Next up in our brief look at iPad announcements from this year's Winter NAMM, are a couple of announcements from Alesis.

DM Dock and Dock Pro Kit

We have seen a few innovations in the field of iPad use for drummers, but Alesis have made a serious attempt to capture the attention of drummers who want to have the iPad at the heart of their sound.

Featuring a healthy 13 x 1/4 inch trigger inputs, the DM (Drum Module) Dock is like a souped-up iO Dock for standalone use with your existing electronic pads/kits or frame mounted as an integrated part of the Dock Pro Kit.

There are also the usual MIDI connections and a footswitch port so you can change kits on-the-fly using compatible apps.  These apps also allow a quick change of sound sets using drag and drop so the possibilities are pretty much endless given the amount of downloadable sound sets that are out there.

More details are available on the DM Dock product page and the official Press Release. 

iO Mix

We originally saw the iO Mix being demonstrated at MusikMesse last year but it has featured again at NAMM and because it reminds us so much of our original Fostex tape based 4-track recorder we wanted to give it a mention.

Touted as the world's first iPad dedicated multi-channel mixer/recording interface, the iO Mix enables input of mics, instruments and other audio via 4 x combo XLR/standard 1/4" jacks.  As you would hope, each channel has individual trim, gain and pan controls (just like your old 4-track) and even some EQ control. 

Importantly for us it also features a guitar DI input so that you don't need a seperate amp, useful for on-the-go mobile recording.

Like the DM Dock above, the iO Mix will charge your iPad when docked and fully encloses it inside the unit so it is nice and snug, but also up to a little knocking about in the (bedroom) studio.

We found a quick demo of the iO Mix at NAMM 2013 on YouTube, from Netherlands based audio suppliers Bax, so thanks to them for sharing this video, check it out below. 

As before, if you have any comments or want to let us know what you are looking forward to seeing, we would love to see them below.

If you create music on or via your iPad, you need to know about some of the very cool stuff announced at the Winter NAMM Show that has taken place over the last few days in California.

There is a lot to get excited about as always, so in the next few posts we are going to highlight some of the shiny new tech announced for your iPad.

iRig BlueBoard

IK Multimedia had several new products to announce at NAMM this year, but this is the one that got us the most excited.  

As anyone who has tried it knows, switching settings or presets in the middle of a song using any of the iPad guitar FX sims is pretty tricky and worst of all, it means taking your hands off the guitar which usually requires adapting the way you play the song to allow time for poking at the touch screen.

Foot controllers are the natural solution to this problem and this is not the first Bluetooth foot controller for iOS we have seen, but it might be the nicest looking.

The BlueBoard ($99.99 / €79.99) is a wireless MIDI controller (so it should work with most MIDI apps you have on your iPad.  It is advertised as working up to about 30ft away from your main iPad rig, so you could set it up on the other side of the stage for those spotlight solos whilst retaining some control over your virtual pedal setup.  It will also work with your iPhone/iPod Touch and your Mac if you have one.

Check out the video below and the web page for more details, suffice to say, we want one very badly!

iRig HD

More than just an update for the much loved (and to be honest still default for us) iRig guitar interface, the iRig HD is another device altogether.  

iRig HD a 24-bit A/D convertor, with thumbwheel adjustable pre-amp on the device and digital noise reduction plus many other features, but what really stood out for us is that this device can be used with your Mac too via an interchangeable cable that features USB, 30-pin and Lightning dock connectors.

This is for us a brilliant feature that means purchasing less cables or audio devices for musicians who use both iOS and Computer based processing/recording apps.

We have yet to hear what it really sounds like, but we are really keen to find out and we will be looking out for some good samples in the near future.

More details again on the web page and in the video below:

We are always interested to hear what you think and what announced products you are looking forward to seeing (or maybe just adding to your wishlist).  Let us know in the comments below.

IK Multimedia continue to bring great sounding, and fantastic looking, guitar goodness to your iPad with their new AmpliTube Slash for iPad, a special edition of their iOS guitar effects app.

