iPhone App: FourTrack

If you play an instrument, there’s a good chance you’ve come across a nice chord progression or melody while practicing, didn’t write it down, and subsequently forgot about it. Who knows, it could have been the embryo of a song that would have propelled you to the top of the charts. There are various tools you can use to prevent this from happening again: you can write it down in form of sheet music or tablatures if you play a fretted instrument, or even better, record it. Of course, you can use ridiculously complicated 1,000$+ software on your laptop, but when it comes to musical scratchpads, you need something easier, faster and more portable. Two decades ago, this would have been a 4 track tape recorder, like the ones the Beatles used to record their early albums. Five years ago, it would have been a gadget such as the Zoom PS04, a little recording device that I loved. Today, my friends, the ultimate portable musical scratchpad is the iPhone. Yes, there’s an app for that.

Meet FourTrack by Sonoma Wire Works, the developers behind DopplerPad and InstantDrummer, two highly acclaimed musical apps. FourTrack is currently in version 3.1.2, which indicates a maturity that can instantly be seen when you start the app: The loading time is minimal, the interface is gorgeous.
As the name indicates, FourTrack is a four track audio recorder. The main screen is straight forward: four tracks, four faders, four pan wheels, rec/arm buttons, a shuttle wheel, and record/play buttons. To record something, just select track 1, arm it, slide record and slide back when you’re done. Want to start recording track 2 at a specific point in track 1? Use the shuttle wheel. The learning curve here is really minimal. The interface is absolutely gorgeous, well organized and easy to understand.

But there’s more than meets the eye. The song tool button opens world of possibilities: tap it, and eight icons will appear. The first one, the metronome, is probably the most important one. This is where you’ll determine the speed of your song. The metronome features 7 sounds and 4 time signatures. It has wheel to adjust the speed, but there’s also a tap function, which can be useful if you’re just starting with the recording. Digg a little deeper, and you’ll find a pan/volume screen as well as an on/off button, which is a nice addition.
Next on the list of song tools: duplicate. This one is simple, it will just duplicate a song. This can be useful if you’d like to keep a safe copy of your work before playing around with it.
The next tool, called bounce, is where the power of FourTrack resides. Tap it and a dialog screen will ask you if you want to bounce within the song, or to a new song. If you choose within the song, all four tracks of that song will be merged and reduced to two tracks, track 1 being the left channel and track 2 the right one. That’s right, your iPhone can now record a virtually unlimited number of tracks. Just bounce bounce bounce.
The next icon is called Mixdown. As you’ve guessed, tapping it will merge all you tracks into one .wav file, but it doesn’t just stop here. Once the mixdown is complete, a wifi sync button will appear which you can tap to access to the connection screen. An IP adress will then appear on you iPhone. Just type it into your browser, and observe in awe as a fully fledged interface allows you to download the full mix or just the individual tracks. That’s right, your iPhone-based recorder just mutated into a webserver. Wire Works also provides a desktop based software called RiffWorks that will simplify the workflow if you want.

Moving on: the next tool, MasterFX, will allow you to modify the equalization and sonic range of your tracks. Anyone who’s used a basic equalizer shouldn’t have any problems here, again thanks to the beautiful interface and easy pinch/zoom gestures. But it gets quite interesting: click on the little window icon in the bottom and a neat OSX exposé-like feature will appear, allowing you to browse to another window, the compressor. Apple, have a look at it, this is exactly what multitasking should look like on the iPhone.
The compressor will affect the dynamics of your mix. Threshold defines the level at which the compressor begins to work, the attack changes the time it takes (ms) for the compressor to respond to high sound levels, release controls how long it takes for the compressor to stop acting on the high sound levels, and the ratio defines the amount of compression applied to a signal once it exceeds the threshold. The result? A clean, well balanced sound.
The two next tools AudioPaste and PromoTracks allow you to respectively import audio from other supported iPhone apps, and to listen to what people have created using FourTrack. Here is a video of Stephen Poff explaining and using the app, enjoy:

Impressive, huh? Other artists, like the great Al Di Meola have also used this app.

Finally, the settings screen: The tempo setting is a mirror of what you put into the metronome screen, the display option lets you chose between min/sec or bar/beat indicators, and snap will help you use audio paste.

Sonoma Wire Works proudly advertises a 16 bit, 44,1 kHz quality, which is standard CD quality, but don’t be fooled: you won’t achieve anything close to CD sound. Why? Well the first thing is that you’re recording using your iPhone’s internal microphone. It’s much better than I expected it would be (really, Apple should advertise it more), but it’s still not comparable to a studio microphone. Also, the iPhone doesn’t have a dedicated sound card, nor does it have a compressor. If you’re familiar with desktop recording software, you probably know that unless you buy an “interface” (which is usually audio to USB), the noise level in your signal will just be too high. No wonders here, the iPhone doesn’t have any of this, and you can hear it.
The app doesn’t come close to software like Logic Pro or Cubase, but it doesn’t try to. With a pair of good headphones (don’t use that Apple junk), you’ll be able to achieve a lot.

So what is this app good for? Well, pretty much everything that doesn’t require studio-quality recoding. You can record a quick demo with it, a rehearsal with your band for later analysis, you can use it as a scratchpad for riffs or songwriting, hell, you can even use it as a memo. The app is refreshingly simple and clean, bug-free, easy to use and incredibly versatile. In addition to GuitarToolKit, FourTrack is a musthave for the musician on the go.

Of course, this comes at a price. FourTrack is available for 9,99$ at the Apple AppStore.