Music Memos and GarageBand 2.1 are available on the app store now. Apple Music Memos lets you transform your ideas into tangible talent that you can share with peers and colleagues.
Advertisement
Apple has launched an app called Music Memos that lets musicians and songwriters quickly capture, organise and develop their musical ideas on their iPhone. Right off the bat, it should be mentioned that Music Memos records and stores uncompressed audio in an attempt to maximize sound quality. Things get hairier when you try using Music Memos with instruments like the electric guitar; the app picked up on non-existent chord changes and ghostly notes that were more curious than useful.
Music Memos is the free app, and it’s particularly tuned to benefit musicians on the go. That said, these apps are much more complicated, although musicians who courageous the apps are rewarded with increased flexibility. If you’re lucky enough to have a bass guitar with a compatible adapter lying around, you can plug it in to play through new software-based vintage and modern bass amps, too. The Live Loops is, meanwhile, inspired by DJ hardware controllers and drum machines.
Music Memos takes all this and makes the complex process of recording music from your guitar or keyboard as simple as hitting record, while keeping it as sonically rich as recording a three- or-four track music project in GarageBand.
Built for music makers and creators in mind, the clean-looking app comes with an instrument tuner, a list of your recordings and a huge HAL-like record button – although there’s an “auto” mode, which starts recording as soon as it detects noise. Live Loops features a large grid and users tap cells and columns to play looped instruments and samples. The app helps capture musical ideas, give them a slight polish, and sends the best ones on to a more powerful music tool such as Cupertino’s GarageBand or Logic Pro. You can perform, arrange, and remix your loops live, and GarageBand “automatically keeps all the beats in sync”.
GarageBand is now also optimised for the iPad Pro’s larger screen, and for 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.
Sharing directly to GarageBand will place the song you recorded into the app on your iOS device, letting you open it in GarageBand and fiddle about with the recordings and the accompaniment that Music Memos created for you. Users can then pick their music genre from options such as Rock, House and Chill, and begin to compose music.
Advertisement
GarageBand for iOS is provided for free with the purchase of any new iOS device with 32GB to 128GB storage space, so many iOS users may be able to download the latest 2.1 update at no cost.
