Thursday, March 18, 2010

Recommend Me Some iPhone Apps

























So I bought an iPhone for my band's upcoming tour and have been loading it up with apps that might come in handy for keeping the tour running smoothly.  But I haven't downloaded any music apps yet.  Which ones do I absolutely NEED in your opinion?

17 comments:

manson baptiste said...

I didn't have tried them myself, but my friends recommended me these :
ProTune and ProTempo. Protune is for tuning, and protempo is a metronom.

Intoner said...

Star 6

http://www.agilepartners.com/apps/star6/

awesome and really bizarre app. lots of interesting ways to manipulate sounds!

Wild Pottok said...

Tom,
Hope you won't be offended by me suggesting this app which generates auto-accompaniment : DaLiLa
http://khu.sh/

as you obviously have a lot more talent than the guy in the vid ;-)

Yet, it might be used to get mmmh interesting results ?

Zettt said...

TouchOSC, BeatMaker, BassLine, Jasuto, Mrmr, Oblique Strategies are my favourite audio apps. :D

Paulo Falcao said...

I use iSequence, SoundGrid and SSW

rayzr said...

One of the first app's I bought was
Noise.io.

I haven't found many others that are too unique, i mean there's the facebook, myspace, pandora, lastfm apps but whatever, i'll just use safari for that.

Notepad is my favorite one probably. lol

David said...

iSample. A lot of fun and a very interesting soundset from Mark Mothersbaugh. Voice Band isn't bad either.

Dave said...

Nlog and Argon -> cool synths

iDrum -> fabulous for drum loops, if you have the mac app you can also exchange loops and samples wirelessly

technobox -> basically rebirth for iphone

RjDj -> just cool.

Everyday Looper -> play with self-recorded loops...

Simple Songwriter -> great chords selector, player and recorder, awesome to sketch song ideas

Bloom -> Brian Eno's ambient app

Unknown said...

Definitely give TouchOSC a try. They also have a Mac configuration app that lets you build your own control panel layouts.

Makes me very excited for an iPad version of this app soon--hopefully!

ian said...

if you're on soundcloud, then...

soundcloud

tvtreated said...

technobox and iSyn

Anonymous said...

I've been checking out iPhone music apps for about a year or so, here are the ones I've tested so far which I liked enough to keep on my device at present. I just use these for fun and inspiration, nothing serious.

There are many very similarly titled apps on the app store, so I am including the exact iTunes spelling of the app name in quotes below to avoid confusion.

"Pianist" - simple and good piano app.

"WaveSynth" - a simple wavetable keyboard with many presets to keep folks happy who don't want to program their own sounds.

"NLog Synthesizer" - probably my favourite "serious" synth app that I've tried so far. I'd say this is essential.

"megaSynth" - another pretty good "serious" synth app.

"Noise.io Pro Synth" - this was the first real synth on the app store ages ago, not special anymore but most music people bought it at the time, when there was nothing else. It's still not bad.

"iSyn" - this is a cool synth/sequencer app that is well done.

"8Bitone+ Micro Composer" - this is a pretty good retro chiptunes synth/sequencer app from Japan.

"technoBox (303 808 909 studio)" - for anyone interested in 303/808/909 this is an great iPhone emulation of these, I'd say essential, really enjoyable to improv play on this app with a good pair of headphones.

"PocketGuitar" - gimmicky fun emulation of a an electric guitar fretboard, with some interesting options.

"DigiDrummer" - simple and good drum pads app.

"Jasuto modular synthesiser" - bought this synth app when it was on sale but really haven't had a chance to test it properly since the interface is unusual, but it seems like it has serious potential, now they have released a "Jasuto Pro" version with even more features.

"Star Melody" - more of a toy than a music app, but fun for simple sound creation. This has been temporarily (?) removed from iTunes while they update it to comply with arbitrary new Apple regulations, but I think it will be back eventually.

"Slice" - just a fun little diversion, allowing you to remix a sample by realtime rearrangement of its slices, I had some unexpected fun with this.

"Bowls - Authentic Tibetan Singing Bowls" - amazing simulation of some of the most exotic sound-producing instruments in the world from Tibet, if you are not familiar the idea is to run your fingertip over the rim of the bowls at varying speeds and intervals to produce different resonance effects, you can also tap for chimes, etc.

"Orthovox" - sometimes the simplest ideas can be the most fun, this lets you create spaced out sounds just by moving the position of you multiple fingers in relation to each other on screen, definitely worth trying.

"White Noise" - this is not a music app per se, but it's worth mentioning to anyone with insomnia, concentration, or similar problems, as the background audio this app generates may be just what you need.

Finally, if you are looking for a regularly updated blog to follow in relation to this subject, I recommend "Palm Sounds".

Best regards...

cw said...

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/propellerhead-ceo-discusses-ipad-music-software-240364 :D

cl516 said...

Hi Tom. From my blog:
http://cl516.blogspot.com/2010/02/proloop-iphone-app-by-trapcode.html

Hope you are well!

Steve said...

There's Chris Randall's app DroneStation. I don't have an iPhone but it seemed pretty cool on video. Only 99 cents I believe.

fractured said...

First, I'll echo Virsyn's iSyn as a good package. It is very straight forward to use and achieves good results. I also quite like ProChords. You select the key of your song and it suggests a list of chords to begin with. Once you select, you advance and it suggests the next step, from a list tiered by probability. It is a fun way to look at alternate progressions, and it exports the results as a SMF that is then emailed to you.

I look forward to seeing you soon!

Mr. A said...

I would follow Palm Sounds (http://the-palm-sound.blogspot.com/) since he gets all the scoops on price drops on iphone music apps.

Here is my list:
SunVox
8Bitone+ (warning! it sounds great but is buggy/crashy as hell)
Blue FiRe
Pattern Music
sxfr
Nanoloop
bleep!BOX

There are of course others I want to try, but I want to wait until their price drops. Again, follow Palm Sounds and you'll get the hook up on the apps when their price drops.