Pro Music Apps

Checking the FB page of  the makers of iShred & Guitar this week, I noticed they are close to releasing a brand new music app called BeatStudio which looks pretty comprehensive. Here’s the details they’ve announced so far -

BeatStudio is a fun, easy, and yet powerful app. Whether you’re playing live with your iPhone band or sitting down to make a multi-layered percussion backing track for your guitar songs, we’ve got you covered.

30 Professionally sampled percussive instruments

Ranging from standard drum kit drums and cymbals, to shakers, sleigh bells and even a vibraslap! The selection of sounds will fill all your percussion needs. Each instrument has been sampled at a variety of volume and hit intensities, which you can adjust to get just the sound you need.

Customizable Instrument Layout

The playing and recording screen holds from six to twenty instruments of your choice.  This flexibility allows for a clean interface for songs ranging from simple to complex, and anything in between. There’s even a menu lock for performing live or when you want to hand it over to your budding three year old percussionist.

Recording

Record your performance, with each recording appearing as a separate track in the track arrangement screen. Multi-track recording, and the ability to loop track clips makes it easy to add repeating elements throughout your song. To make your song beat-perfect, you can adjust the metronome and quantize settings -  including BPM, beats per bar, the number of sub-beats and quantize strength.

Editing

Not only can you rearrange your recorded tracks, but you can edit anything you have recorded, moving individual instrument events around within a recording, adding new instruments and events, or deleting an accidental sound. This powerful editing tool also uses the quantize settings to make it easy to put your beats in the right place. There’s a great undo system that will help you recover from accidents or even edits that just didn’t work out.

Backing Tracks

It’s easy to play along with your favorite song, or one of your other musical creations as a backing track. Import from your iPod library, WiFi, iTunes, or AudioCopy/AudioPaste to play along with recordings from other Frontier Design Group apps (and other compatible iOS apps). If there is a tricky section that you want to figure out the best beat pattern for, the backing track player features a variable speed slider, so you can slow down (or even speed up) your backing track. After you’ve mastered it, slide the speed back to 1x and all of your recordings follow suit.

Visible Sound provides a 3-dimensional, colorful, visual representation of the sounds heard by the iPad’s microphone or an attached audio headset. Unlike other audio visualizers, which all too often consist of pre-programmed, mostly meaningless graphics that only loosely correspond to the music being played, Visible Sound creates all graphics completely on-the-fly from the sound itself.

This means you can see every drum beat, every vocal solo, every musical feature represented on the screen. The Visible Sound visualization is so detailed, you could theoretically use it to reproduce the original sound being displayed.

Visible Sound is also great for playing and experimenting with – see the frequency content of your voice, your dog’s bark, your doorbell, or a coin rattling as it falls to the ground. You can continue to play music from the iPod app, Pandora, etc. while Visible Sound is running, or use it with any other source of audio.

Several color schemes may be selected for a different appearance, and to highlight different parts of the spectrum. The color schemes have been specifically chosen for visual appeal, clarity and visibility on the iPad screen.

Visible Sound uses the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to isolate the individual frequency components (essentially, the individual musical notes) in sound, and displays the intensity of each frequency using both color and 3-dimensional position.

Visible Sound works on both the iPad 1 and iPad 2. Despite the graphical complexity of the visualization, performance on the iPad 1 is just fine, and performance on the iPad 2 is even better.

Coming soon: versions for the iPhone 4, iPod Touch, and Mac OS X.

 

Grab Visible Sound HD now –

Koushion merges the best of the iPad technology and professional music production tools to create a world class product. It allows you to wirelessly control your music produciton software on your Mac or PC over a network. The tone matrix and variety of settings available in Koushion make it the perfect tool for creating your next track or performing live at your next gig.

• Includes a 16-step sequencer with a 2-octave range.
• Wirelessly controls MIDI software for both Mac and PC.
• Syncs to any external MIDI clock source available to your computer so that the performance or production always stays synced.
• Plays eight scenes/banks individually, chained in succession, or simultaneously.
• Adjustable quantization.
• Switches easily to any major or minor key with the push of a button.
• Configurable scene/bank MIDI channel assignments to enable control of multiple instruments at the same time.

