APP
OF THE
DAY
Auxy Studio
Music & Beat Maker
A mobile music studio that facilitates sonic explorations as well as the production of release-ready tracks, Auxy is a versatile digital-audio workstation for professionals and novices alike.
To get started, open up a new track and fine-tune your parameters by setting your tempo, key, scale type, and swing. You can also play with the ducker—which automatically reduces the volume of an instrument after it hits—and choose how you’d like it to trigger. (If you’re not sure what any of this is, it’s OK! Just make some selections to play with for your first track.)
Once you’ve got your framework in place, it’s time to start layering in some instruments. Depending on whether you’re going for ambient or dance music, you’ll probably want to start with percussion. To do so, select Drums and Samples and check out the array of options, organized into alluring kit names such as Battery, Appetite, and Itch.
Add a kit to your project and explore its distinct arrangement of elements, all of which can be tweaked per your desired ends. Mess around with subdivisions, syncopations, and tone. Want a distorted kick drum sound hitting on the ones with reverb like a psychedelic transmission from a wandering Mars rover? Not a problem.
Auxy’s interface for laying sounds is intuitive and gratifying. An easy-to-decipher grid allows for simple touch placement. Selecting the name of your component at the top of a column opens up a panel for altering pitch or length, matching note lengths, or automating pitch, among others.
Once your bed of beats is set, you’re ready to go back to your project panel, add another instrument, and select Melodic Sounds. Auxy features samples from sound designers and creators around the world—from trance producer Airbase to the team at Puremagnetik (former collaborators with Ableton and Native Instruments). Add and mix as you see fit, or easily import any samples of your own you’d like to use.
You can set up your project to loop over one measure or more, and you can set up multiple scenes to tie loops together in sequence and build out a song. Do this one loop at a time or finesse each one first and build out your next scene with a whole new array of sounds.
Lots of export options make it easy to upload to SoundCloud or to create compressed AAC or uncompressed WAV files. You can also share a project link to collaborate in the app, or export stems or MIDI files. Pros might also want to use the Ableton Link function to connect to their Ableton Live instance.
Whether you’re hoping to hit the top of the charts or kill some time by building a monster cuckoo loop, Auxy’s News will keep you updated on the latest samples while its featured monthly playlist will show you how top producers are putting them to work.
And if you want to try something completely off the wall, there’s a sound pack called Panic Attack, which is full of “screaming leads, sirens, and growls”—sounds like something too good to ignore.