Yeah, there’s an app for that. As the devices which host apps become more and more powerful, more and more musos are picking up their iPads or iPhones and jamming up that valuable storage space with a ton of functionality for writing, recording and even playing live.
As of now there’s about a billion (I counted, obviously) apps you can grab that serve some part of the music making chain. Here are five of the best.
Have an iPhone or iPad lying around? There’s a ton of music making apps out there waiting for you, and here’s a little starters guide.
Samplr
Every budding beatmaker needs a sampler, and this is probably the most intuitive. The waveform display allows you to manipulate your samples in a way that honestly, most hardware can’t match.
This video is a great place to start if you want an idea of Samplr’s functionality:
Audiobus 2
As close to essential as it gets for iOS producers. A huge fallback of app-based music is the incapability to multitask. For instance, you can’t usually let a drum machine app run in the background while you play on a second synth app.
Audiobus is an inter app routing system which solves that problem, currently supporting over 750 apps, including the downright gnarly motherfucker below.
KORG iMS-20
This thing is a fucking beast. Currently KORG’s downsized MS-20 Mini will set you back around $800, and good luck even finding an original MS-20 in the wild.
The app, made by KORG, boasts all the same functionality of the iconic synth plus more. If you’ve ever tried remembering your patches on a modular or another wired analogue synth, you’ll be pretty stoked to find out you can actually save all the trippy sounds you make this time around.
Bloom
Brian Eno has contributed a fair few of his own creations to the app world, but this one is a personal favourite. Developed in tandem with software designer Peter Chilvers, it’s easy to control, looks great and sounds awesome.
Plus if you leave it idle, a generative algorithm takes the range, allowing you to listen to soothing ambient music literally forever.
GarageBand
Yeah yeah… cop out. But, GarageBand is a surprisingly powerful tool in the right hands. Given you won’t be recording at the quality offered by high-end studios and you’ll need a IRIG or another input adaptor, but don’t discredit this bad boy.
Check out this video of Steve Lacy (The Internet, Kendrick Lamar) at work if you’re a naysayer:
