Balihoo Creative Blog

Expert Knob Twiddlers rejoice! No longer must you drop two grand on a Lemur; the Apple iPad has come to save us…

The steps aren’t enough, feel the music.

—Patrick Swayze, Dirty Dancing (1987)

The step sequencers, in my iPhone, aren’t enough Johnny… I need more! I want to feel the music.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the apps I already touch like technoBox and BeatMaker. They are truly amazing. I just want them bigger. Like about the size of the iPad. That $500 touch surface is screaming for sliders and knobs to be flicked and twiddled.

From the perspective a performance tool, the Jazz Mutant has to be worried. It won’t take long before you see the iPad on stage with the Glitch Mob. A pro quality perforce tool for less than the price of a laptop. And you will see silver spoon 12 year olds with two of these DJing their tweenie bops before their even in the hands of real musicians. The live performance market is salivating over this device.

For the more ambiguous bedroom artists, the iPad will bring them to the coffee shop… or at least the Neurolux. Too poor for an iPhone data plan but willing to sacrifice enough PBR for a chance to play back-up for Bjork. Hours of sitting in the dark face lit by the ambience of a 9.7″ LED leading to the worlds strangest sound never to be heard by any ears other than those wearing the signature white headphones.

Still not convinced there’s a market for these touchy feelie computer thingies? The University of Michigan is teaching a class on how to use the iPhone as a musical instrument. It’s time you start seeing the markets that already exist under your nose and those about to spring up in developers heads. Task based computing is here to stay… everyone is just waiting for their app to be written.

Why not write one for your own workflow be it Music Production, Graphic Design, or Process Management? Speaking of… that sounds like another interesting post. Visual workflows managed by touch… What do you think?