Creating digital music is all about the business of mucking about with sounds. But somehow, the actual sounds themselves have been tangled up in immense grids and spreadsheets and mixers and things called piano rolls and so on.
Blocs Wave is the latest attempt to use mobile apps to get back to basics. Here, whether you’re on an iPhone in your hand or the enormous iPad Pro, the sounds are at the center. Touch your way through the waveforms to make music – whether using soundpacks or adding your own.
There are two basic paths to getting your musical materials. First, there’s the soundware way. There are six Soundpacks, for a total of 300 loops, included the app. From there, you can add more across genres via a Store, updated weekly. (At launch, 12 are available, with more to come.) To keep all of this manageable, there are browser tools for finding what you need. (There’s even optimized downloads in case you’re on the go on your phone.)
If you’re not keen on using sounds someone else designed, the alternative is to add your own. Blocs Wave can both both import and export, and has Audiobus support for grabbing sounds from other apps.
That done, Blocs Wave lets you combine sounds via more touch, adjusting key and tempo. There’s a built in stretch engine so you can change tempo without re-pitching sounds, plus a keep-everything-in-key bit.
Blocs Wave is the kind of app you may see more of. It’s certainly simpler than what we’ve seen on desktop. Indeed, Blocs Wave looks like a single audio clip was grafted out of Ableton Live, was planted like a seed, and then sprouted its own app. That enormous grid of clips is gone (Novation’s own Launchpad app has treaded those waters), and now touching the waveform is really the whole app.
And adding in those Soundpacks to a simplified instrument, clearly this is another entry in the “you don’t need to know anything about music” or, alternatively, “you don’t need to be technically advanced” app category.
But here’s where the narrative changes. While those things are indeed beginner-friendly, this isn’t just an app for the unwashed punters. There’s low-latency loop recording. There’s hardware audio support, so you can record and monitor from external gear. Import and export works via Audiobus, AudioCopy, AudioShare, and Mail (so, sort of everything).
In other words, it’s not so much whether you’re advanced or beginner. Rethinking the app to make it simpler can prove useful to everyone – particularly when designing inexpensive tools that you use on the go. And that may be a necessary formula for success. Apps have to be sophisticated enough to win over enthusiasts – the people who care passionately about making music on, well, their phone, even when everyone else is satisfied with Tinder and Snapchat. But given those apps are trading for only a few bucks a pop, apps also have to have broad appeal, or the business doesn’t work.
Novation seem to think that this is a formula that merits investment. They’ve even accompanied the launch with a behind-the-scenes video that looks at the Blocs team and their philosophy. As it happens, I visited this office last year, and found a passionate group of developer-musicians who really wanted to think about how music software should look from the ground up, and told me they were already seeing swaths of customers they hadn’t seen before.
You’ll see these lads also have the kind of complexion one gets when lit entirely by Apple displays and English winter weather. (Hey, I’m not doing a whole lot differently myself!)
The app:
The overall concept is nice, I guess. But if I understand it right, you can’t edit sounds besides stretching/shortening them and they are always looped. Is this correct?
At least a basic EQ and a way to silence part of the loops would be mandatory for me in order to use the App with my own samples.
If you’re into the whole loop-pack experience, it might be simple fun, though.
I have requested envelopes, volume and fx, and otherwise…. the dev is very responsive so go to the audiobus forum and make your desires known!
It seems the priority here is to make it easy for everyone to create music, and that’s fine, I guess. And while I love this tendency to make it simple and immediate, I think Samplr is a better app for touching your waveforms.
this app has an auto assign loop function and it allows random loops to be assigned and i found it got ideas going i woudlnt have thought of otherwise… dead simple to,use and lots if fun and loops included sound very good.the pitch/speed of loop cant be edited just the legnth. when importin my loop it did allow me to assing a key or bpm to it when importing though,.,, i guess the whole idea of this app is immediate creation of music ideas and it succeeds very well at that … lits of fun.. i bought this and skram app same time, that of course is a different animal all togetherbut same idea, immediate musical creation…
Yeah, exactly – I think it’s really the ability to combine waveforms that’s unique in this app. If they build on that, it could get really interesting. And connectivity with other apps also make an interesting way to toy around with sounds from other apps.
Can you change the tuning? If so, I’ll buy it. I love apps like this with auto key change features and whatnot. However, with apps like Figure, I have to either play in 440Hz or run everthing through Melodyne to get it in the correct pitch for my project. Not so good for work flow so I really only use the Figure drums…
Anybody?
samplr
Exactly.
Normally I’d call ripoff, but Samplr hasn’t had an update in 18 months, so someone has to move this concept forward.
Sad really when Samplr is so amazing.
Samplr used to be an incredible app. It plays like an instrument and is ideal for live situations, not just for getting ideas and composing pieces. Getting Samplr to work nicely with a Live set, recording various elements from the Live set to Samplr is an absolute nightmare due to the lack of support for new utilities such as Studiomux and Audiobus. Samplr is unfortunately not an option for someone who actually wants to make sounds and utilise the maximum capabilities which have been developed over the past year for mobile music making. I am however unsure if this new Blocs product will fill the void that Samplr left and it doesn’t seem to address the same needs at all. I am downloading this to check it out. (but I think someone should just resurrect the wonderful app that Samplr used to be because there is definitely still space for that in the market).
Agreed. It will be useful midi input too due when you use an ipad with docks like alesis or behringer the touchscreen doesn’t work in the same way as unplugged but it seems developer forget its own app…
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midi sync ?
Smo-o-oke?! Looks like rasta dream.
Blocs Wave gets a new Slice and Rearrange mode too. http://blocs.cc/blocswave_slice