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A Look at Band for the iPhone

Sunday July 20, 2008 10:59 pm PDT by Arnold Kim
Arstechnica posts an in-depth look at the $9.99 iPhone App, Band [App Store], by Moo Cow Music.

The app was amongst the featured applications demoed at this year's WWDC. A Youtube Video provided by the developer shows its capabilities.



Ars put the app through its paces and was impressed by the built in functionality beyond basic instrument play:

While the ability to play these instruments would be impressive enough for an application running on a phone, the application also comes with some pretty impressive DAW functionality. You can record, overdub, solo a track, mute tracks, and make basic edits, all on a handheld device. You also have the ability to work on multiple songs, save them independently, erase the last note recorded, erase the last overdub, and erase the entire current instrument track. You can overdub as many times as you want, with the only limitation being the iPhone's processor.

Still despite all this, they note that you are unable to export your creations outside of the iPhone short of connecting to the headphone jack.
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xamkil83
Posted: 50 months ago
This app is a great one but I would love to have the ability to export my creations to Garage Band of even save them as a Ringtone on the iPhone. Mabie these features will come in an update to the app.
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nickspohn
Posted: 50 months ago
It makes me sad that he's charging $10 for this...
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hexonxonx
Posted: 50 months ago

It makes me sad that he's charging $10 for this...


why? Deveoper should be able to earn some money.
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xamkil83
Posted: 50 months ago

why? Deveoper should be able to earn some money.


I completely agree with you. He worked hard, and created a really cool app. 10$ is a fair price in my opinion.
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sunfast
Posted: 50 months ago
It's a shame you can't export your tracks though, considering all that power the app has.
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futherout
Posted: 50 months ago

I completely agree with you. He worked hard, and created a really cool app. 10$ is a fair price in my opinion.


yea, it is. But it has been free for jailbreakers. (and still is)
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macduke
Posted: 50 months ago

It's a shame you can't export your tracks though, considering all that power the app has.


Just buy a $2 male to male stereo jack, connect it to your line-in jack, and record away. Easy as pie. It's just not as convenient as syncing.

Most of these apps involving sound seem to not be able to export the audio files. My guess is that for this program, it is just a simple set of on / off switches turning on different audio track files at certain times. They would need to build in an encoder. Same is true for voice recording programs...I think there is like a core audio format that most of them are in that isn't useful to most people unless it is encoded. That could end up being a battery hog on the iPhone for all we know. It will be interesting to see how this turns out, but I could see companion apps being released that do all the encoding on the connected computer. It might not be as elegant but it may end up being more practical. I hope I'm wrong though. Maybe the h.264 chip on the iPhone can do it on the fly. That would be neat. Is access to that available in the SDK?
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macduke
Posted: 50 months ago
I must also say that I have downloaded this app and love it. Everyone who has seen it has been amazed that my iPhone is now a musical instrument. This app definitely has a high "wow" factor and I show it off all the time. So does Sketches...I've made some pretty crazy drawings, although I ended up losing a lot of them when I did a restore the other night. My girlfriend's nieces and nephews love both those apps, along with the Crash Bandicoot racing game. I got a rugged case for the 3g so I actually let kids play with it now. Just not near the pool! Kills my battery life though. I now carry the charger in my pocket. Sad.
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sunfast
Posted: 50 months ago

Just buy a $2 male to male stereo jack, connect it to your line-in jack, and record away. Easy as pie. It's just not as convenient as syncing.


Certainly easy, but D > A > D is always a shame! It'd be sweet if you exported the song to the iPod on the phone which synced back to iTunes like purchased music does. Maybe limitations in the SDK stopped them doing this.
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diamond.g
Posted: 50 months ago

Certainly easy, but D > A > D is always a shame! It'd be sweet if you exported the song to the iPod on the phone which synced back to iTunes like purchased music does. Maybe limitations in the SDK stopped them doing this.


Beatmaker gets around that by allowing you to upload your stuff wirelessly. I would think that Band would have to do the same thing.
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