The official trailer below shows what some of the equipment included in this special edition sounds like (we're loving the OctoBlue):

IK Multimedia are rightly proud to note that Slash apparently uses the iRig and the iPad / iPhone Amplitube app on the road to capture ideas and practice his riffs.

Check out this overview with Slash himself demoing the sounds:

What more can you want? At a fairly reasonable £6.99, we're off to the (in)app store now.

Educators are always seeking the 'Holy Grail' of teaching - engaged learners. It's even better when students don't realise they are learning but do so through having fun and being creative. That's where the iPad comes in.

Children especially are naturals at wanting to interact through the touch interface, many computer owning Parents will testify to that after repeatedly cleaning smudgy fingerprints off their screens.

Here are a couple of videos demonstrating how the iPad is being used to engage and teach children through fun and creative learning.

iPad Pilot Project - RCEF

This video from the Redwood City Education Foundation (RCEF) shows how one elementary school is using the iPad to help children get involved and interactive with learning, mainly in Maths and Literacy lessons:

iPad Pilot Project Funded By The Redwood City Education Foundation from RCEF on Vimeo.

Using DoInk to envision the future

This video, one of many from the Clay Animation Network, shows what children from the Lawton Elementary school think the future will be like. Apparently in 50 years time the world will be full of aliens, robots, teleportation and floating people. Sounds about right to us (apart from the aliens probably).

The elementary school students used the brilliant iPad animation app DoInk to create their vision of the future:

At Lawton elementary 66 students are creating animations in groups of 2 and 3 students using the animation program called DOINK.  Each group will create a 10-15 second animation showing a scene that could happen in a school 50 years from now.

There are a lot of ideas in this video, it's quite a long one, but stick with it, we think you'll enjoy the animations:

Share your story

We love hearing about how the iPad is being used in the Education field, so if you have any good examples of creativity in the classroom with any age group, young or old, please let us know about it.

Dip into our iPad Creative Flickr Group on any given day and you will find many examples of paintings, sketches, photographs and even some animations that have been created or edited with an iPad.

The painting below from Dan Hoffman was made with the stunning Procreate app. We loved the colour, light and style of Treasure Trove, it really stood out to us, we hope you like it too. Be sure to check out Dan's other paintings on his Flickr stream.

Read our recent post about today's release of Photosmith 2 and want to grab your own copy for free? Why wouldn't you? Read on...

Comment and win

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning your very own copy of Photosmith 2 (a $19.99 app) is leave us a comment below stating the feature of Photosmith 2 you are most looking forward to using.

That's it!

Here are a few details about our giveaway: 

• To be eligible for this giveaway you must leave a comment below stating the feature you are most looking forward to using in Photosmith 2
• You must enter a valid e-mail address with your comment (it will not be made public). We will e-mail you your unique code if you are a winner
• Your comment should be left before the closing date and time of this giveaway which is Monday 28th May 2012 at 1900 GMT

A big thank you to C² Enterprises, developers of Photosmith 2, for generously providing the 3 promo codes for this giveaway.

More sounds from the cloud (SoundCloud of course) for your delectation, created using an iOS device and/or apps. No real theme this time, just tracks we heard and wanted to share, to get you thinking about having a go yourself.

Be My Queen by Li$H

Robotic vocoder (via VirSyn's iVoxel) mashed with GarageBand strings and some fantastic drum sounds? We love it! Nice one (again) Li$H.

It's Just the Lighting by Simplexity (Derek Mecca and Jeff Pritchett)

[Update: We have amended this bit of the post after Derek contacted us and let us know some more details about the Simplexity project.]

Odd but strangely compelling to listen to, this fairly spartan track was created by Derek Mecca and Jeff Pritchett under their collaborative project 'Simplexity'. They used Korg's iMS-20 and Addictive Synth (another VirSyn app) on a couple of iPads to put this song together. We hope you like it too.

Personality Disorder….System Failure by Michaelw

And finally, an amazing, disturbing and almost operatic piece from the brilliant Michaelw (Michael Wadlow from Wales). We liked this because, although uncomfortable to listen to in places, it is also totally entrancing in others. This track is a bit of a departure from some of Michael's other stuff, he really mixes things up here and makes you marvel.

