My old friend Adrian4 paid us a long overdue visit this weekend bringing small boys, iPhone 4 and his iPad with him. We plugged my Strat into his iPad via the iRig connector and output it through my Cambridge Audio domestic hi-fi. Great fun ensued for all levels of ability.
I have wanted a simple way of producing digital recordings of my guitar playing since 2007 when I made some progress with my Zoom digital guitar effects box and the free Cubase LE disk that came with it. This worked after a fashion under Windows 2000 Pro but was riddled with latency problems and unwanted snap, crackle and pop on the resulting audio files. The Cubase disk is now well out of date and to buy an up to date version that works under Windows 7 would cost at least £500.00. I can’t justify that sort of expenditure and it is also mind bogglingly complicated to set up and work.
In the quiet of the evening when everyone had gone home and more in a spirit of faint hope rather than expectation I had a poke around in The App Store on my iPhone 3GS.
I didn’t really think this would work on a 3GS but I found Amplitube, downloaded the free single track recorder, read a bit and chanced £6.99 on a bundle of upgrades including the Four Track recorder.
It’s the best £6.99 I ever spent in my life! I can’t believe some of the whining, negative reviews this app gets. Yes. It’s quite expensive for an iPhone app but it solves the problem of producing digital multi-track recordings for peanuts at the side of other methods.
You can email your file or upload to Soundcloud which seems to produce an m4a file. I take this to be a more modern, Apple equivalent to an mp3 file. Sounds fine to me!
Alternatively, you can share your file into iTunes in uncompressed WAV format and take it for a walk with Audacity or whatever audio editing software you prefer which is what I have done here.
The original WAV file was 47 seconds long and about 8MB in size.
I trimmed 15 seconds of silence off the end of it because I didn’t stop the recording promptly enough which reduced the WAV to 5MB.
The original m4a file chucked out by Amplitube for email was about 741kb.
I exported the WAV from Audacity, (which is a free open source download btw), as a variable biterate mp3, medium quality settings and that also comes out around the 740kb mark.
I think the sound quality is amazing considering all I had was an acoustic guitar, my iPhone 3GS on my knee in front of the guitar and the little white ear buds in my ears so I could hear the rhythm track while I played the lead track. Just the basic iPhone equipment, no extra hardware and an app that cost £6.99.
The playing is pretty ropey and totally off the cuff just to see if it works but I’m thrilled by the possibilities.
Listen on the Flash Player below.
I’m also pretty impressed by the Camera+ app by tap tap tap.
It gives you control of exposure so here’s a Camera+ shot taken today.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
