Music is a big part of Apple, and it has been for a long time. Music helped to make Apple what it is today with iTunes and the iPod and Apple’s got its own GarageBand music editing software, Apple Music streaming service, and Beats line of headphones. And today Apple is making music an even bigger part of its company with a new app.
Music Memos is a new iOS app from Apple that aims to make it easier to take note of any ideas you have for some new music. The app can record uncompressed audio, and it can also detect your tempo and provide drums and bass that you can adjust if you’d like. You can also use Music Memos to tune your guitar.
Once you’ve recorded some music, you can add comments, lyric ideas, alternate tunings or capo position to any memo that you’ve saved. You can also name and tag the memos to make them easier to find later. Once you’re all done, your memo will be saved in iCloud Drive so that you can access it on other iOS devices. Music Memos also supports exporting to GarageBand on iOS as well as GarageBand and Logic Pro X on the Mac so that you can further tune your tune.
Music Memos also includes some sharing features to get your music out into the world. You can email them if you want to share with select people or you can share to SoundCloud, YouTube, or Apple Music Connect to share with a larger group.
Apple has long offered a Voice Memos app that you could use to record quick audio notes, but this new Music Memos app seems much better suited to musical tasks. And while I’m not very musically inclined — my history consists of a couple of years playing bass in a band in high school — I can see how Music Memos could be super useful to folks more talented than me. The app can let you quickly begin recording an idea, which is good because it means you’re less likely to forget what you’re thinking about since you won’t be fumbling through a bunch of app settings, and it makes it easy to collaborate with others.
Music Memos is free and can be downloaded from the App Store right here.
Apple today also pushed out a major update to GarageBand for iOS. The big new feature is Live Loops, which lets you create music by tapping cells and columns in a grid to trigger different samples, sort like DJ hardware controllers.
