Apple Debuts New App Music Memos

Most modern-day songwriters – well, the ones with iPhones – have gotten to know their Voice Memos app well; the program is a rudimentary audio recorder, perfect for taping a quick melody or lyric idea. On the other end of the spectrum is Garage Band, Apple’s audio engineering program, which allows users to create tracks and produce songs on any device.

This week, Apple released an application intended to strike a happy medium between Voice Memos and Garage Band: Music Memos, a slightly more advanced audio recorder that can break down tracks into measures, figure out what chord progressions are in a song, and keep a log of your “ideas,” or past recordings, for easy access. The app also allows users to add backing tracks and adjust the levels of different instruments, making it a very simple, easy-to-use, one-stop shop for recording demos in any situation. If you’re looking to do more mixing, you can open the song in Garage Band directly from the app. Otherwise, Music Memos can upload the track to YouTube, Soundcloud, or a variety of other streaming services.

The app is free to download from the Apple App Store.