Chapter 11
Playing with Music on iPad
Get ready to . . .
You’ve probably heard of the iPod — a small, portable, music-playing device from Apple that’s seemingly glued into the ears of many kids and teens. iPad includes an iPod-like app called Music that allows you to take advantage of its amazing little sound system to play your own style of music or podcasts and audiobooks. In this chapter, you get acquainted with the Music app and its features that allow you to sort and find music and control playback. You also get an overview of the Ping feature of iTunes, to share your musical preferences with others; Airplay features, to access and play your music over a home network; and GarageBand, an app that lets you be the musician, composer, or arranger.
View the Library Contents
1. Tap the Music app icon, located in the Dock on the Home screen. The Music library appears (the Albums view is shown Figure 11-1).
Figure 11-1
2. Tap the Playlists, Songs, Artists, or Albums buttons at the bottom of the library to view your music according to these criteria (refer to Figure 11-1).
3. Tap the More button (see Figure 11-2) to view music by genre or composer, or to view any audiobooks you’ve acquired.
Figure 11-2
iTunes has several free items you can download and use to play around with the features in Music, including music and podcasts. You can also sync content stored on your computer or other Apple devices to your iPad, including iTunes Smart Playlists, and play it using the Music app. (See Chapter 3 for more about syncing and Chapter 8 for more about getting content from iTunes.)
You can tap the Store button to go to the iTunes Store to buy additional music. See Chapter 8 for more about shopping using iTunes.
Apple offers a service called iTunes Match (www.apple.com/icloud/features/). You pay $24.99 per year for the capability to match the music you’ve bought from other providers (and stored on your computer) to what’s in the iTunes library. If there’s a match (and there usually is), that content is added to your iTunes library. Then, using iCloud, you can sync the content among all your Apple devices.
Create Playlists
1. You can create your own playlists to put tracks from various sources into collections of your choosing. Tap the Playlists button in the bottom of the iPad screen.
2. Tap New. In the dialog box that appears, enter a name for the playlist and tap Save.
3. In the list of selections that appears (see Figure 11-3), tap the plus sign next to each item you want to include.
Figure 11-3
4. Tap the Done button, and then tap Done again on the list of songs that appears.
5. Tap the Playlists button and your playlist appears in the list, and you can now play it by tapping the list name and then the Play button.
To delete a song from the playlist, swipe left to right across the name of the song you want to delete and then tap the Delete button.
Search for Audio
1. You can search for an item in your Music library by using the Search feature. With Music open, tap in the Search field in the lower-right corner (see Figure 11-4) to open the onscreen keyboard.
Figure 11-4
2. Enter a search term in the Search field. Results are displayed, narrowing as you type, as shown in Figure 11-5.
3. Tap an item to play it.
You can enter an artist’s name, an author’s or a composer’s name, or a word from the item’s title in the Search field to find what you’re looking for.
Figure 11-5
Play Music and Other Audio
1. Locate the song or audiobook you want to play using the methods described in previous tasks in this chapter.
2. Tap the item you want to play. Note that if you’re displaying the Songs tab, you don’t have to tap an album to open a song; you need only tap on a song to play it. If you’re using any other tab, you have to tap items such as albums (or multiple songs from one artist) to find the song you want to hear. When you find it, you tap it.
3. Tap the item you want to play from the list that appears (see Figure 11-6); it begins to play.
4. Use the Previous and Next buttons at the top of the screen shown in Figure 11-7 to navigate the audio file that’s playing. The Previous button takes you back to the beginning of the item that’s playing; the Next button takes you to the next item.
Figure 11-6
5. Tap the Pause button to pause playback.
6. Tap and drag the line that indicates the current playback location on the Progress bar to the left or right to “scrub” to another location in the song.
7. If you don’t like what’s playing, here’s how to make another selection: Tap the Back to Library arrow in the bottom-left corner to return to Library view or tap the Album List button in the bottom-right corner to show other selections in the album that’s playing.
If you play a song on an album, the album cover displays full-screen. To close the album cover and return to your Music library, place two fingers on the screen and pinch them inward.
You can use the Genius Playlist feature in Music (enable Genius in Settings and then tap the white atom symbol on the right of the playback progress bar in Figure 11-7) to get lists of recommended content in your iPad library. Based on items you’ve purchased, iTunes suggests other purchases that would go well with your collection. Okay, it’s a way to get you to buy more music, but if you’re building your music collection, it might be worth a try! Visit the iTunes site at www.apple.com/itunes for more information.
