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Music

iPad DJ Rana June Sobhany Names Her Top 5 Music Apps

The world’s first iPad DJ shares some trade secrets with us.

Rana Sobhany (aka @RanaJune) is the world's first iPad DJ…well, sort of. She’s not only DJing, but producing, recording and mixing entirely on mobile platforms. Sobhany became something of an internet sensation back in April after social media powerhouse Robert Scoble recorded an early video of her DJing for his podcast (above), which spread like wildfire throughout the blogosphere. “I think there was a hunger for this sort of thing,” says Sobhany. “People were speculating about the iPad’s effects on the music industry and this was kind of like a proof of concept.”

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Sobhany, who has never pursued music professionally, has been playing and producing music since she was six years old. After a successful business career—working at a venture capitalist firm, and most recently, at a mobile analytics company specializing in the iPhone platform—Sobhany took some time off to write her first book, called Mobilize, and take on more creative pursuits.

It was at 2 a.m. while waiting in line for her iPad that she was struck by a stroke of genius: she could combine her loves for music, technology, and mobile by using the iPad as a tool for music production and live performance. After her early experiments with the first clumsy iPad music apps proved fruitful, Sobhany started to develop a name for herself as an iPad DJ. But, make no mistake about it, the moniker is not a gimmick. For Sobhany, the iPad offers an opportunity to show the world what the capabilities of mobile technology really are, and in her eyes, the tool signifies a paradigm shift for music production.

Let's start with the basics. Did you have experience DJing previously?
I had actually never DJ'd traditionally, and even now, I'm not necessarily DJing. Really what I'm doing is music production. People call what I do iPad DJing because it's probably easier to describe to a non-music audience, but the proper terminology for what I do would probably be something like "mobile music production."

You're actually producing tracks in real time?
Yes. Exactly! So, what I'll do is pick a drum beat that I like and a synth line that I like, and actually I was using some products that let me play synths, like iPhone apps that trigger hardware components, things like that. So, really, my whole premise is, I don't think that you need a computer to write music. I think all of these mobile technologies are getting so advanced that they're becoming the basis for what you can use to write, record and perform. And that's really where the newness of the idea comes from.

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So you don't need a recording studio anymore, you just need your iPad?
Sure! But that being said, I don't want that to get misinterpreted as there's no room for computers. I'm not talking about high-end production, I'm just talking about somebody who's always been interested in music, maybe they've played a little bit of music but most likely they haven't, if they want to get started, there isn't going to be a $5,000 cost barrier to get the equipment. You can do a lot just using these platforms. So that's really what interests me—helping the mainstream audience understand just how far they can push themselves with these kinds of tools.

How do you think the increased accessibility of these tools is going to affect the music industry?
I think there are three ramifications to this. The first is creative—as a producer, I've got my tools on two iPads. When I write a song, I've got the same tools whether I'm in my recording studio, on an airplane, in a submarine, or in outer space. It doesn't matter—the tools come with me. That's something that we've never really seen in music, that's a game changer.

The second thing is from a business standpoint. I think that, just like Garage Band really reduced the barrier to entry for a lot of producers and musicians and was many people's first experience with music production, the iPad is going to do that again, but on a much broader scale. People can teach themselves basic chords and music structures using an iPad and then graduate to higher-end gear, and that's amazing. This kind of access to technology has never existed in time before now, and I think there's going to be a lot of ramifications from that.

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The third aspect is the performance aspect. When a DJ is using a computer, it's very limited engagement. You see someone clicking a mouse or maybe turning a knob or something, it's never anything too engaging, but with the iPad I really feel like I'm playing an instrument. People see me moving my hand and then they hear something in the music and they immediately know that I affected the change.

Who are some other musicians utilizing the iPad in interesting ways?
So there's a guy named Richie Hawtin who's an amazing DJ from the UK and he uses an iPad during his sets and it's just really brilliant how he's incorporated it. He designed his own interface for the iPad called Griid, which I think is just so incredible. I like that he’s taking things to the next level and designing his own stuff. The other guy who I am such a big fan of is a VJ named Mike Relm and he does absolutely brilliant things using this thing called Touch OSC, it's a protocol to shoot messages from an iPad to a computer using Bluetooth. So he can do things like scratch video by touching his iPad. He'll even take it out into the audience and they'll be affecting the video that they're watching. Things like that are so inspiring to me.

Rana’s Top 5 iPad Music Applications

AKAI SynthStation – This is far and away the best music app in the App Store if you’re looking for production tools. AKAI is known for creating very high end tools in the production world and you get all of their years of experience in making drum machines and midi controllers in one app. Plus, SynthStation has some of the best built in sounds of any app out there, and they’re even customizable. I use this app during every show.

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Looptastic HD – Looptastic is my workhorse. I’ve based my live set around using this app and have spent about 100 hours importing sounds and songs into it to make it do what I want. As a framework, this is similar to tools like Acid that DJs and producers are already familiar with, but on the iPad, this complicated idea becomes simple for anyone to understand. All you do is open the app and drag loops on the screen and you’re creating music. It’s a very encouraging app for first time DJs.

IK Multimedia iRig – When I heard about iRig, I was blown away by it’s capabilities. AmpliTube, which this is based on, is one of the most amazing guitar modelers on the market, and now you can get those tools plus a hardware unit that can give you the opportunity to have a rich-sounding guitar component to your music, and I’ve started incorporating this app into my live performances.

Pianist Pro – This is a highly versatile application for creating melodic elements. If you play around with it a little bit, you can get pretty fast at manipulating this app to do what you want. There are some great piano and synth sounds here. There’s a drum machine, too, but I much prefer the AKAI SynthStation’s drum sounds, so I don’t use it much. But this is my favorite of all the piano apps on the App Store.

Korg iElectribe – This was the first app I tried that felt like a serious music app. The hardware version of this costs hundreds of dollars, but you can access the same sound library in a $9.99 app. These sounds and drum patterns are the cornerstone of dance and electronic music, so it’s amazing to have these tools at your fingertips.

Want to see what else Rana can do using mobile technology? Here’s a music video she shot using her iPhone 4 for her track “Solace” composed entirely on her iPad.