musicmemos

Apple has apparently been paying attention to the way musicians use their iPhones. If you’re like me, you’ve occasionally used Voice Memos for a quick musical idea or impromptu field recording. Apple is now turning that into an app, called Music Memos.

So, what makes this different? Well, you get uncompressed audio, for one. There’s also additional metadata: tagging and rating.

Okay, so far, no reason not to drop other third-party apps – I’m a big fan of Apogee’s MetaRecorder. But here it gets surprising: there’s built-in analysis of rhythm and harmony, so you get an automatic accompaniment to whatever you’ve created and a rough notation view of the recording. There’s also sharing over email or Apple Music Connect.

I’m meeting with Apple tomorrow, if you have any questions.

Music Memos is free, and happily works back to the iPhone 4s and iPad 2.

26 responses to “Apple wants you to use your iPhone as a musical sketchpad”

  1. Armando says:

    No bluetooth playback.. kind of a bummer.

  2. Sean Costello says:

    Question for Apple: Any progress supports on AudioUnitsV3 for OSX/iOS?

    Apple announced the v3 Audio Units in July 2015, with the intention of having these running in GarageBand iOS, but this hasn’t happened yet. Just wondering what the status of this is.

    Thanks in advance for asking this, Peter!

  3. Will says:

    Can you ask them to give us Marcos back?

    (Samplr developer they swooped up)

  4. grimmwerks says:

    Is there a link? Feel ridiculous but can’t find it…

  5. toot! says:

    Does it export to MIDI?

  6. Guldæg says:

    Isn’t this basically just a copy of Take (by Propellerhead)

    • Freeks says:

      This is even simpler. And if just humm something in it gives you the chords/notes you hummed. It’s quite cool. The bass and drums don’t seem to work when doing random melodies.

    • foljs says:

      No. Except in the sense that Take is a copy of the built-in iPhone audio notes application (or tons of other multi-track recording applications available way before Take).

      This is very different in design, has different capabilities, and is even meant for a different use case (it’s better to use with piano / guitar instead of voice).

  7. mckenic says:

    I guess my question would be – how we supposed to hear it back if you know, they fuck with the headphone jack in the future? :-p

  8. Freeks says:

    Ask when OSX (and logic!) gets touch screen support. Slate Raven is nice but it’s a bit DIY. Official support would be nice as 27″ multitouch screens sell for $500 now.

    Yes, yes, they will not answer that 🙂 they will milk iPad as long as they can before bringin out 27″ TB touchscreen as “new technology”.

  9. AS says:

    My question would be: are we ever gonna see a serious iPad/Logic integration?

    • Peter Kirn says:

      I think it’s safe to say this is their current picture of how they work. Apple definitely won’t comment on anything in the future – not even off the record, not to me.

  10. pinta_vodki says:

    Question: will MainStage get any love? Like a timeline or Ableton style loops instead of that awful Playback plugin for backing tracks.

    Another great idea: let us export MainStage layouts into Logic Remote (or make MainStage remote). That would be SO cool.

  11. Freeks says:

    Ask does Logic 10.2.1 and AU3 finally support midi out from plugins.

  12. Che says:

    “I’m meeting with Apple tomorrow, if you have any questions.”

    Yeah, tell them to leave the Jack connector alone, or there will be riots !

  13. including a tuner. neat!

  14. including a tuner. neat!

  15. Have you seen the format of these files? Band-files which you can open in GarageBand! Brilliant stuff. Check http://melodiefabriek.com/blog/music-memos-apple-musical-sketch-full-arrangement/

  16. JoshuaB. says:

    Im looking for a high quality recording app for Android – anyone??

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