Propellerhead's Figure App is now universal

That's right, it's now a universal app, which means that you can run Propellerhead's Figure on your iPad in full screen mode instead of in x2 mode.


There's also a few other new features added in this update:


• Legato notes - Create tied notes in the pattern by drawing finger right on Rhythm wheel, then up/down 
• Clear all function - clear a whole track with one tap
• VU meters in mixer
• Updated translation (Russian and chinese)
• Choose language in Settings

You can get figure from the AppStore for just 69p.

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Beat Evolve for iOS review

Beat Evolve from Team Popo is a fun little iOS app which shares a few similarities between with Yammaha's   TNR-i app. It's a music sequencer based around a 16x16 beat grid. However this app boasts something that the TNR-i doesn't; the ability to randomise and evolve the patterns that you put into it. You can even further customise how the pattern evolves.

However, the built in instruments are a bit limited compared to the TNR-i and I feel Beat Evolve would feel more at home keeping you entertained on the couch rather than in your studio.



If you're looking for a cheap and fun alternative to the TNR-i then it's definitely worth checking this one out. While it may not be a serious music making tool it will definitely keep you busy when on your downtime.

Beat Evolve is available in the AppStore for iPad and iPhone now.

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HyperTunes for iOS

HyperTunes lets you compose and arrange music directly in terms of musical structure, such as verse-chorus-bridge song forms. It also lets you collect and organise all your musical patterns, song fragments, and songs within the app, so that they're ready to "plug and play" in a new song with just a few touches.

This app offers a fresh approach to song management and and arrangement on the fly. For more details check out hypertunes.net

Hypertunes is available in the Apple AppStore for £6.99

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Figure by Propellerhead iOS app review

Propellerhead's new iPhone app Figure has just found its way into the Apple AppStore. Figure is based on the Reason sound engine so you know its going to sound awesome. Imagine that, Thor and Kong sitting just in your pocket, waiting for that moment of inspiration to strike.

Figure provides you with a three instrument loop sequencer; one part drums (powered by Kong) , one part bass (powered by Thor) and one part lead (also powered by Thor).

The app itself is separated into four different sections that will aid you on your way to creating some awesome beats and loops.

The 'Pattern' section allows you to select your sound and play in a part (drums, bass and lead). This is the main window that you're going to be working with when you're making beats in Figure. When working with the synths in the Patteren window you are presented with three basic controls and an X/Y pad for performance and recording your loops. The controls allow you to select the rhythm pattern of the part, the range of the notes on the X/Y pad and how many notes that you can play in a certain scale. The role of the X/Y pad is pretty obvious, it lets you to play in the notes and make your loops.

When your working with drums in the Pattern section it's slightly different, in place of these controls you are provided with four smaller X/Y pads that control the variation of each drum. You are also given a rhythm control the same as the synth parts.

Moving onto the 'Tweaks' section, this section allows you to sculpt your sound using various preset perimeters such as filter, delay, chorus distortion, etc. You are given another X/Y pad here but this time it's multi touch. Just turn on the parameters you want and tweak away. The Tweak section really helps expand the range of sounds that you can use within Figure. It takes advantage of the Reason synth engine and alows you to take that preset and mould it into something of your own.

The 'Song' section gives you the option to change things like tempo, key and shuffle. it's pretty self explanatory really, change how fast your loop is, change the scale or mood of the loop and adda bit of shuffle to give it a little funk.

Finally the 'Mix' section provides you with a three track mixer and a side chain compressor (which uses the same engine as the Master Compressor in Reason). The mixer is also based on the Reason mixer but to be honest it's just a mixer, it sets the levels of each part. The pump control on the mixer page lets you dial in the amount of sidechain. There's not really much more to the mixer page so I'll leave it at that.



This is a really nice app the GUI looks nice and the workflow is really straight-forward which makes the app extremely easy to use. Propellerhead have done an amazing job on this app, you'll be up and making beats in seconds.

But with that all said the app is not perfect, there are tonnes of features missing in Figure that we expect as standard from most music apps.

There's no way of exporting your creation as audio when you're done, not unless you're willing to hook up your iPhone to an external recording device. This should be in all music apps that offer you sequencing capabilities. It's just common sense.

The most annoying flaw in Figure is that you can't save your project. Say you've made this awesome loop and you're really proud of it, it's finished and you want to move on to a fresh creation. You cant start a fresh beat without clearing the old one. There's no save feature.

It's also not a universal app so if you have an iPad then you can only run Figure in that ugly x2 mode. I've gone into this many times before so I won't bore you with it again. There's no reason (no pun intended) that this cant be a universal app.

Another thing that annoys me is that there's no pan section on the mixer, I suppose it's not a nessesity but I'd like the option to separate the sounds a little and give the mix that little extra room.

