iPhones come with a built in audio recording app but the iPad doesn't for some reason. Garageband is a great tool for complex audio projects but if you want a basic audio capture tool there are lots of apps to choose from.
The one I am going to recommend to you was actually recommended to me by Valerie (again - Thanks, Valerie!). It's called Voice Record Pro and allows you to do most of the things you would want to do with an audio file, including:
- Emailing audio files
- Saving to Google Drive, Dropbox and other cloud services
- Converting to mp3 (good for putting on SMO)
- Basic trimming
- Joining audio clips together - one at a time