Four Track for iPhone - A Pocket Sound Studio

Today, I received two new whistles in the post--a Tony Dixon Traditional D and a Tony Dixon polymer D.

The Trad D sounded so nice out of the box that I began to wonder if I could record some guitar strums on the computer and play along with them. Curious, I checked my iPhone for recording apps, and lo' and behold, I discovered the Sonoma Wireworks' Four Track app. It had 3.5 out of 5 stars with over 900+ reviews, and after I looked at some of its features, I figured it was worth a shot for $10.

I spent a couple of hours this evening laying down this test track. It may not seem like much, but I was on the backside of a steep learning curve most of the time. I had to figure out how to operate the app on the iPhone and produce the tracks. Then, I had to sync my iPhone with my secured wireless network to get the tracks over to my desktop (not easy). I could not find any way to do so with a corded connection. Finally, I had work out the basics of the associated (free) software offered via Sonoma Wireworks, a program called Riffworks. Riffworks saves the mix as a .wav file, so I used iTunes to convert the file to an .mp3. I also registered for a box account and uploaded the clip.

Exhausted, I had a beer before making this post.

I did learn a lot, and I think I'm going to have a lot of fun playing with this app and mixing some songs. Four Track comes with a built-in metronome that you can use as a practice tool and as an aid to get your tracks in time as you're recording them. The beats-per-minute as well as the pitch options are readily adjustable. My only real complaint with the app is that you cannot delete a track once you start laying down tracks for a song, a deficiency that I hope is remedied in a future update. You can record over a track though. I had to record the guitar track a couple of times until it was acceptable before turning to the whistle track, which I also recorded twice. On a side note, I recorded both tracks with just the microphone in my iPhone. I'm betting I could get even better results with a plug-in mic.