Other little addition that need to be considered for this app are wifi sync (WIST maybe?), core midi would be a nice addition too and maybe the ability for Reason owners to export the loop as a Reason project file.

But then again even though Figure's missing out on some vital features it's still a blast to play around with and for 69p in the AppStore I'm going to stop complaining, shut up and enjoy that awesome little loop sequencer that Propellerhead has given us.

All in all I'm going to give this app maybe an eight out of ten. If figure had audio export and a save feature then it would most definitely get a full ten.

Get Figure from the Apple AppStore for just 69p!

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Stochastik Drum Machine for iPad

Stochastik Drum Machine for iPad is now available in the iOS AppStore. The app lets you use a probability engine to program your beats, allowing you to create dynamic rhythm patterns and endless variation to to your drum loops.

Say goodbye to boring, repetitive drum loops and welcome a little randomness into your life.

The best thing about this app is obviously the probability engine. You can program a simple straight forward drum pattern into this thing and then use the probability engine to add a subtle variation to a drum part (say the hi-hats). This helps to give the beat that evolving feeling without making it sound completely random. That's not saying that it can't do random, if you set all of the steps to a low probability then this awesome little drum app will spit out a constantly evolving drum pattern (perfect for genres such as IDM).

I love how useful this thing is for fills and subtle changes. Say you're programming the drums for your new track but don't want to use that same loop all the way through the track. You want subtle variations to a snare fill or maybe that odd bit of percussion randomly coming in and out to keep your listeners on their toes. To program all of these little surprises by hand can take hours but if you program your beats on your iPad with Stochastik you could get this same effect in minutes, seconds even.

Of course the probability engine isn't the only thing that this app does well. It's packed with over a thousand high quality drum samples that can make an awesome addition to almost any genre of music that you can think of. Programming drum parts in Stochastik is really simple too, so even if you're not too familiar with programming drums then it should be pretty easy to learn how to use this thing. The app also has background audio, audio copy and WIST support meaning that you can wirelessly sync it with other iOS devices.

If you're taking your music seriously then you might want to use your own drum sounds or maybe even a hardware drum machine. At the moment Stochastik doesn't yet support MIDI in and out. But fear not, this will be included in the first major update to the app. Also that update will include other features such as multi channel exporting of drum sounds and mute/solo for each drum part.

All in all this is a solid drum machine app that not only offers you high quality sounds and simple programming but it also offers a truly inspirational way of programming beats and coming up with ideas. In fact I'll go as far to say that it's one of the best iOS music apps that I've seen in ages.

Here I've uploaded a video of my playing around with Stochastik, showing of a quick D&B pattern and an over the top mad glitch sequence.


Get Stochastik from the AppStore here.

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How to create a custom background for iElectribe for iPad

If you've watched the video that I posted on youtube of me creating a beat with the iElectribe drum machine for the iPad you'll have probably noticed that I had a custom background image on my copy of the app.

This is a really simple feature in the app and it's really easy to do. I've had a few people ask me how it's done so I thought I'd do a short screen cap video of me changing the boring red background to something a little cooler.

As you'll see this is a fairly simple feature. But this is here just in case. You know.

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Rhythm Studio updated with WIST & a brand new synth

Rhythm Studio has just been updated to version 1.06 which includes a few cool updates including a brand new synth for us to play around with. Rhythm Studio is a pretty cool little app, it's sort of like a toolbox of synths, drum machines and effects for the iPad.

The latest addition to the line up of synths is Phoenix. Phoenix replicates that classic supersaw sound from the legendary Roland JP-8000.

Rhythm Studio also included support for Korg's WIST technology in this update. This allows you to wirelessly sync Rhythm Studio with other iOS devices running compatible apps. WIST seems to be becoming the standard in wireless syncing on the iPad so there's no sjuppurise that this was included.

Background audio has been included in this update and also song sharing over Bluetooth.

Pulse Code have been quite regular with their updates to Rhythm Studio, to be honest it's good to see an app that gets updated this regularly with so many new features. Lets hope they continue to add more devices and keep making this better.

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Making a simple dubstep bass with Korg iMS20 for iPad

The Korg iMS20 was the first app that I ever installed on my iPad. I love the Korg apps (even if they are a little on the expensive side), they just sound completely awesome.

Now, the iMS20 might seem a little confusing at first but once you get into it, the possibilities of this thing are amazing. Don't be too put off by the semi-modular patch bay or the analog style sequencer, a little knowledge of analog synthesis will help a lot but to be fair it's pretty easy to pick up.

Here's a short screen cap video of me making a pretty simple dubstep style bass sound & showing off the sound of this brilliant synthesiser.