Check the app’s home page for details on the PC/Mac client set up software required - http://kudzucreativegroup.com/koushion.html

Grab Koushion now –

technoBox2 is the next version of our hugely popular technoBox adding many asked for features such as dual 303s and drum machines, export recordings of songs and SoundCloud integration. A performance page has been added which allows access to the most commonly used controls on one page. The drum machines now allow you to load your own samples (via iTunes documents). technoBox2 runs on iPad and retina displays with crisp native resolution.

New Features include -

- Dual 303s and drum machines (2×303, 2×808/909)
- The 303 emulation is our latest engine which sports improved authenticity
- Improved song sequencing with Start/End and Loop markers
- Lock parameters song bars
- Export recorded songs (as .wav) via iTunes (documents)
- Upload recorded song to SoundCloud directly and share
- Load your own .wav and .aif samples (uncompressed 44.1kHz 16-bit) into the drum machines (via iTunes documents)
- Performance screen with the most accessed controls on one screen
- Completely redesigned FX Panel: You can now activate effects on any or all of the 4 machines
- Improved tempo synced phaser and distortion effects. Added a damp parameter to the delay.
- Filter cutoff added to the drum machines
- Per part decay added to the drum machines
- iPad native resolution support
- Retina display support
- Requires at least iPhone 3G S (but runs best on iPad/iPhone 4)

Check here for the latest updates - http://www.audiorealism.se/technobox2/

Grab technoBox2 now –

A legendary Australian company, created one of the pioneering electronic music instruments in the late 70s, the Fairlight, and today it has launched for iPad and iPhone. Don’t you just love technology!?

The CMI’s Page R was the world’s first screen-based rhythm sequencer. Today every sampler, digital synthesizer, sequencer and audio workstation can trace its lineage back to this legendary machine. Now you can have, in your pocket or on your iPad, a piece of history developed by Fairlight staff who worked on the CMI in the ’80s.

BIULT-IN FEATURES

- browse and play the entire original Fairlight CMI IIX Sounds floppy disk library – 32 disks containing 564 voices.

- display voices graphically using the iconic Page D, and change your viewpoint by tipping your iPhone/iPad.

- play built-in Fairlight CMI Page R compositions.

- import and play Page R compositions and instrument collections sent to you by others.

- authentic Fairlight CMI user interface experience, including floppy disk sounds.

- on-screen music keyboard.

UPGRADE to PRO VERSION

You can use the in-App upgrade process to add these features for an additional $39.99:

- gain access to the CMI III voices library.

- create instrument sets that store settings for all 8 channels, including the voices, pitch shifts, volumes, release times etc.

- use Page R to create songs that can be used with any instrument set.

- use the on-screen keyboard to record new notes while your composition is playing (minimum iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3G or iPad recommended).

- play back your masterpiece, essentially as it would sound on a real CMI!

- export MIDI files from Page R, with General MIDI instruments for each channel specified by you

- import MIDI files into Page R, with all the notes ready to be edited.

- use an external MIDI keyboard to play the CMI voices or record notes in Page R (see the support page for MIDI devices supported). The Line6 MidiMobilizer and Akai SynthStation are supported.

- import audio files to be used as voices in your instrument sets and compositions.

- send and receive songs and instrument sets by email.

Check out more about the app here - http://fairlightinstruments.com.au/ios

Grab Fairlight now –

Green Oak Software today announced an update to Crystal XT for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch, now available in the Apple App store.  The most powerful synthesizer for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch just got better!

What’s New in Version 1.2

- New two octave keypad with selectable modes
- Patch designer on iPhone for creating patches
- Audio recording which may be copied to desktop
- Audio copy/paste to copy recordings to other apps
- Support for Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer to connect a MIDI keyboard to Crystal on an iPhone or iPad
- Patch breeding can now include up to 20 user patches
- High precision mode (drag vertically to get high precision after touching slider) for precise slider adjustments.

Stay up to date on the latest news with this app - http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/

Grab Crystal Synth XT now –

One of the few drum apps that has remained on my iOS devices since installing it, is this great sounding retro drum machine. This weeks sees the first major update since July last year. And best of all, the upgrade to v2.0 is free for existing users.

