![]() ![]() If you’re a musician, Music Memos might be the best app on your iPhone. This lets you play almost silently, and grab ideas without firing up a whole rig. Music Memos does a fine job using just the iPhone’s built-in mic, but it also works great with a digital interface like we’re using. Especially as you can take the result and send it straight to GarageBand for further tweaking (more on that in a future installment). It might sound like a gimmick, but this can provide serious inspiration. But this app’s killer app is that it analyzes your playing, figures out the tempo and the chords (or melody), and automatically adds a bass line and drums. You could leave it right there, and most of the time I do, letting it keep my ideas for later. It launches fast, and lets you preserve quick ideas or play whole songs. ![]() Bonus tip: Record with Music MemosĪpple’s Music Memos is like Voice Notes for your music. That’s it! You can stop reading now and go play. ![]() Just fire one up, and it will automatically detect your incoming signal, process it through any selected amplifiers and effects pedal, and send the awesome result out the other end. (Note: BIAS FX is iPad-only, and only ToneStack offers a free trial version.) My favorites are Yonac’s ToneStack and Positive Grid’s BIAS FX. It is also a bit complex to set up, so we’ll choose a dedicated app that’s just plug and play. ![]() The free option is GarageBand for iOS, which features a section dedicated to amps and guitar effects. You’ll need an app to actually process the digital signal and send it out to the speaker. You may notice that not much is happening. It has pretty much everything you’ll ever need. Yonac’s ToneStack sounds fantastic, and works on your iPad and your iPhone. Some of these Lightning interfaces use the iPhone’s headphone jack as an output, which is fine as long as it has one. The guitar gets plugged into the big hole, your external speaker or headphones get plugged into the little hole, and the Lightning cable runs to your iPhone or iPad. I use the Line 6 Sonic Port because it brings a bunch of useful inputs and outputs, which are of better quality than my iPad’s headphone output. You’ll need an interface to sit between your guitar and your iDevice. If you opt for one of those crappy interfaces, you can still use it with the iPhone 7 as long as you didn’t lose the headphone dongle that shipped in the box. Instead, you need something that hooks up to the Lightning port. You should opt for a digital interface instead - those $12 fake iRigs on Amazon might be tempting, but you will want to upgrade almost immediately, making them a big waste of $12. The cheapest of these actually do use the iPhone’s headphone jack, but the result is usually crackly and noisy thanks to all those signals running in and out through the same wire. You can’t just run a cable from the guitar to the iPhone’s headphone socket. Yousician, for instance, listens to your racket and coaches you, as if you were playing Guitar Hero. You’ll also gain access to a lot of neat learning tools. The quality of the recordings will be way better too. But if you make it a habit to play through your iPhone, you’ll be able to capture ideas instantly, instead of forgetting them while you fumble your phone from your pocket. You could always dig your iPhone out and jam the mic up next to your amp’s speaker, recording snippets with the Voice Recorder app. That’s great not only for making the next hit, but for capturing a fleeting idea. Think of it as a way to have every classic amp and guitar pedal at hand, without filling up your basement or draining your bank account. First, you can send your signal through several pro-level guitar amplifier simulators, as well as an almost endless selection of effects. There are a whole lot of advantages to playing your music through an iOS device, even if all you want to do is output the sound to a regular guitar amp. ![]()
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