navindra that's a very clever and skillful use of a sequencer and synths. They are all manually patched and programmed by the guy who also tweaks them in realtime. A groovebox tries to offer all that in a single box. But it still requires a lot of skills. And then the one in the first post is so simplified that it tries to kind of make it all playing entire arrangements in itself by only pressing a single key. Nothing against grooveboxes, I even considered buying one, for instance the MPC One which is more a DAW in a box. So, there's the huge spectrum of grooveboxes that still require that you program everything yourself, and at the other end you have that one where you don't have to do anything, just press a key on a single octave keyboard that you don't even play like a real keyboard 🙂
On that same topic, Apple released Logic Pro for iPad this week. They had teased it a few weeks earlier and I was very excited, so I purchased an iPad Mini 6 with the intention to use with for Logic Pro. It's a really small device that fits in the palm:
I'm sure a bigger iPad Pro is the device Logic Pro is targeted at but I already have a MacBook Air with Logic Pro that I use for my synth arrangements and piano recordings, so I thought of the Logic Pro on the iPad Mini as an alternative to purchasing a MPC One. I decided to recreate the Depeche Mode song Behind the Wheel on that new iPad since it's a song we like with the guys I play with, we also try to compose and make dark wave music. It took me a few hours to make that song on the iPad, I didn't use an external MIDI keyboard, only the touch screen keyboard, as well as drawing on the piano roll, sequencing drums in the drum machine pattern grid, I even used the Alchemy Sampler with an existing bottle blow sample that I managed to twist into something "flutey" sounding but not too acoustic and reminiscent of the bottle sound. With one exception, I only used patches and effects that come with Logic Pro but I tweaked all of them. I also used an external AUv3 synth called Zeeon where I programmed a tuned white noise since I couldn't find the embedded Logic Pro synths providing oscillator modulation with noise as a source. In no way I was trying to recreate the original song verbatim though. Of course there's no vocal, it's only the instrumental parts and our vocal will sing on top of it. I have to decide which parts I will mute during our rehearsal, so that me and the guitarist would have something to play 😀 Here's the result:
behind-the-wheel-final-02.m4a
So, in a way, it's a groovebox too. BTW, another reason to purchase an iPad Mini was that I wanted to downsize my rehearsal rig and replace my MacBook Air that I put on a stand next to the Numa X Piano 73, with the iPad Mini that will sit on the piano and I already posted a picture in my Numa thread:
Ultimately I'm very happy with Logic Pro on the iPad Mini 6 although I wouldn't recommend that exact combination to everybody 😉 I look at it as an ultra portable DAW in a box where I can lay down some ideas anywhere I am. However I would have created that arrangement on my Mac in half the time and using external plugins. But once again, the combination of an ultra portable iPad Mini 6 that is 6mm thick and the size of a small book, that can fit in my pocket and has almost the full arsenal of sounds and effects as its bigger brother makes it the ideal couch/beach/train/airplane music making solution.
