How Apple’s New Music Memos App, GarageBand Updates Aid Song Creation

Music Memos lets songwriters quickly capture their latest song ideas, while GarageBand provides a virtual drummer, instrument loops and more.

Music Memos gives musicians the ability to record their latest song and musical ideas using their iPhone, iPad or iPod, and then put them together using the sounds of various instruments and other features. Users can then listen to their recorded song ideas to make changes, additions and other customizations.

When spur-of-the-moment musical ideas arise, Music Memos can be used to quickly and easily get a new song creation started with a simple screen tap. The app allows users to record high-quality, uncompressed audio through the built-in microphone of their iOS device or through an external microphone. Music Memos is optimized to work with an acoustic guitar or piano, but works with other musical instruments, too.

Music Memos lets users hear how their music will sound when joined by tracks from a virtual drummer and bass player. Users can modify and tweak the energy and performance of the drums or bass with a few simple on-screen controls in the app.

Music Memos also lets users organize their song ideas with names, tags and descriptions so the pieces can be saved and integrated into other creations later. By tagging songs or components with descriptions such as Intro, Bridge, Verse, Upbeat or Mellow, users can easily find the pieces later when they are needed as inspirations for other songs.

Songs created in Music Memos can be moved into the GarageBand app to add more advanced features and capabilities as needed. Users can export their tracks into GarageBand on iOS or GarageBand or Logic Pro X on a Mac. Users can also email song ideas to friends or collaborators, add the tracks to their iTunes library or post them to Apple Music Connect, SoundCloud or YouTube directly from the app.

GarageBand now includes Live Loops and virtual drummer features that allow users to add a wider range of sounds and effects to their musical creations. With Live Loops, users can create music like a DJ by triggering sound loops in real time. On-screen controls let users add sounds from instruments including a piano, organ, guitar and drums.

GarageBand now has a built-in virtual drummer that gives users new options to add percussion and drums to their song creations. Drummer for iOS lets users choose from nine acoustic and electronic drummers to add drum performances as needed.

GarageBand includes a wide range of sounds from musical instruments through its Touch Instruments capabilities. Touch Instruments sound and respond like the real thing and allow users to add keyboards, guitars, bass and much more.

Musicians can use GarageBand across their Apple devices using iCloud, which keeps GarageBand sessions up to date across all of a user’s iOS devices. Songs can be started on one device and then worked on or completed on another device.