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polychord for iPad: an inspiring way to create music
polychord (US$9.99) is a virtual instrument for making and creating keyboard / electronic-style music on the iPad. With its easy-to-use approach and layout, polychord makes it painless to get your head around the basics and start making some really lovely sounding and creatively inspiring music. Whether you're an expert musician looking to perform live or a novice, you'll find polychord engaging and fun. There are two main components to playing polychord: chord circles and strum keys. There are nine Chord circles, each representing a chord that is derived from the musical key you've selected. Each chord circle has seven chord inversions around it, so you can play a variant of the root chord (minor, major seventh, augmented fifth etc). This gives you 63 chords to play in total in a really straight forward and easy-to-read (and touch) structure. Strum keys is a virtual keyboard with 13 keys or individual notes that are derived from the corresponding chord circle you're playing at the time. There are no keys present that wouldn't melodically fit in with the chord circle you're playing. Strum keys is placed horizontally at the edge of the iPad, making it really easy to reach for and play, as opposed to so many virtual keyboards that mimic a traditional piano layout. You can play individual or multiple keys, or strum the strum keys up and down, which produces a very satisfying sound. Additionally, swipe the keys to pitch bend or add tremolo. polychord lets you specify strum keys to play a specific scale pattern, like blues pentatonic, dominant Bebop or Ionian, depending on the style of music you're looking to play. The idea is to play chords with the chord circles and a melody over the chords with the strum keys. In theory, polychord makes it nigh on impossible to hit a wrong note, and with very little practice you'll soon have some nice chord circle progressions and strum keys melodies under your belt. Once you've got an idea for a song, turn on Auto Accompany to add drums and bass (27 patterns) to your track. There's also a customizable arpeggiator which plays the notes of the chord you're currently on. When you switch chords, Auto Accompany's drums, bass and arepggiator will follow you. It all adds much more dynamic to your song. For more advanced musicians, and those wanting to dig deeper, polychord lets you mould and tinker the sound with some very practical variations and customizations (filters, envelope control, warm and fat waves, bitshift mode and timing). It's all accessible and generally designed to be tweaked on the fly, particularly in live performances. When playing, everything is really responsive, with very little noticeable latency, so it really does feel like you're playing an instrument while you're tapping away on polychord. Additional features include saving and exporting, sharing with Soundcloud, Twitter and Facebook, MIDI (for using polychord as a controller with a DAW) as well as virtual MIDI (controlling other apps) and finally, full Audiobus support and integration. Speaking of Audiobus integration, polychord with a few other choice music apps on iPad (see video below) really does make for an exciting and rewarding music-making experience. Spending some time with polychord, the things I loved about it most are just how engaging and playable it is. And it sounds great, too! If you're looking to approach a musical task from a different angle (like songwriting), polychord is a great way to inspire and think differently. Or if you're a beginner, or someone looking to kill some time, polychord is also just a lot of fun, too! polychord is available from the iOS App Store now. For more info on polychord, check out the polychord website here.
GarageBand for iOS updated, adds AudioBus support
Apple has pushed out an update for GarageBand for iOS. The version 1.4 update brings a number of enhancements to GarageBand for iOS, most notably support for playing and recording audio routed through the third-party app AudioBus. AudioBus is an iOS app that allows users to route various music apps through it. The makers of AudioBus liken it to a "virtual cable" that connects separate audio apps together. The full list of enhancements to GarageBand in this update include: • Play and record music apps supported by Audiobus directly into GarageBand* • Turn off grid snapping to get finer control over region and note editing • Fixes an issue that resulted in feedback while connecting third-party audio accessories into the headphone / microphone jack * Requires iPhone 4S, iPod touch (fifth generation), iPad 2 or later. Audiobus requires a separate purchase. GarageBand for iOS is US$4.99. AudioBus is US$9.99.
GarageBand for iOS gets Audiobus support, plays nicely with other apps
Still haven't found the sound you're looking for in Apple's iOS GarageBand offering? The newly released version 1.4 broadens the music app's horizons, thanks to Audiobus compatibility, letting it work alongside titles like Animoog, ThumbJam, Samplr and pretty much all of Korg's iPhone offerings. Sounds created on those apps can now record directly into GarageBand -- assuming, of course you're using it on an iPhone 4S, 5th-gen iPod touch, iPad 2 or later. You can pick up the latest version of the app in the source link below.
Audiobus claims to mix audio sources on your iOS device
We've seen before that iOS can be very powerful in terms of producing audio, but there's one big drawback, and it's that iPhones and iPads are still only designed to be used for one task at a time. If you want to do more than one task at a time (like combining beats with a synth, or processing and recording vocals), you're either out of luck, or you have to find an app that does both. Until now, apparently. Audiobus is a brand new app for iOS that purports to have solved this problem, and will combine audio sources and actions across multiple apps somehow. That means that with Audiobus, you can play synths in one app, play drums in another, and record them all together in a third. There are a few catches, not surprisingly. The first is that each app you use must be Audiobus compatible -- you can't just combine any app's output with any other, sadly. But there's a solid list of Audiobus apps available already, and presumably adding the compatibility in isn't too hard. Second, of course, using multiple apps at the same time can push the processor a little bit, so Audiobus recommends you use newer devices, in order to get as much power as possible. But otherwise, this sounds like a nifty suggestion for the apps listed as compatible. Audiobus is available now for $9.99. I think this is probably the next area where Apple can grow with an official solution. Obviously, Apple has wanted to keep iOS devices targeted towards one task at a time, but if third parties start creating other ways for apps to connect, Apple may get pressured to release more and more options for sharing information across multiple apps.
