My first attempts have been frustrating at first, but really sort of amazing once I got the most basic hang of it.
I’m talking about my mobile recording rig: Apogee One for iPad, an iPad Air running Auria recording/mixing software, a Mackie CR3 monitor, and an ATH-M50x all on a boomless mic stand.
I hooked it all up and attached a microphone to the Apogee One last night. Then I started Auria and could hear myself through the headphones. We’re cooking with gas now! Then I created a blank track, armed it for recording, and pressed Play.
Woohoo, we’re recording! And the quality of the recording itself (not my voice) is very high! The only comparison I have is my recording using a Zoom H2, and this blows it away. Of course, I'm using a $600 mic so there's that.
Adding track after track is fairly easy. Just “rewind”, create another empty track, arm it, and press Play. I can listen to what the other track(s) is/are doing while recording another. Very cool stuff. And when the whole thing is done, I just put the recording in Dropbox directly from Auria and retrieve it from Dropbox on my PC.
The whole kit and caboodle can be packed away and taken to our practice space, or someone’s living room or a school or whatever. And this opens up some cool ways of exploring. I can lay down a couple guitar parts and my vocals, and then email just that to the band asking them to come up with some ideas for their parts. Then a couple weeks later, we can get together individually. If we want, we can record as many takes/versions as they like to use as reminders or jumping-off points or whatever.
I can see it as a nice way to foster multipart harmonies, lead guitar riffs, bass riffs, drum rhythms. Very cool.
And then of course there’s the possibility of recording a complete album. It’s got the specs. The feel of the album would be different from the first one we made, and I’m going to have to weigh that, but with the right room acoustics and enough time it’s possible to record whole polished songs.
Anyway… cool toy.
Here's an example (sorry about my vocals):