24 thoughts on “Daft Punk JamStik + iPad Synth Jam”

  1. Ive been considering getting an Ipad for sometime… mostly for manuals in PDF kind of thing.. but will all these new apps Im always seeing .. Im curious from ipad users here… Does it ever crash? Im mostly a hardware guy, I sequence everything with a Cirklon, but wouldnt mind sequencing an app or two. I understand that everything can crash.. even hardware… Im just wondering if the whole Ipad app thing is safe enough to do live?

    1. Ive inherited an iPad 1 from work, I haven’t been using it a great deal for music, but it does crash out of apps, mostly safari, Youtube because of scripting conflicts I suspect.

      The whole system never crashes. Ever. You just restart the app which takes seconds.

      But my colleagues at work are shocked that it crashes, so their newer ones are more reliable (or they don’t work them as hard)

      My iPhone 4s doesn’t have this problem, early days of iOS music apps had instability, beatmaker crashed on me every so often, enough to annoy me. but I’ve asked around and beatmaker 2 doesn’t have the same issues. In the past the main issue with apps was memory leaks but apple crackd down on it, improved the os, and it doesn’t seem to be so notable anymore.

      I recommend you go to the gearslutz iOS ipad forums, there you’ll find heaps of users who are working their iPads pretty hard for music.

      1. Good tip, The video here is nice because he basically isnt jamming on the ipad, but using a controller. I suppose IF I get one, it really would have to be treated as a layer in the mix of everything else, and maybe avoid beats and stick with some of these synths Im seeing on this site. Like the animoog for pads, or this PPG. The only thing Im worried about besides crashing is the clumsy factor of miss judging where your finger lands. Flashing lights, a bunch of drinks..
        Overall though its going to interesting when in the future.. laptop screens will essentially be a touchscreen and you can harness some serious processor power.

        1. The touch screen is highly responsive, all the time, there’s pretty much no lag, and no latency on a decent app.

          And that’s a major point, the stuff being developed now is being developed really bloody well. They’re not toys.

          Things I’ve been thinking about usingmyipad for- step sequencer for my ms-20 mini (to come).

          And I’d really like to set up a sequencer sampler for my glitch/8-bit sounds. So I’m using TNR-i On for that.

          Once you have an iPad you’ll find endless uses for it and will come to trust that it is reliable enough live. I’ve been looking at future music magazine a lot lately and so many pros seem to be using not one but Two iPads, part of that is back up, but mostly it’s for the addition of another touch interface, they’re that useful! Especially as in OSC when you can pretty much design the midi interface of your dreams.

          The on,y real drawback is constantly pouring money into new apps to discover new cool stuff. The good pro music stuff tends to be around the $20 – $30 mark. Audio bus is $10 but currently half price on sale this month.

          1. im also looking to get into using an ipad with my music and i have two question for you:

            1. how can you use it to sequence the ms-20 mini? i pre-ordered one and i’ve been looking for a sequencer. i thought about getting a MIDI-CV converter and using a software sequencer but is it possible to do it with the external signal processor or what?

            2. what magazines have you been reading? the only one i really know about is soundonsound

            1. You can plug the ms-20 mini in to the iPad using a USB cord and the pole camera connection kit, which turns the iPad dock into USB port.

              This means you can use a huge array of apps to control the ms-20, for now I’ve settled with Little Midi machine which is very much an SQ-10 style analogue sequencer. But th possibilities are endless (and overwhelming!)

              I’ve just started Hunting around for magazines again recently, I like Future Music Magazine a lot, it shows peoples studio set ups, their YouTube channel is great.

              Computer Music magazine is solely software focused so that bores me, but I enjoy their ipad issues.

              I like sound on sound a lot too. Things that have a mix of adware, interviews, reviews an a bit of software mixed in are ideal or me.

              All these magazines can be subscribed to on an iPad too I think.

              2. MusicTech and MusicTech Focus (special issues focused on some software or technique) are also worth mentioning. None of the magazines mentioned really focus on the iPad, as they’re all computer music centered, but they’re all excellent. MusicTech April’s issue has 10 page special on making music with the iPad.

                As for stability, ChrisG has already summed up nicely. For controller apps, even the iPad 1 is good as they don’t tax the system as an audio app. It could be a good starting point for experimenting with iPad sequencing. It is cheap. The downside is that it will no longer be supported and won’t install the latest iOS. As Apps start using the new OS features they will not run on the iPad 1.

      2. iPad 1 only have 256 mb RAM memory, which is the reason why it’s prone to crashing/closing apps. iPad 2 have 512 mb RAM which makes it a lot more stable, still have to manage your resources tho. iPad 3 and iPad 4 have 1 GB of RAM which obviously makes it all even more stable.

        iOS closes apps as soon it feels that there’s not much RAM left, and it doesn’t seem to prioritize what it closes (to the user it will just look like the app crashed). Anyway, iPad 1 is a big no no if you’re gonna use it for music production. iPad 2 and above is a must for a reasonably reliable and fast enough environment.

        And I’m guessing iPad 5 coming this fall will double up the RAM to 2 GB…

    2. I’ve been using the iPad 2 as a synth onstage with no problems, mostly running Animoog, Filtatron, and TC-11. I play it fro the screen, but I have been looking at the new Keith McMillen controller to make it a little more expressive. I’m an old hardware guy also (Voyager, JP-8000, Rhodes, etc) and I’m blown away by what you can do on the iPad.

    1. People keep doing Daft Punk covers because its easy; because many just want to play for its own sake; and mostly because they haven’t heard a wide enough range of music to realize that Daft Punk is something to grow *past* if you want to create music that’s about more than getting laid. If you don’t, have fun, but don’t mistake technical capability for virtuosity or real passion. There’s no $2.99 app for either of those.

    2. Well it’s an advertisement for a product, so the guy’s not really looking for indie cred here.

      Anyway, I like the idea of it all, and you can do pretty much the same thing with an electric guitar, a midi interface, a synth app and one of the guitar apps in the app store (with varying degrees of success depending on the app and the synth). And the bonus with this method, aside from possibly being cheaper, is that you don’t look like a tool playing a wonky looking guitar- you’ve got the real thing! Lol

      1. Actually you need a guitar interface as well… So depending on the eventual price, the (wonky looking) Jamstik could be a good deal for an all-in-one product

      2. “Well it’s an advertisement for a product, so the guy’s not really looking for indie cred here.”

        Okay, fair enough point. Familiarity matters and the guy deserves to benefit from his nice, slick app. I just wish there was more between light pop covers and utterly abstract squeals in the general demo world. Neither of those fires up my imagination, so a little indie cred would be a plus. Good example: Rhayne’s posts. His ambient/chill style seems simple on the surface at times, but he won me over when he ran down the line and played a section on a real Rhodes, with actual fingers! 😛 That’s the kind of left-turn classiness that makes me focus harder on an artist… or a new product.

  5. This is really cool. I like how he talks about simplicity in the beginning. Talk about simple but powerful and bang for your buck with the iPad…..I think I will check out loopy now. As far covering the song I think the point also is to show how quickly he is able to come up with something that we are all familiar with, and have it sound pretty close, all in a few minutes and on a 10inch portable device and the jam stick….playing his own song wouldn’t quite illustrate that point in the same way.

  6. I’m having such a hard time trying to run Sample Tank and Sunrizer at the same time on my iPad 2. Last rehearsal they worked fine in the end, but not before I had to open and close both apps several times. I’m a bit jealous here, maybe I need a newer iPad.

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