Beginner’s Guide to making music on your iPhone / iPod Touch or iPad
If you’re reading this then you’re interested in making music on your iPhone or iPod Touch or your iPad which is great news. You’ve come to the right place.
Lots of us own an iPhone or an iPod Touch iPad. They’re great devices to have around, but there’s so much more you can do than checking your mail, facebook, twitter and playing games.
How about doing something really creative with your iDevice? How about making some music rather than just listening to it?
If you’ve never played an instrument before in your life it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a lot of fun making music. It isn’t difficult and it doesn’t have to be expensive either. In fact, if you’ve got an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad then you’re well on your way already. Whether you want to play a guitar, a piano, remix beat loops or do something a bit more experimental, you can, just read on.
I’ve never made music before, but I’d like to, where do I start?
Good question, if you’re a not a musician that doesn’t matter at all. Whether you want to mess about with synth, play a guitar, piano or be your own personal DJ, as they say ‘there’s a app for that’!
I miss playing the piano
There’s plenty of apps for playing the piano on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Pianist is a great app as is PianoStudio which lets you record and share your compositions, and if you’re using an iPad give Pianist Pro a look. None of these apps need you to be a virtuoso pianist. You can have fun with them and make your own music just the way you want to.
I’ve always wanted to play guitar, what can I do?
There are a lot of guitar apps available for the iPhone and finding the one that’s right for you can be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. So here are a couple of excellent apps you should check out if you want to do a little strumming.
Guitarist is a really nice guitar app which lets you strum away to your heart’s content. It has plenty of options to get you started and you can even record your stuff too.
If you’re looking for a great electric sound and lots of effects pedals then look no further than iShred which is an amazing guitar app which does just about everything.
I want to make some relaxing sounds to help me with stress
Bloom, Trope, and Air are apps from Brian Eno that are brilliant at just creating relaxing ambient music with beautiful graphics too. Great for fun or relieving stress on the way to work.
Let me just make some beats:
Groovemaker apps are great for starting off with making your own music from a selection of loops and there are free versions for both iPhone and iPad.
ComputerMusic has it’s own apps which are all free and let you create tracks using great sounding loops.
Looptastic is a brilliant app that let you mix excellent loops together to be your own DJ. Looptastic has a free app and an superb iPad app too.
I want to play with some great synth sounds, where do I start?
If synths are your thing then there’s no shortage of great synth apps around. You could try out Toro Mini, MiniSynth, and NLog for starters, and if you want more, then just look in the Palm Sounds blog under Synth.
I want to DJ
No problem. If you want to mix the music on your iPhone or iPad then try out TouchDJ, Sonorasaurus and Cue.Play.DJ which are all great apps
Give me a personal soundtrack on the go
Try RJDJ who make some incredible apps that defy description. Just try them out and see what your own personal soundtrack is like.
Thanks for checking out this guide. For daily news on mobile music making visit PalmSounds The home of mobile music.
