MadPad: Delight

Some apps are attempts to emulate PC programs and concepts. Some apps are sad, some apps are exciting... MadPad is absolutely delightful.

For those who don't know me, I am unrepentantly a former high school music teacher. As I walk around and work each day I am always very conscious of the sounds that surround me. I often whistle, hum or tap to the beat of my footsteps or the pulse of the photocopy machine. I'll stop whatever I am doing if an accidental movement produces a resonant or interesting sound. I dream of going around the school recording the bell chimes of long veranda railings and down pipes.

And now... MadPad makes this a right and proper thing to do, not an embarrassing oddity, gives me the tools to do it with, and makes me part of a global social network of ambient sound recordists! As I said, what a delight!

This is a beautifully crafted app. One is presented with a matrix of twelve rectangles. Each contains a "record" button. You set up a simple "noise trigger" and you trigger the recording with a sound. The goal is to capture twelve small videos to a set, each with its own sound. The total video length is only a second or two.

When you have your grid full of sounds, you can tap any sound and it will play. Tap again at any time and it will play (even if the video has not finished). Tap two sounds at the same time. Tap a little rhythm, and you start to understand what you have in your hand. There are thus two distinct stages: putting together a set of sounds, then deciding how to play them to create a tune or soundscape.

There are some simple tools available for editing your sound/video samples. Each can have the volume adjusted, or can be played faster or slower (thus changing the pitch). I missed not being able to trim the clip to ensure that a sound component I wanted started right at the beginning. Sound sets are saved to the iPad, and can be shared via Facebook, Twitter or email.

Performance can be live, but you can also record a performance and either save this to the iPad Photo drive, or share to YouTube. For a more complex live performance you can set up a loop and play over this, or record a performance then play it back and play over this.

I showed one current music teacher at school and her response was immediate... "oh, I'd love that for my Year Eights". It was great fun making my first "sounds of the OLRC" set and I had positive reactions from both colleagues and some young students standing nearby.

Of course if your goal is melody making you can record notes from voice or a keyboard, or edit pitched recordings to tune them to specific notes you want in your set. This would work well in a school iPad set context with one proviso. We currently have our iPad cameras turned off to get past issues of distraction and students leaving self portraits as wallpaper. This app would certainly justify the time required to flick a set back on for a music class.

Because it is so easy to share, the thought of an entire room of amplified iPads all playing along together to create a giant soundscape sends chills up my spine. Anyone for "cereal swampcalls"?

Andrew Lack