Yeah absolutely! I was actually just thinking I should write a blog post or something about this topic some time, as I often find myself trying to explain how to get started with mobile music making to people… perhaps this comment can be v0.1 of that post ;)

To some extent, I’d say it depends on what kind of music you want to make, and how you want to approach making it. I’d recommend different starting points to someone who wanted to primarily “arrange” songs in a somewhat traditional fashion, perhaps recording in some live instruments and adding some synths and effects and drum loops etc.; vs. someone wanting to make electronic/experimental music in a more freeform “jamming” approach; vs. someone primarily interested in playing synths live with a keyboard. Personally I’m more interested in the electronic jamming approach, but I’ll try to comment on the approaches too, I’m just not an expert there.

If you’re interested in arranging songs and perhaps recording some live instruments, you probably want something similar to a “DAW” (Desktop Audio Workstation, terminology for desktop software such as Cubase or Logic). Software like this presents your song as a timeline, usually with time on the x axis and multiple tracks of recorded audio or MIDI notes on the y axis, so you can see the overall arrangement and easily create e.g. a verse/chorus structure (this kind of thing: https://www.audiotechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2...).

This will let you record in audio from a microphone (you can use the one on the device, or you can connect an existing audio interface via USB with the right adapter, or you can buy specialist iOS microphones), edit it, add effects to it etc., and then let you add in other tracks with synths etc. with notes usually arranged in blocks on a “piano roll” (https://sevish.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/19-edo-c-maj.p... then you can structure your song by moving these blocks around and editing them.

Garageband is actually a great starting point here – it’s free with every iOS device, and has a load of built-in synths, loops and effects, and is pretty easy to use. If you want to get more serious, I think Cubasis and Auria are the two main contenders on iOS. Personally, I have to say I find this kind of software a bit fiddly to use on an iPad, especially if you don’t have a pencil. It’s the kind of thing that to me benefits from having a mouse for more accurate editing and a big screen. That said, a lot of people do happily make music like this on an iPad, and if you do want to go this route, you can use a lot of the other awesome plugin synths and effects available for the iPad inside your chosen app, so it’s pretty flexible.

If you’re interested in something a little less traditional and more electronic focussed, but pretty straightforward to use, I think “groovebox” type apps are great. These apps typically contain a bunch of synths and effects, and let you create multiple tracks with loops on them, sometimes using a piano roll, sometimes using a “step sequencer” (where you have 16 steps you can turn on or off, each step representing 1/4 of a beat). The main difference between these and the more “DAW-like” apps, is that they tend not to have such a traditional way of arranging songs on a timeline - it’s often more about playing it somewhat live. They also tend to be closed ecosystems, in that you can only use the synths and effects provided with the app. The advantage here is that they tend to be cohesively designed, and immediately gratifying.

For me, the best app on iOS for this is Korg Gadget. It comes with a big selection of synths and effects, all of which sound great and strike a nice balance between simplicity and still being able to tweak the sounds in interesting ways. There are also a bunch more synths/effects you can buy in app, but there is plenty to get started with in the basic version. It’s pretty easy to use, and it sounds great. It’s not that cheap though, although they do sometimes have sales on it, and there is a free “LE” version you can download to try it out.

Some other apps that might be of interest in this area include Auxy (which is simpler than Gadget, very elegantly designed, but a little bit basic for me - but free to try), Ampify Groovebox (probably a bit easier to use than Gadget, but more limited, again you can try it out for free), and NanoStudio 2 (which is maybe a bit closer to a DAW than a groovebox, it’s somewhere in between). If you’re interested in hip hop style music making (which is more sample based), you might find Akai iMPC Pro or Beatmaker 3 interesting - these are more focussed on a classic sampler-type workflow.

Finally, there’s the more free-form approach of using individual synth and effect apps. There are tonnes of these, including from some of the big names in the music industry (Korg, Eventide, Moog). You can use the apps on their own, if you just want to play with one sound at a time (e.g. hooking up a keyboard and playing with other instruments, or running a guitar through an effect), but where it gets really interesting for me is that Apple added a technology called “Audio Units” (more commonly referred to as AUv3) to iOS a few years ago, which allows synths and effects supporting this standard to be used as plugins inside other apps.

This means that you can hook up e.g. a synth by Moog to an effect by Eventide, and then add a drum machine by Korg on another track, etc. You can do this inside most of the DAW apps I already mentioned (and in Nanosutdio, I believe), so you can use these plugins to arrange songs traditionally; but another kind of workflow has emerged on iOS which is much more freeform, primarily using an app called AUM. AUM can host Audio Unit apps, but has no concept of a traditional timeline. Instead, it can host Audio Units which generate MIDI note data instead of sound, then route this note data to synths, which are then routed through effects. You can then just “jam” in real time and record the results – it’s a workflow much more analogous to using hardware sequencers and synths, and is something quite unique that has emerged as a popular way to make music on iOS.

I actually recorded a video recently for someone showing a quick jam session in AUM to explain the concept better, so check that out if you are interested, it should explain it better than I can in words :) https://www.dropbox.com/s/6xq0fw37k4lx8km/AUM.mp4?dl=0. If you are interested in this way of working, hit me up for recommendations on specific apps and effects.

One last thing to mention is the weird and wonderful apps that don’t quite fit in any of these categories. The fairly low barrier to entry to iOS development, the nature of the touch screen, and the low price point of most apps has created a really exciting scene of developers creating some really crazy apps. Some of these are just nice uses of the touch screen, some of them are fun toys, some of them are crazy modular synthesis systems. A few apps to check out if this intrigues you: Figure is a really fun way to make simple electronic loops. Samplr is one of my favourite touch screen experiences for playing with samples. Drambo is an insanely flexible modular synth/sequencer (there’s also MiRack, which is a port of a desktop app called VCV Rack, if you are interested in modular). Fractal Bits is a weird and wonderful glitch synth. There are so many great apps out there, the only problem is it’s addictive! There’s a good forum at forum.audiob.us if you want to delve deeper.

Sorry, this post is rather long - I hope it doesn’t break any etiquette rules here.

TL;DR: Garageband is free, great way to get started with fairly traditional music making on iOS. Gadget is king of the groove boxes but its worth checking out a few apps as they tend to have free "lite" versions. If you want to get into the world of freeform music making, AUM is the place to start. Have fun and feel free to ask questions here or via Twitter/whatever!