My fiancé and I currently occupy a small-ish condo and sometimes I’ve had to get creative about where I practice. Normally, I’m set up on an iMac in our shared office space where I plug-in via a Focusrite Scarlett Solo, but today my better half needed to the room so I decided to see how portable I could get and just thought I’d share this in case anyone else was curious.
For those curious, here’s a list of the humble gear being used
5th Gen 12.9 inch iPad Pro
Audio Technica ATH-M50x Headphones
Focusrite Scarlett Solo
Magic Keyboard
If the Focusrite has a power source, you can get a plain clean tone without the iPad, but since the iPad has GarageBand for free, you can play with the plugins and get a variety of sounds or record anything you might be working on.
Forgive me if the tech on this is old news. I’m still pretty new to the world of the modern musician so this is all still fun and exciting to me.
Yep, use of plugins even live while recording like this works great. And this is a super valid workflow, tons of musicians (and producers/DJs) do exactly what you are doing, but instead with a MacBook. This is also kind of a simplification of the desktop recording workflow I have used for years now; I would never go back from recording clean like this. It’s just so flexible and such a good workflow
Glad you posted this, as I’ve been debating between the Focusrite Scarlett and their iTrack Solo since we are in a similar situation to yours. Small condo, too many hobbies, and it seems like everyone else wants to practice music when I try and use the small music corner.
The iTrack is attractive for the lightning connection feature since I have Garage Band on an iPad, but I have a PC and no DAW for it. Btw, enjoyed reading up on the DAW thread here but just not ready to commit to something for PC when I already have an amazing tool that’s free.
Take a look at a free app called Tonebridge. A lot of artist specific guitar tones but also quite a few bass tones to try out too. Some great stuff in there and it’s made by ultimate guitar.
