BeatMaker – more Pro Audio for iPhone OS

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I’ve already gotten sucked into the amazing synth app noise.io, which is an incredibly powerful synth for you iPhone or iPod Touch.  I’ve also been going back and forth trying to figure out how to realize my dream of electronic music and beats mixed with killer live guitar tones.  That has led me to Reason 4.0 and the Akai MPC.  The latter is a series of stand-alone units that work as samplers and recording studios.  An MPC style controller might be ideal for getting the most out of the powerful Reason 4.0 software, but I know nothing about working such a controller, and they’re not free.

Along comes an iPhone app with a forty-one page instructions manualBeatMaker features an interface that borrows heavily from both Reason and the MPC, complete with 16 virtual pads to tap out my imagined rhythms.  At $20, it might be one of the most expensive apps for sale at iTunes, but it’s still about ten times less than a controller that may or may not work with Reason and that I definitely don’t know how to use.  I think BeatMaker looks like a pretty good alternative.  I’m willing to bet that after I read those forty-one pages, I’ll be a lot closer to understanding what to do with reason and a good trigger-pad/MPC-style controller than I am now.  And I won’t have spent any more than $20.

The other aspect of BeatMaker that is intriguing is an app for your desktop/laptop that lets you take your beats off the phone/pod and actually do something with them.  Now we’re talkin!  And while I may be a bit far from getting that done, I’ve no doubt that, within the next few days, it’ll get done.