Using an iPad to create music is pretty common these days, but during a festival over Labor Day weekend in September, jamband moe. played one of its songs live on stage using only iPads.
The band recently posted a video on YouTube compiled from various soundcheck takes and the live performance, with audio coming from a recording of the live show.
At the 12th annual moe.down festival, at Gelston Castle Estate in Mohawk, NY, the band performed its song “Crab Eyes” using five iPads, four of which were running standard instruments in the GarageBand iOS app to play the guitar, bass, and drums parts, according to moe. guitarist Al Schnier. Percussionist Jim Loughin used a $2 app called Mallets to perform the song’s vibraphone parts.
“We simply used our headphone out jacks to direct inputs [to convert line level signals to mic level], which ran to our Digidesign consoles,” Schnier said in an email to Macworld. “We performed the song live and what you hear is a live matrix mix (stereo audience mix blended with a stereo soundboard mix). There are no overdubs, and this is one take, live.”
He explained that the video was shot over several takes to enable the camera crew to get a few different shots and reposition the GoPro wearable cameras during different soundcheck run-throughs.
Coming to terms with the virtual instruments and relearning the parts, “took a bit of rehearsal and some trial and error, but it actually came together pretty quickly and sounded pretty good at the end of the day,” said Schnier. “It still blows my mind that we can do something like this.”
The video, which features some extreme close-up of the band members and their iPads, was posted on October 13 and dedicated in memory of Steve Jobs, who died on October 5 at the age of 56. You can watch it below.