Xewton Music Studio for iPhone/iPod touch

What strikes a potential customer first is the 'professional' price (15 EUR). This is quite high compared to other iPhone applications, so there is a lot to expect.

 

After starting the program I was not disappointed at first glance. There are 7 sections from which you can choose at the top of the screen.

 

The first section comprises an on display keyboard that you can use to play instruments live and also record single tracks. 

 

The second section offers the instrument list with 21 instruments, which is not excessive, but suffices for simple basic arrangements. The instruments are mainly acoustic, only three instruments are synthesizer sounds (Synth Fat Lead, Synth Bass and Dream Pad). Except for attack and release nothing can be edited. The instruments' sound is quite ok by iPod means, not comparable to professional sounds for PC/Mac software samplers like Kontakt, Halion, etc. of course.

 

Probably the most important section is named "Tracks" where you can build your song from tracks. You can also edit single notes in a piano roll, cut/copy/paste notes and segments. There is also a very helpful quantize function.

 

Next comes the "Effects" section which contains 4 effects: Reverb, Delay, EQ, Amplifier (tube simulation). The quality is mixed, you should first disable all effects and only activate selectively the ones you consider useful.

 

In the "Projects" area you can save, load and create projects. "Setup" allows for changing settings like auto-scroll, latency, etc.

 

Finally the right-most section is the help section which works only online and explains first steps and also advanced techniques.

 

The usability of Xewton is quite ok, but could be enhanced in many points. Also some smaller bugs are waiting to be corrected. On my wish list you can find more instruments with more editing possibilities, enhanced usability, more demo projects and an improved help system. Although this list is quite long Xewton Music Studio is one of the best music production systems for the iPhone. Fans of electronic music styles will certainly miss some more synthesizer sounds though.

 

Hopefully future versions will bring more instruments, this is somehow the biggest drawback of Xewton at the moment and limits the kind of songs you can compose with it.

 

An alternative for electronic music styles could be iSequence, but that's a different post :)