Like many musicians, I’m used to carrying music stands, music, music stand lights, and clips for the music (to use if playing outside when its windy). For quite some time I have been wondering when technology would improve and be affordable for musicians and music students. I’m from Austin Texas and for the past several months I have been seeing more and more musicians showing up to gigs with an iPad. They usually clip the iPad on a vocal microphone stand. After speaking with several musicians with iPads, I decided to take the plunge and purchase an iPad myself.
I purchased a new iIPad with Retina display and 16GB of storage space ( wireless only ). I also purchased a high quality microphone stand. I purchased an iKlip to attach the iPad to my microphone stand.
I use the following music ( or music related ) applications on the iPad:
1. iReal b
2. OnSong
3. kindle
The kindle application is not a music application but it is very useful to use with music. One of my most favorite music education websites related to jazz improvisation and saxophone is Neff Music. I have purchased all of Steve Neff’s pdf format books and I upload them to my kindle application on my iPad using the “Send to kindle” application.
I work through the Steve Neff books on my iPad and it works well. I have no problem reading the music on the display. Here is a picture of my iPad on a mic stand.
After using the iPad on gigs for the past couple of months I am convinced that it was a good investment.