RT60 Ltd: Songzap iPhone DAW App

A pocket DAW app for your iPhone? Sure! Songzap is built for creating and capturing song ideas. Professor Rob Toulson and Dr. Mike Exarchos developed this app, and Rob wrote the excellent book Drum Sound and Drum Tuning [Tape Op #146] and made the iDrumTune Pro app; plus, he's a real musician. Here's a cursory overview of Songzap: The Groove pane includes AI analysis of your instrument loops that will generate drums, bass, and pads to fit. Or just simply start with a drum beat that can be created/modified visually by nudging kit parts around; I had some Peter Gabriel-style beats going instantly! The Arrange pane allows the naming and shuffling of song parts around. The Track panel is where your four audio tracks can be recorded – a 4-track for the modern age! The Mix pane offers up a simple mixer of all the elements, plus premium mode opens access to EQ and compression sliders in a second window, something I never imagined I'd see on a smartphone. We can even import existing audio and track along to it; imagine how handy this could be for singers who need to write or practice a song before returning to the studio and want to be able to do so anytime they please. Songzap is designed to utilize the built-in iPhone mic, though it will also work with an external mic or audio interface input if your phone can do that. This app does what it sets out to do very well, and in an intuitive manner; I found it easy to muck about and capture ideas on the fly. The fact that audio can be imported into the app, tracked over, then exported and saved to the cloud is important – then you could drop your good idea into any DAW as a starting point. One obviously has to download the app via Apple, but go to the Songzap website for a multitude of tutorials and information. Now, get to writing and creating!