I’m a great believer in multimedia as an educational delivery format, so it’s some pleasure to say that Sound On Sound magazine is finally available for iPad, via the Newsstand application.

Earlier this year an iPad joined the ranks of the computer-based devices slowly taking over our home. While I don’t think it’s the quintessential lifestyle device that Apple marketing make it out to be, it is a pretty amazing piece of technology, and quite a lot of fun.

When I first started working in multimedia we dreamt of a device like this for delivering  educational multimedia. The CDX General Service course taught people how to fix cars through instructional theory and tutorial videos, interactive knowledge checks, and workshop task sheets and assessment materials in PDF format. Allowing the student to take this material into the workshop in a portable, easy to use format was something that we knew would eventually be possible, but to have it become a reality no more than a decade later makes it a pretty exciting time to be alive, and bodes well for the future of technology in education.

The SOS team have done a great job of embracing the technology available in this format to enhance the magazine. Rather than just porting the printed version to on-screen text, they’ve added embedded videos and audio files, high resolution “pinch to zoom” images, and interactive information boxes.

If you’ve  got access to an iPad you can check out the January 2012 edition for free, subscribe to the iPad version, or purchase the February and March editions individually, via the App Store.

Cheers,

Malcolm.

My latest Reaper Workshop article has been published in the March 2012 edition of Sound On Sound magazine.

Loop Recorder

Since the advent of digital audio recording, recorders and editors have grown in power and functionality, and yet, with all of this power at our disposal, it seems as hard today as it was 10 years ago to focus our creativity. By providing us with an unlimited number of options, DAWs have made it harder than ever to escape the “just one more edit” syndrome that prevents so many recordings from making it out the door (no pun intended).

Some devices succeed in the market even though they take the opposite approach and purposely limit your ability to record and edit, focusing on fun and creativity instead of complexity. One of these devices is the loop recorder.

Limited to a finite time — and, more often, a set number of bars — loop recorders have taken many forms, from the original concept based on a loop of tape, through to today’s solid-state recorders full of MIDI power and flashing lights, such as the Korg Kaoss Pad or Native Instruments Maschine.

In this article, we’ll take the complex back to basics and show you how to create a loop recorder of your own in Reaper.

Check out the full article at the Sound On Sound website