BeatMaker 3 to hit iOS July 15 with a bag of updates and features
BeatMaker 3's sample editor. · Source: Intua.net
BeatMaker 3's sample pads. · Source: Intua.net
BeatMaker 3's mixer · Source: Intua.net
When it comes to complete music production solutions for the iPad, Intua BeatMaker is one of the oldest and best apps around. That’s because its history runs deep – a veteran of mobile music making, it was one of the first apps to appear in the App Store when it opened in 2008, giving the world an early look at the possibilities that have now become commonplace.
Taking advantage of the increase in mobile hardware power over the years, BeatMaker has grown to handle arranging and composing with samples, loops, scenes, effects, music apps, MIDI hardware, and almost anything else you can think of. It’s the closest to a Machine or MPC-style workflow you can get on the iPad without going for Native Instruments or Akai’s respective apps – iMaschine and iMPC.
There are good news for those enjoying BeatMaker’s power. Intua announced that BeatMaker 3 is about to drop July 15, bringing a huge list of updates, fixes, and new functionality along with the version increase. Above are three screengrabs published by Intua, along with a small taste of the new stuff that’s coming to iPhone, iPad, and iPod beatmakers.
In BeatMaker 3, each of the 128 pads in a bank runs a multi-layered sampler engine or an IAA/Audio Unit V3 instrument. Audio tracks can be added on top for recording and playback of audio clips, then up to eight aux tracks can be added for more complexity. If you can’t make music with all that, you must be a very experimental artist!
The sequencer, BeatMaker’s heart, has been improved with the addition of a Scene mode, where you can compose in a pattern-based approach. Multiple patterns are triggered and quantized to fit together.
BeatMaker 3 also comes with 16 macros per each bank, output, audio, and aux track. This way, bank presets can be saved with chains of effects and macros. Macros themselves can control multiple parameters at once from banks, pad, layers, and effects. Furthermore, BM 3 is going to be fully MIDI-controlled.
The full list of specifications is available over at Intua’s website. It’s extensive and worth going over, just to see what the steadily increasing processing power of Apple’s mobile devices is doing for app developers and, ultimately, musicians. Head over to Intua’s and get educated before BeatMaker 3’s July 15 release.
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