You see these three dongles right here. These dongles do different things and are used for very specific uses when making music on your iPad or when just using your iPad in general. If you buy the wrong one, you might have just wasted your money or you might be in for some

real frustration. If you are new to music making or making music on an iPad looks appealing to you, this is the place to be. Let's get into it and talk about the essentials and let's start with these dongles, mainly with the most basic one. If any of

you out there have Bluetooth headphones you normally listen on, AirPods or something like that, you cannot use those when you are making music in real time. Sure, they're great for listening, but what ultimately happens is they introduce latency, meaning that if you're trying to place some keys on your

keyboard or actually make music in real time with your iPad, there's going to be a big delay between you pressing a key and the sound coming out, which is going to make it really difficult to make music. So you need to connect your headphones to your iPad, and this dongle

is the most basic way to do that. It's USB-C to a 3.5 mm audio jack. You just connect your headphone cable and you can listen in real time, but that introduces a big problem. iPads these days only have one port. So if you're not using any

other gear to make music, you're just using the iPad itself and listening on your headphones, this dongle will be fine for you. But what happens if you want to connect some other gear like a keyboard or an audio interface? We'll get to those pieces in a moment. Well, you might be

tempted to pick up something like this, this dongle here. Now, this dongle here has an audio jack that you can plug your headphones into and it also has a USB-C port. And you might say, well, that's fantastic, I'll plug this into my iPad, 

plug my headphones in here and then plug in the USB MIDI controller, for instance, and I'll be good to go. No, this is a big problem. Simple dongles like this that have USB ports can be a little deceptive because these USB ports are usually only for power, they are not for data transfer. 

Which you'll need if you're trying to make music. You're going to send data from your keyboard or from an audio interface into the iPad. These ports in this particular dongle, right here, this is only to power the iPad, so that is useful still if you wanted to say, listen, 

with headphones and charge the iPad at the same time. If that's all you want to do, this dongle is good for you. But of course, we have a lot of other gear to connect, so that brings me to the third option here. This is a dongle by J5, 

Create. I just got it on Amazon and it has tons of ports. Actually, it's got a jack for our headphones, it's got USB power in, two USB-A ports, and even HDMI and SD card slots. This dongle can get you far because not only, not only can 

you power the iPad through it, listen with your headphones, but you can also connect other gear like your MIDI controllers or your audio interfaces. And I know we haven't gotten to talking about those yet. You might not know what those are used for, but we're going to 

Get there, something you're going to notice is the big price jump if you notice these little dongles. These can be pretty cheap because they don't do all that much, and then once you get to something that looks like just a simple USB hub, the price jumps quite a bit and

that is because it takes a lot to get all this kind of connectivity into a single USB-C port. And I do have one other option when it comes to connectivity in the iPad, and that is this Anker docking station. Now, this would be an alternative to this hub right here. I think these are

both relatively equal, and let's examine why. First of all, this thing is made out of metal and it also becomes a stand for your iPad at the same time. But this is like a full-on docking station that has two USB ports, the audio jack for your

headphones. You can power the iPad right here with the USB-C port. HDMI out, you got your SD card slots on the side, and also a port here to connect the actual iPad. These two pieces are pretty much identical. It just comes down to if you want a really robust metal docking

station that doubles as a stand. I also like how it folds and becomes really portable, or if you don't mind having a dangling dongle. But the key lesson to take home here is if you are trying to make music on your iPad, you're going to

want to listen with headphones, so you need a headphone jack. You're probably going to want to power your iPad somehow because you're going to drain your battery pretty fast, and you're going to want to connect other gear like MIDI controllers and audio interfaces. Let's

Get into those now and real quick. I will just shout out this cable winder that I'm using helps keep my cables nice and organized. I got this at Muji. I think it's pretty cool. [Music] Okay, let's talk MIDI controllers. This video is brought to you by Cito who

creates these really nice keyboard and pad controllers. They make a bunch of other music gear too and there's a reason that I want to specifically recommend these controllers for use with an iPad. First of all, they're very versatile. It's not like they were made

with one piece of software in mind. They're made to sort of be used with different apps and different software, but for iPad music making, if you remember what we just talked about with like powering your iPad, draining the battery, etc., these controllers actually come with ports to power the controller

so that you don't actually have to drain your iPad's battery or so that you won't get this error when you plug the controller in, like some other MIDI controllers will give you. Some controllers just can't be used with an iPad cuz they're drawing too much power

or you have to find some wonky workaround for it. So aside from having just a great keyboard controller or a great pad controller if you're into finger drumming or playing on a traditional keyboard like this, you've got a controller that's easy to insert into

