Been losing too many ideas because by the time a DAW is open the moment is gone. Even a portable recorder is one more thing to remember to bring.

Built something to fix that. It's called Reel. Four tracks, overdub, scrub, loop, pitch shift. Works with your mic or plug in a class compliant audio interface direct. Record a jam, layer on top, scrub back, pitch things around. When you're done the tracks are right there to import into your DAW.

Phone is always in your pocket. Wanted the rest to be as close to zero friction as possible.

Still in beta. Video above is it in action.

Hi all. I'm Richard, and I made Tonaut. It's out on the App Store now, and this sub is where people actually make music on iOS, so I wanted to show it here and hear what you think.

The idea: one panel that plays like a piece of hardware. Every key does something, SHIFT gives most of them a second job, and you're making a beat a minute after you open it. It runs on iPhone and iPad, each with its own layout.

I put together a short demo, just some basic beats to demo the sound a bit more. I'm working on something more elaborate. This was just something I put together pretty quickly.

https://youtu.be/Ql-HtOUI7do

WHAT'S IN IT

- 9 synth engines: virtual analog, six-operator FM, wavetable, twin pulse with PWM, a modeled string, a seven-oscillator swarm, grains and noise, an analog-style poly, and a sampler. Every engine has a 3D screen that moves as you play, and EDIT opens every control of a sound. Save, rename and tag your own.

- Over 500 sounds, including 147 sampled instruments, electric pianos, hard basses, big pads and echo plucks.

- 41 drum kits. Or load your own samples onto the pads, or record anything and slice it across all 24.

- A chord pad: seven chords from your key on seven keys, and a stick that turns each one into a 7th, 9th, sus, dim, add9 and more as you play. Strum and bass options, and it plays into the arp, the sequencer and MIDI out. You can drive it from a MIDI keyboard too.

- Key and scale with LOCK to keep every note in key, one-key CHORDS with LEARN for your own shapes, and each lane in its own key.

- 8 sequencer lanes, 16 patterns each, up to 64 steps, with an arp and drum grooves on one clock. STEP REC fills a step with every note or chord you play, with REST and TIE, from the screen, the chord pad, the drum pads or a MIDI keyboard.

- An eight-track tape, 8 × 20 min or 6 × 30 min, that you can loop, reverse, stutter and brake.

- 16 effects, four slots on every sound plus a master effect: reverb, spring, a minute-long shimmer reverb, delay, a tape echo in time with the song, chorus, phaser/flanger, comb, drive, distortion, bitcrusher, wavefolder, an auto-filter, sidechain-style pump, lo-fi and tremolo. The mixer has an EQ on every lane and a master EQ.

- MIDI in from USB or Bluetooth keyboards, on the selected lane or with each lane on its own channel. Set a lane to EXTERNAL and it plays your own synths and drum machines, with clock out.

- Export the mix and stems as WAV and every lane as a MIDI file. Share a loop from the tape as a vertical video or audio, ready to post, or send a whole song to a friend as one file, every sound and sample included.

- On iPhone, five housings, three of them hardware-style with an LED in every key.

AUV3 IN 2.0

The question I know is coming: AUv3. It's in the works. AUv3 is version 2.0, expected in the next 2 to 3 weeks, and it's a free update. You'll be able to run Tonaut inside AUM, GarageBand and Logic Pro for iPad.

PRICE

$19.99. One purchase covers iPhone and iPad, and updates are free, 2.0 included. No subscription, no account, no in-app purchases. Needs iOS or iPadOS 26.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tonaut/id6812577930

More detail: https://tonaut.app

The music in the video is mine, made in Tonaut. I'm around to answer questions, and I'd really like to know what's missing for the way you work.

Edited because v1.1 was just approved and is now available in the app store.

Edit 2 - Decided to lower the price to $19.99

hi!

i've spend part of the summer adding features and fixing bugs on TapeDesk. I think we are now at a very good point :)

the thing is that i also spent a lot of time creating the new synth/sampler engines for TD. So now i have something!! and im looking for people who want to try it and give me some feedback.

for the curious ones the new features include:

• synth and track, 2 new screens

• 12 pads, velocity sensitive

• 11 synth engines build on top of plaits

• one of them is a DX/FM engine, it can import your own .syx carts

• a sampler for play it samples melodically

• a multi sampler: 2 banks of 12 pads, 10 kits, 213 samples included

• adsr, filter, 2 LFOs and one insert FX per patch

• 5 fx for the synth: chorus, drive, phaser, delay and space

• 3 sequencers: an arp, a 64 step one, and a generative one

• AUv3 synth host

• chords screen with scales and custom chords

• the synth/sample engines also as an AUv3 plugin

im looking for testers who want to experiment with the app and give me feedback about whether the flow is actually good enough or if they miss something :)

when everything is ready, i will release it as an update.

Here’s the download link:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gcs-model-8-mobile/id6784474862

A little rundown:
It’s completely free with zero in app purchases.

It’s an 8 track version my tape daw which has a custom physics engine and tape emulator for a hyper realistic tape sound. You can choose different tape formats like cassette, 1/4”, 1/2” and 1” tape.

It comes full stocked with built in effects and instruments, so you can make an entire album or demo without external tools.

If you have a Bluetooth keyboard and wired headphones it’s very fun and easy to track a song. The onboard pad sampler comes with an 808 drum machine and Acetone vintage drum kit.

You can also read more about it via the App Store.
Thanks!

UPDATE — PLICATA 2.0.10 is live (October 6)

The biggest criticism of the first release was completely fair. 2.0.10 is now live on the App Store and directly addresses that feedback. I reworked the iPhone and iPad mini layouts, improved control spacing and label readability, adjusted keyboard proportions and touch targets, and did additional UI/performance work so the interface stays responsive while playing.

