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November 30, 2009

MultiTrack For iPhone



I'm curious to know whether this is any good.

Not that long ago I accidentally snapped my old mobile phone in two (yes, really, I'm that hard) and I gave in to the inevitability of eventual iPhone ownership.

The iPhone is a great toy... not a great phone per se...

Anywho, I came across this "app" today. I've seen 4-track recorders on the iPhone before, but never a 16-track. Right now it's a pretty simple program, but it looks like it has potential to be pretty cool. Right now it's just a low-latency recorder with import and export functions, pan, track volume, mute/solo etc. Future enhancements (apparently) include a metronome, effects etc.

I have a number of music apps. Most of them I got for free (usually on sale days). Some are decent. Some not so much. Almost universally, though, the GUI leaves something to be desired in terms of functionality. Because the iPhone screen is so small, most programmers have opted for teeny-tiny buttons which, well... they're fiddly. This one seems to have adopted a more practical approach. Touch a control and it pops up to fill the screen, making fine adjustments easier. Developers... learn from this!!!!

Of the music apps I have, I think the most useful to date has been iDrum, a pocket drum machine. The pros for iDrum are that it's easy to control and it sounds great. The downside is that exporting beats isn't as easy as it should be. As far as I can tell, all you can do is export 40s of a beat via the 'Ringtone Sync' option. So once you've painstakingly generated the drums for a whole song... well, you're f**ked. The only workaround I can think of is to use an audio cable and a desktop recorder on your 'puter to create a 'live' copy.

The other app I like is iSequence. The user-interface on this one is way too small, though. It has loads of sound banks etc, but its biggest failing is that you have to generate chords via individual notes and until the last release there were only 4 tracks... when you have three notes in a chord? Um...

So, I'm curious about MultiTrack. Apparently, it's possible to import drum tracks etc from PC/Mac. I wonder how easy it would be to use this little device to record home demos, or moreover, when not at home, whether it's functional enough to be a decent pocket recorder. Now that winter's well on the way I'm already looking forward to the summertime... I want to be out there in the sun, jamming, writing songs... creating.

3 comments:

Furtheron said...

I still very much.. a phone is a phone kind of person :-)

I set the recorder up to record your TV staring role tonight before I left...

Axe Victim said...

And tonight Matthew, we're going to be...

Axe Victim said...

This Sat at the Libertine - our favorite pub. Pocket Rocket on stage 9:15, Dipsticks 8:15. Will be there with Ister.