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Shakie - Pellet Percussion for iPhone & iPod Touch

The beauty of Shakie lies in its simplicity. You’re not confronted with endless menus and settings; it does what you expect it to do. It’s a percussion instrument for your iPhone or iPod touch that’s controlled using the accelerometers and gyroscope that are built into your iDevice.

Shakie relies on a realistic physics engine, when you tilt or shake your iDevice the on-screen pallets will respond and trigger a number of samples. This gives the app a really natural feel and makes playing really fun.

The UI consists of just three pages: the main shaker page, the menu page and the info page. Everything is clean, simple and ready for you to pick up and play.

The app comes with 10 high quality built in sounds:

• Bells
• Castanet
• Chimes
• Maraca
• Rattle
• Shaker
• Shaker Dry
• Shaker Gritty
• Spoons
• Tamborine

Get Shakie from the app store now

www.shakieapp.com

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Animoog hits the iPhone

Animoog is my current favourite synth on the iPad, it's beyond awesome and it sounds really cool. Moog recently released it as an iPhone app so as you can probably guess; I brought it. The iPhone version is currently on sale for 69p so it's pretty cheap for such a cool little synth.

With the iPhone version I can now have the power and awesomeness of Animoog with me at all times. The iPhone app is pretty much exactly the same as the one on the iPad with the layout slightly modified so that it fits nicely on the smaller screen.

Your probably getting sick of hearing me complain about this but this app isn't universal, I don't understand why some companies think that people should buy their apps twice. I know it brings in a little more money but many people aren't going to buy something twice anyway. I've only made an exception here because of the low price and the quality of the app, but I still feel slightly cheated here. Universal apps are the way forward, stop scamming your customers out of their money.

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Korg iKaossilator updated, includes iPad support.

The Korg iKaossilator has just been updated to version 2.0.0. This new update includes quite a few cool features and improvements that make the app that little bit more useful.

The first thing that I noticed was that now the iKaossilator has native iPad support, meaning that now you can run it perfectly on your iPad without having to run it in that annoying x2 mode. I think this is an feature that should have been included at the start, the iPad makes playing and performance a lot easier (as I mentioned in my first review) as the bigger screen allows for more precise control of the x/y pad.

Audio export is another feature that was needed from the start, it's a standard that nearly every music app has and I'm surprised Korg missed it from the original release. Along with audio export comes audio copy which basically allows you to exchange recorded parts from iKaossilator to other iPad apps that support the audio copy feature (GarageBand for example).

Support for soundcloud has also been included in the update. Users can now share their loops, phrases or tracks with the world via. the popular soundcloud platform.

An unusual addition is the flex play function which "makes it easy to generate fills and breaks". Flex is a way of further manipulating your loops, giving you more creative options and room for experimentation. Just hold the loop size or tempo buttons and move your finger around the x/y pad. The x axis will effect the length of the part and the y axis with effect the tempo. By doing this you can come up with quite a few interesting results.

These new features really help the iOS version of the Kaossilator. When I first downloaded it onto my iPhone I could tell that it was a bit limited so I'm glad this update didn't take long to come about. Finally I can use it on my iPad without having to run it in x2 mode.

Update: To celebrate the release of iKaossilator v2.0.0 Korg are offering their other iPad apps for half price until December 2nd 2011.

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Bloom iPhone app

Here's a short video of me playing about with the Bloom iPhone app. Bloom is an ambient generative music app for iOS. It's perfect for creating chilled out loops.

Bloom is available in the app store for £2.49

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Moog Animoog gets an update.

The Moog Animoog iPad synth has been updated to version 1.0.1. This update brings a few new features to the app and fixes a few bugs.

So, what's included in the update?

Animoog now has support for background audio, meaning that you will still be able hear audio from the app even if you close it. This is especially useful if you want to jam out with some of your other iPad instruments and Animoog at the same time.

There's now a four beat count in for the record module which can be configured in the setup page. Also, a preview button has been added to the timbres page so that you can now select timbres silently or choose to audition them.

There's now a new 'Random Preset' button in the setup page. When you press this all the settings on Animoog with automatically randomise and give you a complete new sound. I'll warn you though, this can get addictive. It's also very hit and miss, you might end up with an awesome sounding preset or you might just get noise and sometimes absolutely nothing at all (silence).

You can get Animoog for iPad in the AppStore now for just £0.69

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Korg iKaossilator app for iPhone/iPod touch

I've had this app on my phone for a while now and I keep coming back to it every now and again for the odd jam session. It's a fun little app and it's great for making a little noise on the move.

At first the iKaossilator didn't really impress me that much but after a while it grew on me. I've always wanted to own one of the hardware versions so when it hit the AppStore I brought it instantly without any thought. It was £6.99, I don't usually spend that much on a single app (especially for the iPhone) but Korg have impressed me twice with the iMS20 and the iElectribe so I thought that I'd give it a shot.

