With New Music Apps Apple Tries to Make iPhone a Handheld Studio

New Music Apps from Apple Transform iOS Devices into Handheld Studios for Songwriters & Beatmakers

Music Memo App on iOS. (Photo Courtesy: Apple)

Apple on Friday announced a new addition and a major update to its family of music-making apps for iOS that make it easy for people to tap into their musical potential and create music on the go.

The new app called Music Memos lets musicians and songwriters quickly capture, organise and develop their musical ideas right on their iPhone. And a major update to GarageBand for iOS introduces multiple new features, including Live Loops, a fun way for anyone to make music like a DJ using only their iPhone or iPad.

<p>Musicians around the world, from the biggest artists to aspiring students, use Apple devices to create amazing music; the innovative new Music Memos app will help them quickly capture their ideas on iPhone and iPad whenever inspiration strikes. GarageBand is the most popular music creation app in the world, and this update helps everyone easily tap into their musical talent with the powerful new Live Loops and Drummer features, and adds support for the larger iPad Pro screen and 3D Touch on iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.</p>

<b>Philip Schiller, Senior Vice President - Worldwide Marketing, Apple</b>

Music Memo App on iOS. (Photo: Apple)

The new Music Memos app is inspired by Voice Memos and takes the functionality further by adding musician-friendly features designed specifically for songwriting and developing musical ideas.

With Music Memos, you can record any musical instrument through the iPhone in an uncompressed format, then name, tag and rate it to start building a library of your ideas.

The app can analyse rhythm and chords of acoustic guitar and piano recordings, and instantly add drums and a bass line to provide a virtual, customisable backing band that plays along to match the feel of your song.

Music Memos can even provide basic notation that displays the chords that were played.

Music Memos is available for free on the App Store and is compatible with iPhone 4s and later, and iPad 2 and later.

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GarageBand Update for iOS

GarageBand App on iOS. (Photo Courtesy: Apple)

Apple also updated GarageBand app with a GarageBand 2.1 version that introduces Live Loops, that’s a new and intuitive way to create music.

Inspired by DJ hardware controllers and drum machines, Live Loops makes it easy to create music by simply tapping cells and columns in a visual grid to trigger different looped instruments and samples.

The loops can be performed, arranged and remixed Iive, and GarageBand automatically keeps all the beats in sync with perfect time and pitch.

The Live Loops comes with a library of Apple-designed loop templates in a variety of genres including EDM, Hip Hop, Dubstep and Rock, or you can create your own loops from scratch.

GarageBand 2.1 for iOS also includes the new Drummer feature with nine EDM and acoustic virtual session drummers that provide their own signature sound, as well as an expanded selection of amps for bass players.

GarageBand 2.1 for iOS is bundled free with new iOS devices 32GB and larger, is available as a free upgrade for existing users with compatible iOS 9 devices or later.

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