuitar HD app for iPad.

WI Guitar is a virtual acoustic guitar iPad application that includes a classical instrument and electric guitars. It allows you strumming chords. But it includes only 12 chords plus maj7, add9 and sus4. Even though you can make about 150 unique chords, this app is best for playing and recording easy songs only.

If you wish to add solo to your basic guitar line, use easyGuitar HD app for iPad. Designed and sold by Paolo Bottigliero, this application includes 2 classic guitars. You can play on the first 6 frets or the last 6 frets when making solo. Use your fingers on one hand to push the string you need to be played and the other hand to play these strings as if you are playing real guitar.

Piano HD Free

This version of piano is pretty good. It is free first of all unlike GarageBand which costs you .99.

You can imitate 6 instruments on keyboard, including violin, guitars, saxophone, horn and grand piano with 6 octaves. It is a cool way to record a song if you are tired of the GarageBand sounds.

This free music app includes 3 modes: multiplayer piano, multiplayer piano with saxophone and 4-ocvates grand piano. You can play a duet with your friends and compose beautiful music.

Still there is one drawback that I should mention. Our fingers are a bit too big for this application; it is often difficult to tap the right keys.