The tune it contains is loosely based on the introduction to “Worried Life Blues” from Eric Clapton’s 24 Nights album as well as some improvisation (and mistakes).

A friend of mine recommended the iRig to me recently – a discrete and portable connector which allows you to hook up a guitar, bass guitar or other musical instrument with pickups to your iPad. I got one from Amazon for a modest £26.

iRig

The iRig arrived in the post today and it has consumed most of my evening. Once I got it connected to my iPad and my guitar, I started playing around with Amplitube free for iPad. This app supports the iRig nicely and has a range of amps available it’s free. However, as with many free apps, there are features that don’t work unless you unlock them, for a fee. Amplitube has a range of effects pedals which fall into this category, so I didn’t bother trying any of them out as I remembered just in time that I have already paid for Garageband.

Garageband turned out to offer a much wider range of guitar amps and effects as well as multitrack recording. After half an hour or so of experimenting with various amps, effects and tweaking the tone controls, I decided to record something. Something bluesy.

I settled on the “sparkling clean” amp as it’s quite versatile: with a low gain it gives a lovely bright clean tone and when you crank it up a notch, it breaks in a nice bluesy crunch.

I laid down three tracks. One for the introduction in a modest crunch, a few chords in a clean tone to provide rhythm backing for a third solo track, which had the gain turned right up and a fair bit more reverb.

I had always been slightly sceptical of the idea of mixing relatively traditional musical instruments and very new technology. I learned to play the guitar as a teenager and I’ve still got most of the same kit now that I had then: I’m comfortable with it, I know how to use it and how to make it sound like I want it to. However, since I’m not playing nearly as much as I used to, I need something to get me excited about making music again and to encourage me to play some more. This seems to have hit the spot. As I’m quite lazy, I need as many reasons as I can find!

I’m going to try to record a few more pieces like this one, mostly just to make sure that I’m playing new stuff and not just sticking with tunes that I already know. Watch this space. I’d love to know what you think so please get in touch and let me know.