Figure 11-7
Shuffle Music
1. If you want to play a random selection of the music you’ve purchased or synced to your iPad, you can use the Shuffle feature. With Music open, tap either the Music, Playlist, or Purchased button in the Source List and then tap the Songs button at the bottom of the screen.
2. Tap the Shuffle button (see Figure 11-8). Your content plays in random order.
Figure 11-8
Adjust the Volume
1. Music offers its own volume control that you can adjust during playback. With Music open, tap on a piece of music or an audiobook to play it.
2. In the controls that appear onscreen (see Figure 11-9), press and drag the button on the Volume slider to the right for more volume or to the left for less volume.
Figure 11-9
If the volume is set high and you’re still having trouble hearing, consider getting a headset. It cuts out extraneous noises and may improve the sound quality of what you’re listening to, as well as adding stereo to iPad’s mono speaker. Preferably you should use a 3.5mm stereo headphone; insert it in the headphone jack at the top of your iPad.
Understand Ping
Ping is a social network for music lovers. If you think of Facebook or other social networking sites and imagine that they’re focused around musical tastes, you have a good image of what Ping is all about.
After you join Ping, you can share the music you like with friends, take a look at the music your friends are purchasing, and follow certain artists (see Figure 11-10). You can also access short previews of the sounds your friends like.
Figure 11-10
If this sounds like something your grandchildren would do, you might be right. But if you have a few musical friends with whom you want to connect, Ping can be great fun.
To use Ping, you need to activate it using iTunes on a PC or Mac by clicking the Ping link in the Source List and clicking the Turn On Ping button. You’re then asked to fill in profile information, such as your name, gender, town, and musical preferences (see Figure 11-11). After you save this information, you have a Ping home page and can start inviting friends to share musical inspirations with you.
Figure 11-11
One cool feature of Ping is that, on your Ping page, a list of concerts near you is displayed. Even in my small town, Ping alerted me to some interesting events to check out.
Use AirPlay
The AirPlay streaming technology is built into the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Streaming technology allows you to send media files from one device to be played on another. You can send (say) a movie you’ve purchased on your iPad or a slide show of your photos to be played on your TV — and control the TV playback from your iPad. You can also send music to be played over speakers.
You can take advantage of AirPlay in a few ways: Purchase Apple TV and stream video, photos, and music to the TV or purchase Airport Express and attach it to your speakers to play music. Finally, if you buy Airport-enabled wireless speakers, you can stream audio directly to them. Because this combination of equipment varies, my advice — if you’re interested in using AirPlay — is to visit your nearest Apple Store and find out which hardware combination will work best for you.
If you get a bit antsy watching a long movie, one of the beauties of AirPlay is that you can still use your iPad to check e-mail, browse photos or the Internet, or check your calendar while the media file is playing.
Play around with GarageBand
1. GarageBand is a music-playing app that has been preinstalled on Mac computers for a while now, and now it’s available for the iPad. You have to buy the app for about $5 from the App Store. After you purchase it, tap the GarageBand app on the Home screen where it appears. A list of virtual instruments appears, as shown in Figure 11-12. Swipe left or right to scroll through them.
Figure 11-12
2. Tap an instrument name, such as Keyboard, to display it (see Figure 11-13). Each instrument has slightly different options, but all allow you to record what you play on the virtual instrument; you can also play it back, visit any songs you’ve saved, control volume, and return to the main menu of instruments. Tapping the Instruments button allows you to change to a different instrument.
3. Tap the Instrument Settings button to control settings such as echo and reverb (see Figure 11-14), or tap the Song Settings button to add sounds or adjust the tempo (see Figure 11-15).
Figure 11-13
4. With the instrument displayed, tap it (whether it’s a drum or keyboard) to produce sounds. If you want to record what you’re playing, tap the Record button (refer to Figure 11-15), start playing and tap it again when you’re done.
5. Play back what you’ve recorded by tapping My Songs, tapping an item, and then tapping the Play button (refer to Figure 11-15).
I don’t have enough room here for an exhaustive tutorial on using all GarageBand instruments, but feel free to play with this fun app. You can’t break anything!
Figure 11-14
Figure 11-15