Made using Animoog, iMS-20 and studio.HD, this track left us speechless and is a great way to round things up for this instalment. Awesome job Michael! 

Show us your stuff

We hope you enjoyed listening to our picks this week, but as always, we want to hear from you too. If you have your own iOS created sounds (preferably with the iPad, but not essential) here's how you can get them to us:

• Join our iPad Creative SoundCloud group then click on the 'Share a Track' button on the group page
• If you're on a computer, click 'Send us your sounds' at top of the sidebar to the right of your screen --->
• Leave us a link to your track on SoundCloud in the comments below

We're looking forward to hearing from you soon. 

Thank your for taking the time to listen to our notable tracks, feel free to leave a comment below and let us know what you think of this week's picks.

Opinions vary on the need for iPad keyboards, but they do seem to be ever popular, although we haven't seen the perfect one yet. Or have we?

Build a Brydge

(Sorry, we couldn't resist that one) Brydge (pictured above) is a new Kickstarter backed keyboard, designed to "transform your iPad into a laptop worthy of Apple".

For a Kickstarter project it has done fantastically well. The team behind the Brydge were after $90,000 funding.

By the end of Tuesday this week, their first day, they had secured pledges of $100,000! At the time of writing, they still have 35 days to go and already have nearly $286,000 in Kickstarter pledges and rising quickly.

Apparently the demand for making your iPad look like a MacBook Air is very high.

To see what all the fuss is about check out the Kickstarter video from the Brydge team:

What we are curious about is if you want something like this for your iPad. What do you think?

TikiBone have been developing 'SketchPad Pro: A Filmmaker's Storyboard for the iPad' for a while now. The app is designed to make the storyboarding workflow more instantly accessible, easier to share and cheaper (especially with regard to materials costs).

SketchPad Pro: A Filmmaker's Storyboard - KickStarter from TikiBone on Vimeo.

The team behind SketchPad Pro, Roger Trier (a storyboard artist) and Scott Ahten (iOS Developer, animator and VJ), have got the app to the point where it is almost ready for release, but to make it a truly awesome app that does all they want it to do for their customers, they need to be able to invest more time and resources into it.

This is where their Kickstarter Project comes in. Roger and Scott want to make the leap, quit their day jobs and go full time on SketchPad Pro (rather than developing it in their spare time as they have so far).

They are after $20,000 funding to bring SketchPad Pro to final production by the end of the Summer. You can get on board with a pledge of just $5, this will help them out of course, but for $25 you can secure a copy of SketchPad Pro for yourself when it is released.

There are various other pledge levels, with some unique rewards, so if you're an Artist, Animator or Filmmaker or just interested in backing the project, check out the Kickstarter Page and let them know we sent you.

alone, the roses, the space from francesco marescotti on Vimeo.

This video was created by Francesco Marescotti from Milan, Italy, who describes himself as an "architect / designer / graphic artist / musician / dreamer" on Twitter.

Francesco contacted us to let us know he created this video entirely on his iPad. We like the way the drawing kicks into a surprising new development about half way through, you'll have to watch the video to find out what we mean.

The image was drawn and recorded in Brushes and Francesco added some visual effects to the video in Nexvio's 8mm HD. The video's soundtrack was made by Francesco in GarageBand and the whole thing was put together using Avid Studio for iPad.

Find out more about Francesco and his creations on his blog, on Twitter or at his company website (Flash site).

We are always happy to see what you are creating with your iPad (even if we don't have space to feature everything we see). You can let us know about your creations by emailing us or getting hold of us via one of the links in the 'Social' panel at the top right of this page.

This is Galileo for iPhone. It is an already funded Kickstarter project, but we think you will love it if you are into iOS photography or video of any kind.

What is it?

"The Galileo is a revolutionary, iOS-controlled robotic iPhone platform with infinite spherical rotation capability. Just swipe your finger on the screen of your iPad or other iOS device and Galileo reacts, orienting your iPhone or iPod Touch accordingly."

