Tyler Haltman: The Dismal State of Android as a Music Production Solution

Thursday 23 February 2012

The Dismal State of Android as a Music Production Solution

I took the picture above on New Year's Eve, and I was originally planning to use it as part of a post illustrating how an iPad-centric music system costing under $1000 is capable of producing better music than multi-million dollar studios from just 25-30 years ago. So let's take a quick look: My son Christopher is working a DJ mixer which is interfaced to a netbook that is streaming music from MOG; an iPod Touch with some other pre-recorded music; and an iPad. The iPad is the workhorse of the music system, located just to the left of the iPod Touch and below the netbook. What you will see below the iPad are three USB devices from Korg - a pad controller, mini piano-style keyboard, and slider-based controller. The three controllers chain together through a $20 USB hub also from Korg. All four combined cost less than $200 and are well-built and simple to use. You just plug in and play. That night Chris was rocking tunes of his own creation using iMS-20, FL Studio, GarageBand, NanoStudio and others. He had only gotten the Korg modules a couple of days earlier, yet they were already integrated into his music studio, making life easier even than using my M-Audio Axiom Pro USB keyboard controller. Everything. Just. Worked. If you read through my coverage of the Winter NAMM show - which is the premiere forum for new horizons in music technology, you probably noticed a theme. That theme? iPad as the center of an on-the-go music system. For synthesis, recording, DJ work, guitar work, multi-track sound production, effects processing, amp simulations, drum machines, controller interfaces ... pretty much everything. Note that I did NOT say 'tablets' ... I said iPad. There is a HUGE market for the iPad as a sophisticated music making and recording and control tool. Apple has always had a great focus on music and media at the core of their OS, so the way that the iPad excels at those tasks grows organically out of that focus. On Android? Continue�reading on Gear Diary ...