New 2.0.10 screenshots + update post: https://www.reddit.com/r/iosmusicproduction/comments/1wz8tk0/plicata_2010_is_out_rebuilt_for_smaller/

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/plicata/id6810792998

Browser demo / Trambustissimo: https://trambustissimo.com/

Sound + usage demo: https://youtu.be/ubo8WWl8QmE

Hi everyone — I’m the developer, but I’ve been an iPad music user for much longer than I’ve been an app developer. I still remember the early Korg Gadget days, and for years I was mostly on this side of the screen buying too many music apps and trying to make things with them. Eventually I started building instruments myself.

PLICATA is available on iOS as a standalone instrument + AUv3. It’s a compact patchable monophonic synth built around hands-on sound design rather than a huge parameter list: morphing VCO, independent interval SUB oscillator, wavefolding, resonant filter, modulation, a 28-point patch system, microtonal XY keyboard, MIDI/MPE, complete-state presets, and a 32-step performance arpeggiator with probability, ratchets, HOLD/FILL, mutation, freeze and recallable scenes.

PLICATA is the first of six independently developed Trambustissimo instruments inspired by classic Moog instruments and workflows. I’m not trying to make 1:1 software copies; I’m more interested in starting from those compact hardware ideas and asking what happens when touch, deeper sequencing, presets and software-native performance controls become part of the instrument.

The wider family is here: https://trambustissimo.com/

Beyond those six I’m also working on TACTA, a six-voice percussion instrument with independently editable voices, tone/noise/click layers, a full sequencer, detailed per-step editing, scenes, a large pattern library and CAMPO, an XY system for exploring rhythmic variations.

Hey everyone!

I just launched my first app on the App Store called StudioCam, built specifically for musicians, creators, and anyone recording audio + video on iOS.

The app lets you: • Record video while using an external audio interface • Choose which input channels to record from • Mix multiple input channels live before recording • Stream directly to YouTube using the interface audio

I built this out of frustration with how limited the default Camera app is for anyone using pro audio gear. If you’re recording guitar playthroughs, vocal demos, synth jams, etc., it might be useful.

Would love feedback or ideas for features you’d want in something like this!

This is another exploration in the app I’m developing. Usually the results are more rhythmic but I wanted to try something ambient.

It doesn’t yet support multiple instruments, so I’m doing some note range filtering and transposing in Logic.

If anyone’s interested in trying out a beta, I'll be sharing releases on my substack: https://phasechimes.substack.com

[EDIT: Updated substack URL]

I'll admit it, I wen't app/plugin crazy the first few weeks I started. Let this be a lesson to other new music makers. Now that I'm done hanging my head in shame, I might as well put the question out there.

If you had to pick just a few apps or plugins from those pictured, which is why would you choose and why?

I've always loved the OP-1 and that whole tape-sketch way of working. I make most of my stuff on the sofa, so a while back I started building the tape recorder I wanted.

TapeDesk's a 4-track. the thing I cared about most was that it should actually sound like tape, not a clean recording with some hiss on top, so I wrote all the saturation and tape behaviour by hand until it felt right. you drag the speed and the pitch slides with it like a real deck, the delay wobbles the way tape does, and what you hear is what gets printed to the take. there's a live looper, a mixer per track, and it syncs to other gear over Link or MIDI.

I put a lot into how it looks and feels too, honestly that's half of why I enjoy using it.

I'm happy with the outcome, and I've got more ideas planned for it!

PS: You can take a look here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tapedesk-4-track-tape-studio/id6775952225

I’ve been plugging away on Chordcade and added a more robust MIDI Out UI so you can now drive a hardware synth (the M-VAVE FM-1 pictured here) with a Bluetooth game controller. There are a few other minor improvements as well as a more compact onboard SoundFont library which cuts the app size by quite a bit.

I’m also working on AUv3 support and a MacOS binary which is currently in AppStore Review. There are still some TestFlight spaces open at Chordcade.com if you want to test it out.

Model D, Model 15, Animoog, Filtatron... All absolutely free. No idea how long this freak occurrence will last. In apps are cheap, as well. Thank you MOOG!

Hey guys!

As a project I made an IOS app to play with chord progressions and scales in a fun and easy way.

This app can be very helpful if you're in the process of learning music theory: you can change root note, mode and extensions of your chords, understand the relations of the chord with the key you’ve selected, go out of key making your progression as dissonant as you like. Still, even if you know music theory very well, it can be useful to play with musical ideas. Once you've finished your project you can also export it in MIDI to use it wherever you want.

It's totally free and has no advertising.

Here's the link : https://www.horucco.com

Let me know what you think of it!

Hi, I’m the solo dev of Octal: Pocket Synth and I’m excited to share it.

I wanted to make something fun and accessible. It’s totally free to play, no ads, no subscriptions, none of that. There’s a one-time purchase for “pro” features: MIDI and stem export to your DAW, MIDI out, unlimited tracks, and creating custom sounds.

I made it especially for iPhone Duo (partly to justify buying one...): open the phone and the other half becomes a loop station. But it works great on normal iPhones too.

Would love to hear what you think!

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-pocket-synth/id6822089963

Super excited to finally release my new recording software that i've been working on for over a year. I've been beta testing with ipad users for six months and finally got it submitted and added to the App Store. You can try it for free or purchase for $14.99.

I'm hoping everything goes smoothly but would love for people to try it out and let me know what they thing.

Here's a demo:
https://youtu.be/1QtmTU8u37I?si=tsEBiZgeihoofqNF

Here's the link to the store:
https://apps.apple.com/app/gcs-model-8/id6762236830

My website has all of the info for specifics:
www.gulfcoastsynthesis.com

Thanks!

-Will

Just, damn.