The thought occurred to me the other day that the iPad could be indispensable for home recording studios. Whenever a vocalist needs to record, they’re typically locked in a sound-proof vault while the engineer works the controls back where the computer desk is.

But what if I’m the only one in my studio?

Until now the only options have been hardware control surfaces like the $1,200 Mackie units that act like a full-featured mixer or boutique wireless units like the Frontier Designs Tranzport. The latter is really the only thing I could bring into a vocal booth with me. If you take a good look at the controls on this thing, you’ll notice a lot of it is hard-wired to buttons. If I wanted to create a few more vocal tracks or select takes while I’m tracking vocals, I’d have to keep leaving the booth. And this thing costs $200. If I want anything else, I’d have to run a cable all the way into the booth and I’d still be limited to the buttons and functions the manufacturer thought I’d want.

Now imagine I’m sealed into the mic bunker with an iPad and VNC. A device with no moving parts (read: vewy vewy quiet), a huge touch screen, and the ability to control absolutely every knob, slider, menu, and button that my recording software has to offer. If I’m recording vocals and suddenly realize that the tremolo on the guitar amp is making it difficult to stay on rhythm, I can shut it off without leaving the creative space. I can select the good takes to keep in my ears while I lay down harmony tracks. I can pull up lyrics or lead sheets as a PDF from my computer or on the iPad itself while I sing. Hell, if I’m feeling particularly masochistic, I could edit MIDI tracks by hand and tweak reverb settings from the comfort of my padded chamber.

When I’m performing my weekly UStream show, the iPad could let me control the chat room and broadcast console without taking CPU power away from my performance machine, the MacBook. But that’s another blog post, I’m sure.

Oh yeah, and it’s a frickin’ iPad too. When I’m out of the studio, I’ve still got games, books, music, movies, etc.

When I first saw the iPad’s launch, I was underwhelmed. Now, stacking it up next to current-model control surfaces, I can’t see myself buying anything else for in-booth control. I know this won’t make much of a difference to the general public, but for guys like me it opens up a world of possibilities. I need to save some money for two pieces of control gear: One bigass Mackie mixer for the desk, one iPad for everything else.

Okay, we get it. It’s not an entire Macbook crammed into a single slate. It doesn’t have a 1080p color e-ink touch screen with backlighting, portal technology, and holographic projection. You hate it, fine. It’s not like I’m camping out to buy it once it finally ships. But before you divert your bored hours at work from Farmville to flaming the fanboys on every Apple message board you can find, read this and try to think about long-term strategy.

I’m a musician, so I have to think long-term. The entry-level position for most business is either mail room, receptionist, or dishwasher. For musicians it’s playing hours of classic rock tunes in bars where people are annoyed that you’re interrupting the football game. It’s spending thousands on an album that might just sell 50 copies, if you’re lucky. It’s setting up message boards on your website and talking to the same 3 friends who are bored at their day jobs playing Farmville.

If musicians only thought short-term, nobody would go into this business.

Apple’s new iPad is a lot like a new indie band. (more…)

I am now the proud owner of a large dry-erase board. This is only worth blogging about because a giant blank canvas is a noteworthy thing in our age of little text fields and 140-character microblogging. The best and worst thing a creative person can stare at is a blank page- it represents either total freedom or an intimidating lack of substance.

It’s like looking down from the top of a ski slope. Either you see every twist and turn of the path you might take, or you see a big scary unbroken mountain staring back up at you. The difference, of course, is in the mind of the skier. In either case you’re certainly not going to want to walk down a narrow little path, structured by how someone else might have descended the mountain.

So much of how technology works is centered around the left-brained types. Outlining software, databases, calendars, and to-do lists force us to think in little lines of text. I would lay money down, however, that all of those innovations started life as an idea jotted onto a giant dry-erase board.

This is why we love the iPhone’s big touchscreen but still hate entering data with it. This is why we want Apple to release a tablet MacBook already. This is why, for all we do in front of little LCD monitors, our best steps forward start with a tube-dispensed liquid pigment (or, alternately, a stick of chalk).

If you haven’t invested in a full-size notebook or a dry-erase board large enough to use as a Pilates mat, it’s time for you to head to Staples and pick one up.

Photo by Jeff Kubina

After waiting a long year for the second generation iPhone to hit the shelves, I’m downright insulted. The hardware promises so much, and yet the ridiculous extortion that AT&T calls a “plan” makes my eyes twitch.

I am not getting one. In fact, I’m going to leave AT&T for Sprint as soon as I can sign on the dotted line. I’ve had it with mediocre service and expensive plans. After 5 years, they’re losing my business because they’re just too greedy.

My only question now is which hardware platform I should be looking at. This is where you come in…

Please leave your reasoning, ideas, justifications, etc. in the comments, and let me know if there’s anything else I should consider. I’d love to hold out for Android, but my current tube-powered wood-burning phone won’t live that long.

Thanks to both Chris Penn and C.C. Chapman for pointing this article by Bruce Schneier out:

Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you’re entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days.

I won’t set foot down the “we’re becoming a police state” path, I just want to focus on what this means for traveling musicians and businessfolk. So, to quote the legendary Dick Clark:

Protect your ass at all times.

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