Appmuse

I was a professional music producer for 10 years, and if i had discovered this app THEN… I literally don’t have to worry about my fingers’ ability to play what my mind is creating. This is hands down, the single greatest VSTi, ever…and nobody knows it. - J.Troup Show more

Update: It’s working again. Thank you for the response. I changed my star rating to 5 stars. It stopped working... I can hear any sounds from it (Dec 2020, iOS 14.3). Show more

It offers inspiration and a creative way to not only explore chords but serves as an amazing performance device through it MIDI support. I use it virtually every day!

Saw Doug at The Sound Test Room on YouTube give a tutorial...had to have it!

Watch the tutorial from The Sound Test Room on YouTube first, otherwise the interface can seem a bit overwhelming at first.

First off, this app is pretty useful and works well, but there are a couple peculiarities about it that bother me. For one, the 7th chord of the selected key is missing from most of the maps. But what REALLY irritates me is that you can’t select minor keys in any map except three (out of nine), and even then it’s a bit odd, because the 3rd chord is augmented. So you’re mostly confined to major scales, and only certain fixed chords within each map. This a huge bummer because the whole point of this app is exploring various chord combinations. It feels overpriced for what you're actually given to explore. Show more

I probably should give it 5 stars because it does everything it is suppose to do and it is a very powerful songwriting tool. The reason I only gave it 4 stars is because I have a wish list and I'm holding 1 star for ransom?. If it only had midi in, it could be an instrument instead of just a tool. Please add an in app purchase option for midi in with midi note and cc mapping. AUv3 and OSC support would make this app indispensable. It would enable musicians to play ChordMaps2 from their existing midi controllers or build custom midi controllers using arduino platform or software such as Lemur or Midi Designer Pro. Show more

You need to write music but you don’t have great instincts to composing chords to make a song? Don’t worry, this will greatly help you in your quest for musical harmony! Love the program, love the fact that you can easily tie it to your DAW, trigger and record the chord structures in your sequencer. Would like it even more if Chordmaps 3 (hint) could stand alone and included a few premium built sounds (piano, strings, guitars, some pads, bells and whistles, lol) that could be linked to the different sections and would allow you to just compose songs without the linking process to another DAW, but please keep ALL the features of this app you currently have. Thank you. Show more

This app is now an indispensable tool for me to make music. I can’t recommend this app enough.

This is, by far, the best music theory/performance interface out there. Probably not just for iPad but in general. Unfortunately it’s not exactly a pick it up, poke at it, and enjoy kind of thing. The documentation is there, it just verbose and not really set up for musical neophytes to be able to understand. Which is unfortunate and a bit weird as this has serious potential to be an amazing learning and teaching tool for music theory. Even more odd since that’s precisely why the dev built it... Anyway, if you can trudge though figuring it out, it’s ability to control up to like 7 different synth voices playing everything from chords, bass counter melody, melody, lead, solo, etc. all from one interface, all in a “musically coherent” manner is pretty amazing. It’s probably better served pairing with hardware though because it’s full screen (and even that’s not enough) and a lot of app switching would be needed to really go nuts with the thing. Buy it, learn it, love it! Show more

This app is harder to use with GarageBand ...I contacted the developer and he replied by saying “please also buy this other app” which is even more expensive ... Other than that... it seems quite useful... and I hope it continues to develop... how about some dynamics based on tilt... Show more

Might be a good app, but it has no midi. I have several keyboards and synths, all of which show up, but checked or not, there is no sound. Junk! Show more

It’s great to be able to have access to tools which have organized harmony/melody theory in such a practical way that you can access it and incorporate it into your music creation process so seamlessly. All of the chords in the app can be accessed from one page. You can select various chords, set the octaves for bass, chords, melody, and accompaniment parts plus set their MIDI destinations in the app. Even though you may have limited knowledge of music theory, you can still connect the app to whatever MIDI compatible apps or hardware you have and try any number of combinations out and record what is of interest to you as a MIDI track and/or audio track in the DAW of your choice. From there you can do further editing and always return to the app for further exploration at anytime in the process. Show more

actually very cool for exploring chords !! — pls add AB3 support so we can rock it, 5 stars if developer makes it happen!

I've enjoyed this app for years. When the new OS started giving warnings, I was worried the app would get updated. While I preferred the simpler interface, everything is all on one page now, but it also means using a stylus to press the correct sound. All things considered, I extremely pleased with this app. I even used it with KORG Gadget with no trouble. Show more

The fairly incoherent documentation seems to indicate this app will work with Korg Gadget, but there's no way to make Gadget play in the background so you can play chords in chordmaps2. Seems it only works with thumbjam which I'm not going to buy just to find out if this thing does anything at all. Let me know when this app works with audiobus or any other iOS MIDI standard. Show more

This app appeared to stand out to me among the various chord generation apps in the store. It is daunting at first, and there isn't much support in the way of tutorials. I've worked with it for a few hours and think it is quite impressive. However, it is NOT as easy to learn and master as implied in the other review and by the author. While it is true that a child could "mess around" with it and get complex chords, to get meaningful output requires practice and work. Also, and this matters to me, it only displays in portrait mode. The issue is that most synth and sound apps display in landscape. This causes it to be less useful live because your ability to change settings and voices will be impeded, especially if you are using a stand or a clamp. Still, it is a very good app with many tools for the songwriter/composer. Show more