Recording - December 2011 - 58

A selection of fun and useful holiday iOS toys
Here’s a quick look at some nifty iOS products that could brighten your holidays, or those of the musician in your life (who just happened to leave this magazine laying around open to this page). And they don’t have to be expensive, either—apps can be really affordable or even free and still provide cool utility! While there isn’t enough room to squeeze in all of the cool iOS apps and accessories we’ve tried in the past year, and more are coming out every day, we hope you’ll enjoy this selection. Unless stated otherwise, all apps and devices mentioned here work for the iPhone and iPad, but you’ll want to check the products’ websites or App Store pages for specific issues (e.g. some apps won’t work with older-generation iPhones). Onward!—MM

2011 Holiday Treats
Reviews by Mike Metlay

Frontier Design Group iShred and iShred LIVE
$4.99 and free (additional effects 99c each); www.fdgm.us We’ve known of Frontier Design Group’s hardware interfaces and controllers for years; the company’s recent move into iOS apps has already resulted in half a dozen newcomer-friendly music and video apps on the market. In another article, we’ll take a look at Frontier Design’s family of music creation tools (GuitarStudio, PianoStudio, and BeatStudio), but for this issue’s Gift Guide we’re focusing on iShred and its free cousin iShred LIVE. Both run on all iOS devices; iShred is especially iPhone/iPod touch-friendly, and iShred LIVE can be used on the smaller boxes although its user interface benefits from the larger iPad screen. Despite the similar names, these are two very different programs. iShred is essentially a virtual guitar and effects chain that can play chord progressions on demand, while iShred LIVE expands on a small part of iShred’s feature set and turns it into a powerful effects processor for live performance with a real guitar. iShred offers a playing surface with six strummable strings and ten buttons that can be preloaded with chords—dozens of them in all keys. You can create songs by putting chords into the buttons, and then play songs by strumming the strings while selecting chords at the appropriate time, somewhat like playing an autoharp. You supply the strumming rhythm, iShred does the chord fingerings for you. You can also fret the guitar neck at a particular fret and then pick individual notes if you wish. Once you’ve created chord progressions, you can record yourself playing them, play them back, set up playlists, and play over prerecorded audio backing tracks that you’ve imported, all within iShred. If you’re not a guitarist... or if you are a guitarist and want a portable way to develop and audition chord progressions for songwriting... iShred gives you what you need and then some. One part of iShred that I didn’t mention was its built-in effects; you can alter your virtual guitar’s tone with pickup selection, a choice of eight stompboxes (up to four active at a time, in drag-and-drop order), and a simple amp simulator. These effects are flexible and sound really good... so good, in fact, that they were spun off into an entirely separate free app called iShred LIVE, which is simply an effects chain for live guitar playing. As I mentioned before, the larger screen of the iPad helps you use iShred LIVE effectively, because the virtual stompbox chain expands to 12 pedals (again, four active at a time). iShred comes with the Q-36 modulator, Sybil dual chorus, HK-2000 delay, Trembler tremolo, Adrenaline treble booster, Wahsabi tilt-controlled wah, Hot Fuzz
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distortion, and the Kömpressör, which is, well, duh. All of these except the Wahsabi can be added to iShred LIVE, which comes free with Q-36 and HK-2000 plus the Buzz Kill noise gate/filter. You can purchase other effects at 99 cents a pop, all the ones we mentioned above plus the AutoWah, Phaser, Octavinator suboctave pedal, and Screamer distortion. The effects are easy to learn to use and many of them sound great; my favorites are the free Q-36 and HK-2000, with the Adrenaline and Trembler close behind. I found the Hot Fuzz a much more musical distortion effect than the Screamer, and the Octavinator glitched a lot in response to my playing technique—it likes clean solo playing on lower strings, according to Frontier Design. But your mileage may vary, and for 99 cents each it’s not a huge gamble to try any and all of these effects for yourself. Whether used alone or combined with the StompBox (see below) for realtime control, iShred LIVE is a very effective portable effects chain for your guitar, and iShred is a fun and easy-to-learn way to play guitar charts from your iPhone. Both highly recommended.

http://www.fdgm.us

Recording - December 2011

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