This app is really basic, I know that the original kaossilator was aimed at amateur music makers and Djs but I was expecting a whole lot more functionality from the iOS version. Don't get me wrong, it's a really fun gadget to have on your phone but I expected Korg to implement a little more into the software version.

The app on it's own is alright for a quick noise making session while your out and about but to be completely honest I can't see me making any serious music with this thing.

If you have an iPad running iMS20 or iElectribe then you can have a whole lot more fun with it. The iKaossilator has the same wireless syncing technology (WIST) that Korg have put into their other apps so you can pair it up with your iPad and run it along side the other Korg apps (or any other app that supports WIST).

I'm really surprised that the iKaossilator is only available on the iPhone and iPod Touch, an iPad version of this would have gone down a whole lot better. The bigger screen on the iPad would have made playing this thing a lot more easy where as on the iPhone it's hard to actually make anything that doesn't sound like random noise. Since I've brought the iPad I've found that I've moved all of my music making apps from the phone to the tablet. I don't know, maybe I just need a little practice.

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Fingerlab DM-1 drum on sale for £0.69

DM-1 is a vintage style drum machine emulator by Fingerlab. The app is currently available in the app store for a limited time at just £0.69. I already have some great drum machine apps on my iPad (iElectribe, Funkbox, Molten, etc.) but when I saw DM-1 on sale I thought that I'd try it out.

The drum machine is built up of 5 main parts; a step sequencer, drum pads, mixer, X/Y effects trackpads and the main song sequencer. All these different sections are spread out over different pages which makes navigation around the app really simple.

The step sequencer is easy to use and works just like any other drum sequencer, it's really fast to build a beat and get your ideas down. The included drum sounds are superb, they are professionally recorded and ready to use. There's the classic drum machine sounds (which are the standard 808, 909, etc.) along with some acoustic drum kits and exclusive DM-1 kits for you to play with.

There's two things that caught my attention with this app which have quickly made this one of my favourite drum machines for the iPad. The first one is the GUI, it's beautiful and really gives off a slick retro vibe. I'm loving the leather background to this app.

The second one is the X/Y track pads. I know, every music app on the iPad seems to have an X/Y controller of some sort but it's very rare that you see them on drum apps. The pads really give you a whole new way to sculpt your sound, they're really fun too.

For £0.69 you can't go wrong with this, I'm glad I brought it and it will be a nice addition to my line up of iOS music creation apps. Get it now while it's still on sale.

DM1 - The Drum Machine for iPad - By Fingerlab from Fingerlab on Vimeo.

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Rhythm studio app update

Pulse Code, Inc. Have recently released an update to their ever popular Rhythm Studio app. I've been waiting for this update for a while now I'm glad to finally get my hands on it and have a play around with the new devices. My favourite by far has to be the HORNET ribbon synthesizer, a nifty little device that's perfect for those little squelchy acid sounds. Check out the video that I've uploaded below for a quick demo. It's pretty much me just having a little jam session with the new instruments.



Rhythm studio is available in the AppStore for a very generous price of 69p. It's a universal app so it will work on both your iPhone and iPad. Pulse code, Inc give the promise that all updates and additions will be free so you won't have to worry about in app purchases when more instruments are added.

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Synthetic Bits updates FunkBox Drum Machine to version 2.0.

FunkBox Drum Machine has to be one of my all time favourite iPhone music apps and now this new feature brings a whole new set of features to the table.

The app now boasts new and improved graphics and GUI that are more crisp thanks to Retina support.

The samples are also clearer which means an improved audio quality for all you audiophiles out there.

There’s also two brand new drum machines added to the line up; the LinnDrum LM-2 and the Roland TR-77 brings a whole new set of sounds to the table.

You can now also alter the pitch of any of the drum sounds in FunkBox along with the start and end point of the samples making the drum sounds completely customisable.

One of my favourite new features has to be the import feature. The ability to import your own samples makes this great app even more fun to play around with (Looking for samples to play around with? Check out some of the samples on my blog).

I was confused about how to add samples to the app at first but a quick message to Synthetic Bits via Twitter solved the problem.

Here's how it's done: In iTunes click on your device and then the apps tab at the top of the page. Scroll down to the bottom and you’ll find the ‘File Sharing’ option. Click the add button and locate the samples you wish to import. Re-Sync your device and then all the sounds should be on your device.

When all of the samples are on your device, load up the FunkBox app and go to the import page. Select the files that you wish to use and click import. It’s as simple as that.

Also Synthetic Bits has also added the ability to save your own custom Drum Box configurations and pattern banks. Having the ability to store more patterns is a real help to us beat programmers.

Other features which make this 2.0 update amazing are: Tap Tempo, the ability to pan individual instruments, MIDI in/out and more presets!

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