Basically, the Galileo is a charging dock/holder for your iPhone that can be rotated to any angle and controlled remotely via your iPad's screen or another iOS touch device.

What can I do with it?

Lots! Check out the video above for some ideas, but it has applications for:

• recording video
• photography, time-lapse (very excited by the answer to this question)
• video conferencing
• baby monitoring
• video surveillance

and many other uses, with the added benefit of controlling your device from anywhere in the world over wi-fi.

There are plenty more examples listed on the Kickstarter page.

The Galileo also features a standard tripod mount, which means it will fit straight into and onto your existing equipment, including tripods and gimbals.

Additionally, with the imminent release of an SDK, Developers can integrate Galileo functionality into their apps, so a whole world of ideas could soon be opened up. We're looking forward to seeing what robot mounted devices start appearing.

How much is it?

Before the project finishes in (at the time of publishing) 16 days time, you can get the Galileo at a very reasonable $85 with free US shipping (but us International customers will need to add another $20 for shipping).

After the project has finished the retail price will be $129.95, so if the Galileo is something you want to have in your iOS life, you would be best advised to jump on it now, plus you'll get yours before it is on general sale.

Where can I get one?

Right now, you will need to set up a free Kickstarter account and become a backer of the project to at least the $85 level pledge to reserve your Galileo. We think it is a great price for a robotic device like this and the potential integration with your iPad as a control device has got us very excited.

Do you fancy getting the Galileo? Have you already ordered yours? Let us know in the comments.

Computer game music can sometimes rival the production values and emotional impact of feature film soundtracks, often being written by professional film score composers, as is the case with BioWare's Mass Effect 3.

Originally composed by Clint Mansell (former member of 'Pop Will Eat Itself' turned film score composer), this brilliantly played iPad arrangement by YouTube user billkramme (creative Bill Kramme) uses the new orchestral/strings Smart Instrument in GarageBand for iOS 1.2 to great effect.

We were impressed at how great this sounded, what do you think?

Agile Partners have updated their sonically amazing guitar amp sim AmpKit with new Retina Graphics and it looks gorgeous.

We think they are (at least one of) the first guitar sim app makers to update their in-app graphics for the new iPad's Retina display.

It isn't anything that really affects the every day use of the app of course, but it is a lot nicer to look at and makes the amp controls especially a whole lot clearer.

Retina Upgrade

As we are interested in how Developers are updating their apps, we took a series of screenshots from AmpKit+ before we upgraded so that you can compare them.

It's hard to see in these scaled down versions but if you look closeley you should see the added clarity and detail on the amp controls and stomp pedal graphics in the gallery below.

New Gear

With the release of AmpKit+ 1.3 Agile Partners have also added 3 new pieces of kit and bass players get a little love. From the Press Release:

Trace Elliot 1215
For the first time, a world class, full-featured bass amp and cabinet for iOS bass players.

Rocktron Metal Planet Distortion
A versatile, true heavy metal distortion pedal - not for the faint of heart

Rocktron HUSH Noise Reduction
If you aren't using HUSH, you aren't using real noise reduction for guitar.

Select the links if you want to find out more and see videos of Rocktron Hush and Rocktron Metal Planet Distortion.

50% off!

In addition to the updates mentioned above, the purchase price for AmpKit+ has been halved to $9.99/£6.99 and the 3 pieces of new gear have between 33% and 40% off for a limited time.

If you haven't pulled the trigger on that AmpKit+ purchase yet, now is the time to do it, it is well worth it for the savings you make over individual gear purchase prices.

App Store Link: AmpKit (Free) / AmpKit+ both Universal apps

Another mixed bag of picks this week for you from iOS using SoundCloud-ers, showing the diversity and creativity that can be found over there.

Don't forget we have a SoundCloud group just for you, so you can share your iOS creations too.

Details of how you can get your tracks to us are below this week's song picks.

