The mobile app industry has exploded since the debut of the iTunes App Store five years ago. No matter what operating system your mobile device runs on, there are available applications to help you improve your process for making music (or just have fun messing around). For the sake of brevity, I’ll talk about a few options that are available to iOS users that will allow you to make your mobile device an active part of your studio and creative process (If you use an Android or any other platform, don’t feel left out; there are similar choices available to you as well). These different apps can turn a phone or tablet into an amazing tool for making music whenever the creative inspiration happens.

In my last post, I discussed a few types of controllers that can be used for producing music electronically – thanks to mobile apps, a single device has the ability to fill the roles of a variety of these controllers or instruments. Depending on your needs and preferences, it could just be a better idea to invest in a large tablet device and a few applications rather than buying multiple controllers. After reading a bit more, you can make a decision on which route you should take with your studio.

Apps on Apples

If you have an iPad, then you have an extremely powerful tool for digital music production lying in your hands. The large touch-screen, portability, and the variety of available apps will allow you to do a lot of cool stuff for music production. Like I said before, an iPad (or Android tablet) could replace every one of the controllers that I described in my previous post because of the different available apps that were designed to serve their functions.

But even if you don’t have the iPad and its large display, its little brother can still do just as much and is even more portable. Apple’s iPhone is responsible for about a quarter of all mobile phone sales in the world and they come with over 800,000 apps that are currently available for purchase in the iTunes App Store. There’s an amazing amount of these apps that were designed for music production, but I’ll just focus here on a few types of them.

DAWs:

Remember some of the software that I described in my first post? A couple of these are available in mobile form, and many others exist so that your musical ideas can be captured anywhere at any time. Last month, Steinberg released their popular Cubase DAW in a mobile version called Cubasis and Apple’s Garageband has been available and affordable for a few years now. These types of applications are extremely useful because they provide you a mobile workplace where you can create and save your ideas no matter where you are. I wouldn’t recommend these for doing full projects or as a main DAW, but they are a great resource for producing while you’re on the bus or during a boring TV show.

Examples: Steinberg Cubasis, Apple Garageband, Propellerhead Figure

Instruments:

These types of apps will turn your device into a playable instrument such as a synthesizer or a drum set. There are many keyboard apps available, and many of them have MIDI capabilities that can connect to your studio. I’m sure an experienced pianist or drummer would hate these because of how they feel to play, but they’re great for jamming a few quick melodies or sketching down some MIDI sequences to improve later. There are also many apps that emulate grid-style controllers, drum pads, and mixers. The ability to control an app by the device’s touch-screen makes using digital faders and knobs on a mixer application extremely fun and powerful.

Examples: Moog Filtatron, Korg iMS-20 (iPad Only), Liine Lemur, AppBC touchAble (iPad Only for Ableton’s Live DAW)

Hardware:

If you want to integrate your phone or tablet as an active part of your home studio or make it a hub for your other devices, then it is important to get some hardware in order to do so. You will need to get adapters such as a MIDI or a guitar interface that will allow you to hook your device into your studio or to connect your instruments to your mobile apps. These interfaces simply hook into your iPhone’s 30-pin dock connector or the new Lightning port and provide you with inputs and outputs for communicating MIDI or audio data. Once you have this connection, you are ready to treat your mobile device as a new component in your music studio or as a recording hub for your other devices.

Examples: Line6 MIDIMobilizer, IKMultimedia’s Variety of iRig Devices, Yamaha iMX-1 MIDI Interface, Alesis iO Dock

Find what works for you.

These types of apps can transform your phone or tablet into an active part of your main studio or even give you a separate environment to work with while you are away. Like I’ve said with all my recommendations, choose which apps or devices you think will best complement or contribute to your creative process. It’s possible that you may find mobile devices frustrating and hard to work with, and there is nothing wrong with that conclusion. However, inspiration happens at random times and places, and a mobile device with a couple great apps on it can allow you to capture it when it strikes. Choose an app or two that work for you and you will have a powerful musical creation tool at your disposal at all times.