The company is betting big on the future of music production and touch screens when almost no one else is in the music industry. Is it the right bet?
For many mix engineers and producers, desktops and laptops have become a natural place to compose, record, mix, and master new music. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of Logic Pro for iPad when Apple unveiled it last year. It quickly became apparent in early hands-on testing that it had the goods. It was the first time I saw something as powerful as a desktop digital audio workstation running on a tablet. But it also struck me as something for up-and-coming pros, not ones already well-versed in computer-based music production.
The iPad’s touch screen means the way you use the app is completely different. And since I’ve been around the block a few times, I wasn’t sure I would use it much myself. I’ve been working in digital audio workstations (DAWs) for more than 30 years, recording and mixing indie artists and as a sound designer and composer. I’ve been testing and writing DAW reviews for PCMag for over a decade.
I’ve now reviewed Logic Pro for iPad 2, which Apple launched at its «Let Loose» event last week, and found it to be pretty terrific. But I was still curious how existing producers and engineers could use it and whether they’d even be interested, or if the iPad version was just for newer users graduating from GarageBand. Most of the other companies selling DAWs, including Avid, Ableton, and PreSonus, view the iPad as something to run a glorified remote control app on as opposed to a full-blown recording studio.
I spoke with Apple executives Monday and learned the iPad version of Logic Pro grew out of a couple of different ideas: giving the next generation a way to make professional-quality music in a familiar way (to them), yes, but also giving experienced musicians more intuitive tools than they’re accustomed to so they can work from an inspired new perspective. The New Generation
The backdrop for all this is GarageBand—which Apple points out is arguably the most successful music creation app of all time. It’s in the hands of some 2 billion people of all ages, between Macs, iPads, and iPhones. But it’s one thing to remake a beginner app for the iPad and another thing entirely to do that with a professional audio workstation. John Dancy, Apple’s product marketing lead for music apps, said that during the company’s work in schools guiding students in curriculums with GarageBand, they found students fall in love with making music, but that making the transition to Logic Pro on the Mac doesn’t always go smoothly.
“I don’t think any of them had any trouble understanding [Logic Pro] conceptually,” Dancy said. “But we were really surprised to see that they were confused with something you might be surprised to hear: the mouse or the trackpad. It’s not a device that they normally communicate with; they do everything through touch, which is their medium of creation, and GarageBand is no different…That gave us a real moment of, ‘Wow, okay.’
«So we’re thinking about this next step for people coming from the application,” he said. “We really need to make sure that we think about touch as the foundation for that experience…and then transform the iPad itself to not only the instruments that people know now, but [having] the full professional music creation experience right on the device itself.”Tools for Musicians
Alec Little, Apple’s director of music creation apps, told me that they see themselves as toolmakers for musicians and that as toolmakers, it’s essential to pay attention to how a tool works in somebody’s hands. Before, this meant a big screen and a mouse or trackpad in front of you.
“But the iPad really is a fundamentally different way of thinking about how you interact with software,” Little said. “That’s not surprising. But trying to think about how to take an application like Logic Pro, which has decades and decades of history and ways that it works—[taking] that thing full-heartedly and putting it on the iPad without any alterations didn’t make sense at all.
