I recently bought a new mobile and I’m right now thinking about buying some music apps that are a little “more” than just a basic pianos for children. I tried Caustic demo and Pocketband Lite and I’m now considering buying Sunvox.
Do you have any suggestions about some other apps? (Some simple sequencers or similar stuff just to get the pattern in my head quickly down and later redo this on PC for “real”) I’d use it primarily when I’m out so I don’t miss any good idea 
(but I’m not talking about those pianos or guitars)
Thanks in advance 
Nanoloop ?
touchosc works a treat
When it comes to catching an idea during a work break, I have an easier time writing a shorthand for rhythm and memory fragments, or quickly singing a bit into the phone, than i do trying to figure out a weak or terse piece of software.
I either sing into the memo recorder or I save in Google Drive.
yo, how do you set it up/use it? (:
I’m been using Control, TouchOSC (but less often since the Android version does not allow for editing layouts, while Control does), SunVox (very very cool), Electrum Drum, PixiTracker and PixiTracker 1-bit (both from the same maniac who wrote SunVox), ReLoop, and Tape Machine for when I just want to capture something live.
Some other fun music apps: Nanoloop, SoundBow, Sonaur, NodeBeat, Orbits.
I think I’ve posted on this in a previous thread. Here’s my ist
- Sunvox - get it. Keep an open mind about non-keyboard trackers, it’s pretty well designed, especially for small screens.
- Caustic - yes
- Nanoloop - It’s pretty amazing. I put up an oldish demo track a while back on my neglected youtube account - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km7FIuhJed8
- G-stomper - electribe sampler clone
- Audio Evolution Mobile - surprisingly full-featured multitrack recorder/editor.
- Tapemachine - Excellent sample recorder/editor
- Loopstack - looper / jammer app from the creator of Caustic.
There are some other nice apps, but I personally don’t use them as much as these.
Cool feature of SunVox: If you get the proper splitter cable you can use it as an effects box. It accepts audio in and will do real-time processing on the signal.
Thanks very much for this list. It’s hard to find the better apps without someone pointing them out.
The “not be able to edit your own layouts on windows” for touchosc is a bit of a downer:-( (and I hope they will add this in future…it is possible to create your own layouts on mac) … but, when i first got it setup I was quite suprised how smooth the control worked, I thought being wifi it wouldn’t be stable…but i was wrong…
A bit of “pure data” knowledge is essential if you want to convert all controller messages to midi…I do have a puredata patch with this setup (this is a modded version of the one distributed from the touch osc website) This makes it a bit easier to control your effects or synths or whatever (saves working out osc addresses etc) I could upload this somewhere if people are interested. A great thing is that this puredata patch will work with Renoise or Ableton/anydaw, less messing around. (You will need midiyoke installed and selected as as a midi output device from within Pure-data, and the same midi-yoke device setup as an input from within the software your wishing to control.
Another thing I discovered is that TouchOsc predominately works through a wireless router, which may be possible from within our homes, but when performing at a gig you might not have said router, I found a program called “Connectify”, which turns your wireless device inside you laptop/pc into a router, it took two seconds to setup and i then had touchosc controlling synths without any changes to my puredata patch and no router needed to be in between laptop and android device…
This is all gonna come into effect in the next couple of weeks, as for the as for two or so years I have always had to be the one that starts the songs live, now i can give my phone to the drummer who will be able to trigger the songs to start himself.(this laptop runs ableton with synths and samples setup within scenes and also a tr505 as a metronome which only the drummer hears via headphones. everything synced up to him per song. it means i can concentrate less on what everyone else is doing and just just play guitar…let the drummer start the METAL.
Just demoed Caustic on Windows because my phone seems to old for it (doesn’t have Play Store just Market??) that stuff rocks
Thanks everyone for the app sggestions, I will definitely try some of these. But most of all, I’d buy Sunvox because it seems fast and flexible tool to track sequences fast the way I like (the Renoise way). I’d also try the Audio evolution mobile, although I don’t know how it’d be going on such a small screen, as there seems to be lots of buttons and stuff at once.
Audio Evolution does a pretty good job of stripping things down. The controls aren’t overwhelming, but the essential stuff - cut/move/copy/import/effects, etc. are there. That said, if you don’t record live instruments/vocals, you may not have that much use for an multitrack (it can import audio though, so in principle you could use it to mix rendered audio from other apps… don’t think this is the most ideal workflow though).
Another thing - for those who really like the idea of using a keyboard with a tracker, sunvox for android supports bluetooth keyboards (this is not true of sunvox for ios at the moment). There are some portable keyboard options like the zagg flex that work well with tablets like the nexus 7.
Personally, I use the slide out keyboard on my droid 3 phone.
Thanx to this thread I got to know Sunvox. Best music experience on android I had so far. Amazing. Thanx guys
Don’t miss DAWosc. Fancy controller layouts like TouchOSC. Not such a fancy layout editor but the layouts are in txt format and as such can also be edited on your tablet with a text editor.
I’ve used Jasuto since its early days on the iphone/ipod touch. It’s pretty cool. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a modular interface - sort of a stripped down max/msp or pure data optimized for touch.
It has some unique touches, for example, the distance between contraptions can be mapped to a control parameter and the movement of contraptions (which affects this inter-contraption distance) can be recorded and looped. Super innovative stuff.
However, some things to realize:
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Jasuto is practically abandonware at this point - the last update was in 2010. I’m guessing it’s related to Chris Wolfe being hired by Moog to work on their stuff. I know he worked on the ios moog filter app, and I’m guessing he’s been working on the newer moog apps like animoog.
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the multitoouch support is pretty crappy (nonexistent?) under android, making it tedious to connect objects relative to the iphone/ipad version.
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The latency seems somewhat worse than other apps (even by android standards).
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I haven’t figured out how to get recordings to export to other apps. I haven’t investigated in too much depth (I’m guessing there must be temporary sound files somewhere in the filesystem), but if anyone has any idea how to do this, I’m all ears.
It still is a neat app, and for its time was really revolutionary. But this is why I can’t recommend it at the moment.