Find your creative flow.
Roland Zenbeats is a music creation app that keeps you in an effortless artistic flow. Get started on any mobile device or computer platform and make music anywhere, anytime. With its collection of both modern and legendary sounds, Zenbeats brings Roland’s history of innovation into a new, mobile-friendly format.
The app is your instrument.
Whether you’re an emerging musician or an established producer, Zenbeats makes music creation easy. Build beats, compose full multitrack songs, or sample the world around you. Wherever you are, no matter what platform or device you use, capture your creative spark with Zenbeats.
A universe of sound.
Whatever style you’re working in, you’ll find the perfect sounds for your tracks in Zenbeats. From vintage Roland JUNO and JUPITER tones to diverse and progressive instruments for any genre, the 14,000-plus presets will keep your compositions fresh and exciting.
ZR1. The future of beatmaking.
Our ZR1 Drum Sampler is a new kind of beat machine. Fast track your percussive prowess with seminal Roland drum tones from the TR-808, TR-909, and more.
Sample your world.
Sample and import directly into ZR1’s drum pads with the touch of a finger.
Edit. Refine. Repeat.
Tweak your sounds with advanced editing functionality. Manipulate and chop your one-shot samples with the slice editor and quickly crop and fade as needed.
ZC1. Roland’s most advanced synth engine.
ZC1 is a versatile synthesizer based on our powerful ZEN-Core Synthesis System. The free version features signature Roland synth sounds and 60 presets, driven by a sleek touch-based interface with an X/Y pad for easy sound manipulation. When you unlock the full version of ZC1, you get over 900 additional presets and 90 MFX that are all fully compatible with ZENOLOGY and supported ZEN-Core hardware.
Deep MIDI and audio power at your fingertips.
The Zenbeats ecosystem offers tons of time-saving tools to document, edit, and refine your ideas. Quickly capture and play sounds with LoopBuilder, or use a traditional approach with the Timeline view for more sophisticated arrangements and automation options.
Fresh sounds. Fresh ideas.
The Zenbeats Store is loaded with sounds, loops, and creative tools to expand your musical palette. Whatever sound or genre you’re chasing, the Zenbeats Store has you covered. All sounds are royalty-free and new tones are added weekly.
Mix and match.
With the full-screen mixer view, it’s simple to control volume, filter, panning, and more. Browse through 17 native FX, EQ tracks to your liking, and balance all your audio, instrument, and drum tracks from one streamlined location.
Easy Sharing.
Effortless transfers between phone, tablet, and desktop make the distance between you and your finished product even shorter. Use Google Drive™ or OneDrive to share Zenbeats projects and export stems and loops for use in other DAWs.
Free, unlock, or membership. The choice is yours.
With the free version of Zenbeats, you get music production essentials plus the ability to purchase additional loops and presets in the Zenbeats Store. When you’re ready to expand, there are three ways to unlock the full Zenbeats experience:
Platform Unlock: Get all features, instruments, and effects on your favorite platform. Platform Unlock includes over 2,500 presets, loops, and sounds (2.5 GB), ZR1 Drum Sampler with sampling/editing, ZC1 Synthesizer with 90 built-in MFX, full SampleVerse modular synthesizer with editor, VST/AU/AUv3 support, and unlimited mixing and export capabilities.
Max Unlock: Get all features, instruments, effects, and store packs on all platforms and devices.
Roland Cloud Membership: All Roland Cloud membership tiers include Zenbeats Max Unlock. All memberships come with Zenbeats Max Unlock for as little as $2.99 USD per month.
Zencore is a great ecosystem. The newest Zenbeats is a great daw for beginners and professionals alike. It’s just easy to lay down ideas and record them. It’s cross platform cloud integration is unlike anything else. I can sketch out ideas on my iPad and continue them in my studio without hassle. Zenbeats for iOS is not a stripped down version or a lite version to the desktop version. It’s the same exact program. Other ecosystems don’t make it as easy, but this one does. What’s great is if you’re a windows user, you can get the same touchscreen experience on a bigger screen which allows you to not rely on shortcuts and mouse clicking. I think people need to understand what they are buying here. It’s a steal. For as little as 2.99 you’re getting thousands of synth and drum sounds and presets that are found in hardware synths for thousands and they sound great. Zenology and concerto are great plugins in house. So why four stars? Roland cloud management can be a hassle. Support is very good though. They answer right away. Third party plugins can play a little nicer but that’s not entirely Roland’s fault. I also would like to see more native midi support. Mapping a controller wasn’t the easiest thing but it was manageable. Also on desktop versions I’d like to see multi screen capability. Plugins all in one window can be a little overwhelming it’s nice to use a second, third, even fourth screen to spread the racks out a bit. So a relatively new ecosystem in the game, I understand it will take time and users do their part and find the bugs and provide feedback, it’s how this will get better. So great job Roland and thanks for having a responsive support team. Keep it up and I’d like to see this thing get even better.
