Phones and tablets have rich potential as musical instruments. Here’s my list of interesting music apps. The iOS apps are ones that I’ve personally used and enjoyed. I haven’t tried most of the Android ones, but they were recommended by people whose opinions I trust.
iOS
- GarageBand (better than the desktop version in a lot of ways)
- Auxy (packs a lot of musicality into a minimalist interface)
- Figure (exquisite user interface design)
- Spacecraft (intuitive granular synthesis)
- Rhythm Necklace (circular rhythm visualization, futuristic)
- Nodebeat (generative, relaxing, great for preschoolers)
- Patterning (more futuristic circular rhythm)
- Synth One (free open source synth)
- Animoog (not cheap but sounds amazing and is fun to play)
- Bebot (another good preschooler app)
- Baby Scratch (turntablism made simple)
- Samplr (extremely futuristic audio sampler)
- Keezy (super minimal sampler, delightful to use)
- Launchpad (ideal dance music tool, free)
- Borderlands (steep learning curve but super futuristic)
- Wilsonic (weird microtonal tuning systems as playable instruments)
- Audioshare (invaluable for moving audio between apps, for exporting from the mobile device to your computer, for recording from apps that don’t have that functionality natively, and much else)
Recommended by Adam Goldberg:
- Thumbjam (super powerful)
- iKaossilator (limited but sounds great and easy as pie)
- MIDI Touch (infinitely customizable control surface for other apps)
- Morphwiz (also highly customizable)
Android
- FL Studio Mobile (ideal for hip-hop)
- Nodebeat (generative, relaxing, great for preschoolers)
- Nanoloop (minimalist techno sequencer)
- Remix Live (clip launcher)
- Yellofier
- Circle Synth
- MikroWave
- I Am Synth
- Saucillator
- Walk Band
- Caustic
- Sunvox
Marc Weidenbaum’s list of the best apps of 2016
More recommendations
Yet more recommendations
All of the popular free ones
Musical necklace was released yesterday. It is super awesome. Looks like you already updated your link. Thanks for the heads up!
+1 for nanoloop (on iOS). tweakybeat and seekbeats, too, but my favorite tool is impaktor. cool synthesis with randomize, multitrack loop, and you can drum on any surface.
I need to check that one out, clearly.
As a fan of your blog, I was thrilled to see Keezy on there! Some of your thinking has influenced us for sure. Thanks!