The 6 Best Apps for Making Beats in 2022 (Ranked)
“What are the best apps for making beats in 2022?”
In 2022, artists like Billie Eilish are selling millions of albums recorded entirely in their family home, using only a laptop, a mic and a MIDI keyboard.
A couple decades ago, the concept of recording a full album from the comfort of your bedroom would have seemed ludicrous. Even at the turn of the century, the only way to produce music would have been to splash out on pricey recording studio sessions.
However, as technology advances, it is becoming easier and easier to record professional-quality music. Beatmaking tools and software are becoming cheaper and more accessible as the years go on.
There are now countless apps for making beats out there, which can be used to produce anything from simple, rudimentary loops to full, structured tracks.
Should I use apps for making beats?
The best part about making music is there are absolutely no rules.
It’s likely the majority of your production will take place inside a full DAW on your desktop or laptop. However, beatmaking apps make it incredibly easy to cook up beats while on-the-go.
If you want to make all your beats on an app (either mobile or tablet), there are music-making apps powerful enough to let you do that. However, it’s worth mentioning you won’t have the level of freedom and creative versatility of using a desktop DAW.
There is a seemingly endless amount of apps for making beats out there, from some of the biggest audio software companies in the world. So to help you along the way, we’ve compiled this list of the top 6 apps for making beats in 2022, enjoy!
1. Roland Zenbeats
Roland has a long history of sonic innovation, especially their iconic range of hardware keyboards and drum machines (the Roland TR-808 immediately springs to mind).
With their mobile/table app “Zenbeats”, they have packaged this innovation into an accessible format, with really impressive results.
Zenbeats is a beatmaking app with a fluid, dynamic workflow and a huge amount of additional features and controls to sink your teeth into. The app comes with an extensive selection of tools, such as “LoopBuilder Mode” (the classic pattern view), a MIDI editor, an audio editor/splicer, several virtual instruments, and a dedicated mixer view.
Additionally, Zenbeats offers a range of audio effects (EQ, Reverb, Compressor, Delay, Chorus, Flanger, AutoWah) to manipulate and finetune your tracks. This is a huge bonus, as many other apps for making beats do not have this level of in-app functionality.
As far as beatmaking apps go, there aren’t many other apps that offer the sonic flexibility that Zenbeats does.
On the flip side, due to the amount of features in the app, there’s a bit of a learning curve to get started (when compared to more basic beatmaking apps). But once you get the hang of it, it’s incredibly easy to capture your musical ideas quickly and intuitively.
Click here for more info (iOS / Android).
Easy of Use
Features
Value for Money
2. Native Instruments – iMaschine 2 (iOS)
If you’ve done any research on audio plugins or software, you’ve probably come across at least one Native Instruments product. We’ve been singing Native Instruments’ praises for as long as we remember, and to this day they remain the gold standard of audio plugins and beatmaking technology.
iMaschine 2 is their audio creation app that is perfect for rapidly turning your sonic ideas into a reality.
When compared to Zenbeats, I see iMaschine as more of a “sketchpad” for noting down musical inspiration while on-the-go. It’s not as feature-packed as Zenbeats, but it has almost no learning curve and is incredibly easy-to-use when rapidly creating loops and sequences.
Having said that, iMaschine now has an Arranger feature, which can be used to structure your loops into full tracks.
One advantage of using this app for making beats is the enormous sample library. Native Instruments are known for their stunning range of audio samples, many of which you can utilise within the app (although some Expansion downloads are in-app purchases).
Click here for more info (iOS only).
Ease of Use
Features
Value for Money
3. GarageBand Mobile (iOS)
Another fantastic app for making beats is Apple’s GarageBand.
It’s an unfortunate truth that the term “GarageBand” has some negative connotations associated with it, and is often seen as an amateur style of music production. At one point in time that may have been true, but today GarageBand is capable of a wide range of beatmaking and composition techniques.
GarageBand is now capable of multi-track recording, MIDI editing and a huge selection of virtual in-app instruments, including full orchestral sounds, guitars, drums and much more. These instruments are now intelligently grouped together, and the app allows you to add audio effects such as reverb and EQ to your sounds.
GarageBand also includes Alchemy, a powerful, beautifully-designed synthesizer. This virtual synth comes with hundreds of Apple‑designed presets, from EDM, hip-hop to rock and everything in between.
I would say GarageBand holds the title for the most intuitive app for making beats, and it is perfect for beginners looking to dip their toes into the vast ocean of music production.
Click here for more info (iOS only).
Ease of Use
Features
Value for Money
Free product!
4. BeatMaker 3 (iOS)
BeatMaker 3 is another example of an app for making beats that is overflowing with extra features and controls.
This app offers a genuinely staggering amount of in-app features, including a sample editor, a multi-track sequencer, a realistic mixer console, multi-track audio recording, a gorgeous keyboard sampler and dedicated drum machine.
Much like Roland’s Zenbeats, this beatmaking app has an initial learning curve. But once you understand the app’s layout and workflow, making beats becomes a walk in the park.
A personal highlight of BeatMaker 3 is the expansive drum machine, which boasts 128 trigger pads: 16 pads over 8 banks. This section allows you to control audio parameters on individual pads: volume, pan, mute, output bus, semitone, fine tune, reverse and autoscaling. Not only that, but it offers an ADSR control for each pad. This is a seriously impressive level of versatility for a beatmaking app.
Click here for more info (iOS only).
Ease of Use
Features
Value for Money
5. Caustic 3
If you’re a Android user, you may have begun to notice the industry bias towards Apple-only apps. Apps such as iMaschine and BeatMaker 3 are engineered solely for iPhones, and this doesn’t seem likely to change any time soon.
Thankfully, there is still a range of incredibly powerful apps for making beats available for both Android and Apple. Zenbeats is one example, as well as the highly popular music creation app Caustic 3.
Not only that, but it’s currently available as a free download.
This app contains an outstanding effects rack supporting 20 effect types with 2 effects per machine, a mixer console with global delay/reverb parameters, a “mastering” section with EQ and limiter options, and full song-sequencing functionality.
But perhaps more impressive is it’s range of virtual in-app “machines”, including multiple, powerful synthesizers (analog, Bass-line, harmonic pad synth, modular synth, and more!) as well as drum machines, a vocoder and a brand-new supersaw-type polysynth!
Caustic 3 is definitely one of the most underrated apps for making beats in 2022.
Click here for more info (Android / iOS).
Ease of Use
Features
Value for Money
Free product!
6. iMPC PRO 2
The final entry on this list is Akai’s iMPC PRO 2, a beatmaking app with a ton of unique features packaged in a dark, sleek interface.
It features multiple sampling methods (using the microphone, using the line input, the multi-touch virtual turntable interface for your iTunes library, InterApp Audio or by resampling your own audio), countless core MPC features and a giant custom sample library.
iMPC is broken down into 5 main tabs; Main, Program, Mixer, Timeline, and Song. This workflow allows you to create anything from a basic, 4-on-the-floor house beat to a sampled, lofi hip hop track.
iMPC PRO 2 is undoubtedly one the cleanest, most intuitive apps for making beats in 2022, and is an excellent choice for iOS users to begin creating beats on-the-fly.
Click here for more info (iOS only).
Ease of Use
Features
Value for Money
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