Developer Response
Wow- thank you so much for the positive and very comprehensive review! We have shared your requests with our developers, and are committed to continued improvements and enhancements. Thanks again!- Roland/BOSS Support
It should be the best DAW, but sometimes it crashes at the worst time.
LJ Douglas
I’m pretty sure the dev team is small and those guys probably read these comments. Matthew does great work and I realize they had/have their hands full with zenology gx. I think you should seriously take a look at releasing zc1 and zr1 as individual apps and making Zenbeats a closed ecosystem. In my opinion, get rid of auv3. (This is where most crashes come from in my experience). I would also start porting all the vsts in Roland cloud to Zenbeats devices. I would make sure all aira devices have compatibility and integration. For example if I connect my p6 to my phone and I’m in Zenbeats, the p6 should automatically show up as a new instrument. The transport controls should just work and the pads shouldn’t be affected by the key lock. This should happen with all Roland devices. Like a tr-1000 connected to an iPad Pro. It should show up as an instrument with all the sub tracks like a zr1. How does the sp404 have deep integration with koala but not Zenbeats? If you guys would ever hire someone that only knows JavaScript I’d love to work with the team. I’ve asked before on FB lbvs. Even as an intern.
Developer Response
Thank you for the thoughtful review. We really do appreciate feedback like this. We would love to hear more from you on the issues you are experiencing if you reach out through the link below. https://www.roland.com/cloud/contact-us/
This thing is amazing now. The amount of improvement is staggering!
Codowlsky Polopumus
Let me start out by saying Ive been checking in on this app off and on for maybe 6-8 months (just a best guess). My first impression was “ah, this is awesome - real potential here”. But then the bugs and crashes and freezes got me.I’ve checked back maybe every 45 days or something since then and it’s just been rock solid, steady improvement after steady improvement after steady improvement. I think I own just about every music production app worth owning on iOS these days (and scores of apps not worth owning!) and I have to say, never before have I ever seen an app improve consistently like this. Ever. No where even close that I can think of. This thing has just gotten better and better and better. Now it’s super stable, reliable, powerful and for my money, the best tool for top to bottom on iOS at the moment. I said it. I believe it. I’m all about Roland these days, extremely refreshing, extremely impressive. This brand has earned my respect and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store.
Developer Response
Hi Codowlsky,Thanks for taking the time to review. We'd love to hear more about your frustration points. Contact us at https://www.roland.com/backstage/#/zenbeats-support and we'll be here to listen.
Finally, customer service
Eve Severe
This app is pretty fun. has a bit of a learning curve but if you’re used to apps like NanoStudio 2, BeatHawk, BeatMaker, Drambo, or even Gadget 2 you will like this app. I would suggest watching a tutorial or two before you jump right into it as I found myself going in circles for a minute. I own (also have beta tested) hundreds of apps between ten iOS devices over ten years. So, I would like to think I know a bit or two about apps. I am not a fan of subscription models but the monthly fee is not that expensive. I will give Roland credit for that. I have owned many apps that I have paid for and then they have turned them into subscription-based and you cannot access your previous purchases. This app is not like that. if you have purchased it you can still use it. My major gripe is the “point “way of purchasing in-apps. Why they just can’t give you a price instead of points is beyond me. It is reminiscent of going to a festival or a street fair where you have to purchase tickets for everything and by the time the day is almost over you either have to purchase more tickets (because you don’t have enough for one last drink or one last ride) or you end up giving your tickets to someone else because who needs that extra ticket(s) when you can’t get anything with it. Or like a lot of jukeboxes nowadays where you pay and you get so many credits. All of the songs you played were two credits and you only have one credit left so you are basically screwed out of that last credit-lol. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone-I might just be old. I will say that they have finally gotten their customer service up to par. I certainly hope they keep up with their customer service because it used to be awful and I have to say they are on top of things now and that makes a big difference to me. I will never go on a review page and just leave a bad review unless I have tried to contact the developer a few times without any response. That was the case with this app for some time, but they finally started responding which made me bump up my review.
Developer Response
Hello Eve, we hear you. We're sorry you are bummed out about paying more. We are always thinking about the music creators and strive to constantly improve the app, year over year, as much as we can. Did you upgrade to V2? or V1? Because right now we are offering 3.0 upgrade pricing to all V2 owners (for mobile it's $5 to upgrade). Since you are not seeing this price I imagine you bought V1 which was several years ago (2020). Get in contact with support and we can chat to better understand your situation. Thanks!
What's new in 3.1.12
LoopBuilder recording functionality improvements to enable continuous recording from one loop cell to the next
Fixed issue with reverse audio processing adding extra space to the end of a clip.
Fixed Content Transfer functionality by ensuring required network permission is requested
Fixed sluggish UI when inputting MIDI notes
Version 3.1.12
The developer, Roland Corporation, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
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