'DJBITBURNER vs PEZZERDOTCOM - AHOWOY' by Pezzerdotcom

This is a remix by Pezzerdotcom of DJBitBurner's NanoStudio track "Ah ow oy". The original was great 'Chiptune' fun (we love Chiptune stuff!) but this remix really takes it up a level and punches very hard. Great stuff!

'Solitaire' by peanut_gallery

A change of pace now, with this GarageBand-made track from peanut_gallery (a.k.a. Ian Hisert from Oakland, US). He has tagged this track with the 'Soundtrack' category and we can definitely imagine this instrumental piece being used as a soundtrack. Good use of the instruments in GarageBand for iOS, especially as it is his first track entirely produced using Apple's app.

'That Vintage Engine' by Ashley Elsdon 

Here's a little treat for you from Ashley Elsdon, who many of you will know as creator and author of the sadly mothballed Palm Sounds website (we still miss Palm Sounds, Ashley).

Ashley used samples he recorded from cars at the London to Brighton Vintage Car Run last year as the basis for this track, created in the super versatile Beatmaker II app. It's a clever use of samples and has a great energy. Enjoy!

Your turn

We hope you enjoyed listening to our picks this week, but as always, we want to hear from you too. If you have your own iOS created sounds (preferably with the iPad, but not essential) here's how you can get them to us:

• Join our iPad Creative SoundCloud group then click on the 'Share a Track' button on the group page
• If you're on a computer, click 'Send us your sounds' at top of the sidebar --->
• Leave us a link to your track on SoundCloud in the comments below

We're looking forward to hearing you soon.

There are just under 4 weeks left to catch the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. This one is special for us because it prominently features Hockney's iPad art amongst the works displayed.

We haven't been able to make it up to London to see it, but if you are anywhere near the Royal Academy in the next few weeks we would recommend you make time to visit David Hockney's exhibition and if you have visited already, please leave us a comment and tell us what you thought of it.

As much as we wanted to use it, we haven't bothered with Apple's iOS5 Photo Stream feature so far because we simply didn't want every app screenshot we take, or fuzzy shot of our foot, ending up on all our devices.

Now that Apple have released iOS 5.1 we can finally select an individual photo and delete it from the Photo Stream for our account. For us, this makes Photo Stream worth switching on at last.

Why is this a big thing for iPad Creative? The imminent release of the New iPad and its 5MP camera, of course! Not to mention the even more fantastic photo viewing experience we expect from iPad 3's sharper and more saturated 'Retina Display'.

Finally we can look forward to having a camera in the iPad that we are not embarrassed to share the results from, or that we do not have to dress up with numerous filter apps to make useable (although we will still be doing that, especially with the release of iPhoto for iOS - but more on that soon).

What do you think?

We would like to hear from you, are you already using Photo Stream? Has the new update prompted you to turn it on now? Or is it something you just find no use for? Let us know in the comments.

Here's this week's hand picked tracks from that creative bunch over at SoundCloud. After last week's fairly chilled picks we thought a slightly more uptempo selection would be in order, so here we go:

'Electric Box' by Future Grey

Crafted by San Francisco based Future Grey, we agree with what some of the commenters have said, this has a Bowie feel about it at times which is, of course, no bad thing at all.

We like this track a lot and we are sorry we haven't featured Future Grey's music before now as he has been a part of our SoundCloud group since we started it a few months ago.

'interrupción-de-cuenta-a-cero' by heidellberg

Built on a chunky guitar riff foundation, this track by Heidelberg from Argentina picks up nicely about half way through when the fittingly distorted and spacey vocals kick in. Great Indie stuff.

'Time Lord Bangin'' by GMAN GROOVES

We just enjoyed listening to this track so much that we had to share it with you. These nasty sounding beats were made with Korg's iELECTRIBE (Gorillaz edition) by GMAN GROOVES from Mexico and we like it a lot. 

Over to you 

We always want to hear your iOS created sounds, so here's how you can get them to us:

• Join our iPad Creative SoundCloud group then click on the 'Share a Track' button on the group page  
• If you're on a computer, click 'Send us your sounds' at top of the sidebar ---> 
• Leave us a link to your track on SoundCloud in the comments below

We're looking forward to hearing you soon.