your mobile setup. So for instance, the Tempo Key 2 comes with this USB and power cable that you can connect to the keyboard and then connect to another power source and suddenly no more drain in the iPad battery. No more needing a certain amount of power delivery from

the iPad in general, you can just get working and start making beats with this [Music] thing. Now, I do have a couple other videos for music making on the iPad where I talk about different apps. I've talked about the Koala app. I've also

talked about BandLab, which is a great free app. Those videos are also great ways to find out about more features of these controllers, so great. We've got a couple MIDI controllers where we just don't have to worry about power. That's great. I've been mentioning headphones a

bit here and there, and you might notice that I have these headphones that I can use wirelessly. And you might be like, "Tetro, what are you talking about? You said we can't use Bluetooth headphones." Well, these headphones by II are not actually Bluetooth. Actually, let me not

confuse you. They do have a Bluetooth function where I can use them just like Bluetooth headphones, but they have another wireless function that requires the use of a receiver. This wireless functionality allows me to use the headphones wirelessly but not have that latency we talked about before. And of

course, also we can plug in an actual cable into these headphones and just use them the old-fashioned way. But I especially like using these because I have the option to go latency-free and [Music] wireless. And since we keep mentioning power, you will want to power your iPad

somehow, whether you plug it into the wall, but if you want to be free and out there in the world like these mobile pieces of technology are meant for us to do, you might need a power bank. I think this is a good one. It charges my phone

wirelessly as well. I'll link it in the description, okay. Finally, let's talk about audio interfaces. This is really interesting because in a way, sometimes an audio interface might be able to replace one of these USB hub type devices, but some of you might not even

need an audio interface. So why would you use one of these in general? The main reason would probably be that you want to record an instrument like a [Music] guitar or you want to use a microphone, maybe you're a singer or maybe you just

want to use the microphone for sampling. [Music] Audio interfaces have instrument jacks or mic jacks. This one's got mic jacks on the back, instrument jacks on the front. This one here has got combo jacks which combine XLR for microphone and

instrument cable jacks all in one right there. Another key reason you might want an interface is to connect to some monitors. You might need these specific TRS jacks to connect to studio monitors like that. So if you're not doing any of those things, if you're not

connecting to studio monitors and if you're not recording in an external microphone or instrument from an instrument cable, you don't even need one of these. But if you do, here's my recommendations. Now I've got the Scarlet the Focusrite interface here, which the

latest iterations are really good, really low noise, lots of power delivery for uh for mics that need that boost. And this interface, similar to our MIDI controllers as we talked about earlier, actually has a separate power jack on it so you could power it in addition to

connecting it to your iPad, which means you're not drawing power out of the iPad. However, if we're talking about replacing these hubs over here, I got to give a leg up on the competition to the Arturia MiniFuse 2 that I have here. It's got

the same amount of audio inputs and outputs on it. It also has MIDI in and out, which is useful for some people, but it's got a USB port on it, meaning that you can connect this interface to your iPad and then connect your MIDI controller through the interface. So remember

precious USB port space, there's only one USB port on the iPad. If you use that USB port to connect your audio interface, you can now no longer connect a MIDI controller, but with the MiniFuse 2 you can do that. And not many audio interfaces feature that USB hub that

port on the back for an extra MIDI controller. So I think that's really cool. So if you are in need of an audio interface that is good for iPad, I think the MiniFuse 2 is a great option. And real quick, I just want to say if you're

getting into music making and making music on your iPad, and you need some help understanding the basics of music, I've got a pretty easy to follow music theory for beginners series on this channel that I think you will like. Music theory is generally pretty boring or a

little too difficult to understand. I try to break it down and make things easy. So check that out if you're new. And a quick honorable mention, some of you might think an Apple Pencil is just for the visual artists out there, but I got to say Apple Pencil can be very

useful when it comes to tweaking those little parameters on an iPad screen. I mean, I use an iPad Mini, so it's already small. Instead of using my big fat sausage fingers on the screen, I can use the Apple Pencil and much more accurately tweak different things.

Not a necessity, but it is something that I found useful. And with that, I think you should be off and running, folks. Please let me know if you have more questions in the comments down below. If you are new here, check out some of the other videos I do.

I focus a lot on like Ableton Live, making music in the DAW, but I also cover things about, you know, other MIDI controllers or standalone synths. And like I talked about earlier, I've got that music theory for beginners series that I think could be helpful to all musicians. Thank you so

much to my channel members for your ongoing support. Shout out to Sanito for sponsoring this video. If you all need some cool MIDI controllers, go check them out. Links in the description. And that's all for now. Thank you all so much for watching. This has been T. Have a good one.

Gear You Need To Make Music & Beats On iPad

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