Here’s what to expect in the update -

FunkBox 2.0 features:
Works great on iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch
Look, feel, sound and quirks of a vintage beatbox
Includes 36 preset rhythm beats, or easily edit patterns and create your own
Nine preset boxes to choose from, including the 808, 909, CR-78, LM-2, MRK-2 and more
Customize boxes by mix and matching preset samples, or import and use your own samples
Export your drum loops as audio or midi to email, audio pasteboard, iTunes folder
Use CoreMIDI to sync and/or control FunkBox with music hardware/software via USB-CCK or Network MIDI

…and more, but FunkBox isn’t about specs and feature lists. Like those simple yet still constantly used classic drum machines from decades ago that inspired it, FunkBox may look a little dusty and a little old and a little quirky, but it’s perfect when you just want to drop a little funky beat in there. Got funk? Well get some, son…

What’s new

Improved graphics, including retina support
Two new drum machines, LM-2 and TR77
New cleaner samples from all machines
Import custom samples (iOS3.2+)
Set pitch and trim of samples
Save/load custom drum box configurations
Save/load pattern banks
Tempo/swing saved with each pattern
Random volume/timing saved with box
Ability to switch in clave, clap, cowbell, ride sounds
Tap tempo
Accent amount per step, per instrument
Queue up multiple sequences by pressing two sequence buttons,
or play two sequences simultaneously by pressing two sequence buttons
Pan per instrument (iOS4.0+)
Tap overdub and roll functions
Preliminary CoreMIDI support (iOS4.1+)
- MIDI in: note, mute part, pattern/bank, tap/start/stop, clock sync
- MIDI out: note, clock sync
Itunes folder audio export support (iOS3.2+)
Start/stop latency improved
Misc other improvements and bug fixes

New presets are included. Your old saved custom presets can be reloaded using the Pattern Storage menus. “Pattern Store” button on iPad on main page, “Store” button on the iPhone main page. Your old patterns will show up in the pattern list as “OLDSAVEDBANK” 1, 2 and 3. Load 1 into A, 2 into B, etc and you’ll have your preset patterns back.

Head to the developer’s site for all the latest on this app - http://syntheticbits.com/funkbox.html

Grab FunkBox Drum Machine now –

Beat Twirl is a “beat slicer” app. The app lets you analyze existing sounds and detect their rhythm with its note onset algorithms. With Beat Twirl you can work with drum loops and rhythm patterns, easily enhancing them with additional percussion sound, or create new patterns.

With Beat Twirl you can:

• Change the tempo (time) of drum loops without changing the pitch.
• Analyze percussion patterns and find the underlying timing.
• Mix-in additional percussion sounds, or replace the original sounds
• Export single beats from a sound file.

How to use Beat Twirl?

• You can record yourself singing or clapping a rhythm, than add percussion instruments to the rhythm you created.
• You can extract a rhythmic/percussive section from a song and convert it to a loop you can play along with at different tempos.
• Mix-in percussion instruments to a song to enhance its’ rhythm.
• Extract beat samples from a song for use with a beat sequencer.

Features:
• Import audio from your ipod library, using iTunes file sharing or using audio copy/paste from supporting applications.
• Record using an external mic or the built in mic.
• Universal app. UI designed iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Supports retina displays.
• Two spectrum based note onset detection algorithms.
• Manual slicing capabilities on top of the automated algorithm.
• Mix in percussion beats from a library of 300 samples.
• Export audio as wav, caf or aac. Export using audio copy, iTunes files sharing or email.

For more details, click here - http://www.tivstudio.com

Grab Beat Twirl now –

If you’re lucky enough to live in the US, you’ll be able to pick up an iPad 2 from today! The rest of the world will have to settle for a few key new apps launching today. One of those happens to be the touch-friendly version of Apple’s user-friendly music making software, GarageBand. This has traditionally shipped as part of the iLife bundle, but can now be purchased through the Mac App Store. And as of today, it is now also available as an iPad app, and will set you back US$4.99. Be warned, it’s also a 369MB download, so don’t burn up your 3G data quota!