Create one piece of original art (mostly on an iPad) and upload it to Twitter each and every day.

That's the challenge that freelance illustrator and designer Chris Bigelow set himself. His (mostly) colourful, vibrant art has an energetic, sometimes frenetic, style we really like, see the video above for some examples.

We only wish we had known about this project sooner. Check out his site for more recent samples of Chris' work.

Taking suggestions and input from his followers, Chris (a.k.a. ArtanonDesign on Twitter) has been doing this for just over a year now and as he moves into another year he wants to expand the project, widen the audience, get other artists involved and build a community around the project.

Back the Project

To do this, Chris has started a Kickstarter project to raise promotional funds and to build a website (currently limited to a holding page) around the art project. He is looking for just $1000.

To help Chris out you can pledge various amounts, starting from just $1. $5, for example, will get your name (or screen name) incorporated into one of the daily images, $10 for your suggestion or theme to be incorporated into one of the project images.

The top funding level of $1000 will secure your spot as a sponsor for a month of the project, a signed one-off print of your choosing and knowledge that you are the most generous 'supporter of the arts' (our words not Chris').

Get on over to Kickstarter and show your support for Chris and his Twitter Art Project if you can. He has just 19 days left to make his target and he is a fifth of the way there so far, so he needs your help.

We look forward to seeing more of Chris' artwork and we'll be following his twitter stream from now on to see his daily postings.

We tweeted about this a few days ago, but in case you haven't seen it yet we just wanted to let you know that Dubspot have posted the second of Matt Cellitti's brilliant three part tutorial on sound design with the Animoog iPad app.

It's worth watching this video on your iPhone/Computer/other device so that you can follow along with Animoog on your iPad. We did this and it really helped.

Don't forget to check out the Dubspot website where you can find out more about their New York based on-site training and their newer online courses. 

Ever fancied speaking/singing like a Cylon (original series), a Dalek or even Metal Mickey (it was a big 1980’s weekend tea-time show here in the UK)?

Voice Synth by Qneo can help you do just that, but there is so much more to the app than that. We’ve been playing with this universal app on both iPad and iPhone for the last few weeks and we love it.

If you need a fantastic sounding vocoder with a great UI, myriad range of controls and options, or even if you want to sound like some sort of robotic popstar, we recommend you go and get this app right now.

But if you want to know a bit more about Voice Synth check out the video and a few of our notes below it.

Video Demo

Here is a very comprehensive walk through of Voice Synth from Qneo which tells you all you need to know and we promise everything that is shown in this video demo is easily achievable within minutes of opening the app.

Impressive

As you’ll see from the video, the range of controls, filters and effects is mind-blowing, check out the features section of the Voice Synth site for more detail.

The UI is lovely looking and not just eye candy, it is functional and responsive too. We especially liked the EQ with its swipe-to-set action and live meters, as well as the central Pitch/Scale Shift dial (very HAL).

The controls were a joy to use and fit the feel of the app perfectly. All this for just $4.99/£2.99 at the introductory 50% discount.

Incoming update and much needed features

As much as we enjoyed using Voice Synth, our main gripe with the app was not being able to send audio out to GarageBand or other DAW type app on our iPad, with email being the only way to get recorded audio out of the app currently.

With the upcoming 1.1 update though, much needed ACP (Audio, Copy & Paste) support is being added along with MIDI support and uncompressed WAV audio export. This will give Voice Synth some serious potential for use in recording of your vintage 80’s/futuristic tinged iPad productions.

We are sure that Voice Synth will provide hours of fun for anyone though, even if you are just letting the kids play around with their voices. Our iPad Creative kids loved the Sampler feature and also the Live mode where Voice Synth converts your voice instantaneously (best with headphones but also works well through a hi-fi or amp).

We recommend picking up Voice Synth now while it is carries a 50% discount so that you can start delving into its powerful features and you’ll have it ready for the more useful 1.1 version which is imminent.

App Store Link: Voice Synth