GarageBand turns your iPad into a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio — so you can make music anywhere you go. Use Multi-Touch gestures to play pianos, organs, guitars, drums, and basses on your iPad. They sound and play like their counterparts, but let you do things you could never do on a real instrument. Enjoy a full range of Smart Instruments that make you sound like a pro — even if you’ve never played a note before. Plug an electric guitar into your iPad and play through classic amps and stompbox effects. Use the built-in microphone or a guitar to record, or capture any performance. Then mix up to eight tracks to create a song you can share.

Play your iPad like a musical instrument.
• Perform on dozens of musical instruments on the innovative Multi-Touch keyboard.
• Tap out beats from the seat of acoustic and electronic drum kits.
• Recreate legendary guitar rigs on your iPad with 9 amps and 10 stompbox effects.
• Record your voice using the built-in microphone, and apply fun sound effects.
• Use the Sampler to create an instrument from sounds you record, then play them on a keyboard.

Sound like a virtuoso with Smart Instruments.
• Tap chords to instantly create keyboard grooves with the Smart Keyboard.
• Strum chords on acoustic and electric Smart Guitars, or trigger fingerpicking patterns for popular chords.
• Groove with an onscreen electric or upright Smart Bass by tapping on chords.
• Drag drum instruments onto a grid to create your own beats with the Smart Drums.

Create a song anywhere you go.
• Arrange and mix your song with up to eight tracks using Touch Instruments, audio recordings, and loops.
• Trim and place musical regions exactly where you want them to play.
• Use the Mixer to fine-tune each track’s volume – solo or mute any track, or adjust pan, reverb, and echo.
• Use over 250 professionally prerecorded loops as a backing band to your song.

Share your songs.
• Email songs right from your iPad (AAC).
• Export your song and add it to the iTunes library on your Mac or PC.
• Send a project to your Mac and open it in GarageBand to continue refining your song.

For more details check the Apple website - http://www.apple.com/ipad/from-the-app-store/garageband.html

Grab GarageBand now –

I know this is an oldie, but since we’ve just mentioned the Organ+, and this one didn’t make it onto the site earlier, here it is…..

- Pocket Organ C3B3 for iPad works perfectly on iPad.
- GUI of Pocket Organ C3B3 for iPad is optimized to run on larger size of iPadʼs screen for your real performance with large size keyboard.

Pocket Organ C3B3 is a musical keyboard application for iPhone/iPod touch that simulates the Hammond Organ. The sound is generated with the synthesis of the waveforms from “Virtual Tonewheel System” controlled by 9 drawbars like the actual Hammond Organ. You will be surprised at the real sound generated from this App! Pocket Organ C3B3 is a Hammond Organ in your pocket.

Pocket Organ C3B3 has a rotary speaker effect like the Leslie speaker, which adds amazing realistic character and spatial depth on your organ playing. This effect can be changed to Fast (Tremolo), Slow (Chorale), or even Off (brakes). Visit our website to listen to the realistic and authentic sound!

Features:
- Pocket Organ C3B3 is programmed by Shinya Kasatani, the creator of best selling iPhone App “PocketGuitar” and is designed by Junichiro Yamasaki of “Manetron (Mellotron App)”.
- Authentic emulated sounds generated from “Virtual Tonewheel System” mixed by sliding 9 drawbars
- 61key + 61key, 5-octave Dual Keyboards with switchable key width (only for iPone/iPod touch, 8 white keys or 10 white keys on screen)
- Scrollable Keyboard that can be configured to your own octave key range on screen with 4 preset buttons
- Key transpose function (You can play a music of any key in the key of C)
- Rotary Speaker effect can be changed to Fast (Tremolo), Slow (Chorale), or even Off (brakes).
- Harmonic Percussion effect with adjustable decay, 2nd and 3rd harmonic
- Keyclick noise effect
- Built-in Reverb that simulates spring reverb
- Overdrive effects
- Scanner vibrato & chorus
- Shake your iPhone to play spring shock (reverb crash) effect like Jon Lord (keyboard player of Deep Purple) or Keith Emerson (a member of the Emerson, Lake & Palmer, ELP).
- iPhone’s built-in accelerometer gives you amazing glissando effect control.
- 20 Factory Presets containing typical settings used by Rock, Jazz or Gospel Sounds
- You can add the User Memory Bank that allows you to store your own 20 patches (drawbars & effects settings) & Preset Packages with In App Purchase.

Grab Pocket Organ C3B3 now –