Musical Instrument Apps for Android and iPhone

On an iPhone or iPad, open GarageBand before you download anything else. Apple’s own app is free with nothing to buy inside it, and its App Store page describes keyboards, guitars and drums you play on the screen, with a recorder of up to 32 tracks behind them.

On Android, the closest free match is Walk Band, which puts a piano, a guitar, a bass and a drum kit in one app with a multitrack recorder. For one instrument and nothing else, Perfect Piano, Real Drum and Real Guitar are on both stores.

GarageBand, and what Android has in its place

GarageBand’s listing calls its instruments Touch Instruments. You play keyboards, guitars and drums with your fingers, and Smart Instruments strum chords or play string parts for you. A guitar or bass can be plugged in and played through virtual amps. Extra instruments and loops come from a Sound Library that Apple describes as free.

There is no GarageBand for Android. Apple’s developer page on Google Play lists Apple Music, Apple TV, Move to iOS and a few others, and GarageBand is not among them. Anything on Google Play with that name comes from someone else.

Walk Band is the nearest thing in spirit. Its listing covers a piano keyboard, guitar and bass in solo and chord modes, a drum kit and a drum machine. A multitrack section records MIDI and voice tracks, edits them on a piano roll and converts the result to MP3. It comes from the maker of Perfect Piano and turns up only on Google Play.

If recording matters more to you than playing, BandLab is the other free answer, and we cover it with the audio editors for Android.

Piano apps

Perfect Piano has a learning mode built in, on either phone. It gives you an 88-key keyboard that can be shown as one row, as two rows or split between two players. The Google Play listing adds a chords mode, sounds that include grand piano, pipe organ and Rhodes, and recording to MIDI or AAC. The learn-to-play mode shows falling notes or sheet music. Both versions accept a MIDI keyboard over USB, so the phone can be the sound source for real keys.

Real Piano from Kolb Apps has a seven-octave keyboard, a chord mode, loops to play along with and 100 lessons. Pick it if you plan to use the same maker’s drum and guitar apps, whose listings promise the same mix of lessons and loops.

Simply Piano, on both stores from Simply Ltd, is a course for people with a real piano or keyboard.

Drum apps

Real Drum is the pick, a drum kit laid out on the screen. Its listing says you choose how many pads and cymbals there are, their size and where they sit. It has more than 100 lessons, loops, a sequencer for building rhythms, MP3 export and MIDI support.

Drum Pad Machine is a grid of coloured pads that trigger samples, grouped in sound packs by genre, with tutorials that walk you through a beat. Read the price before you subscribe. The App Store lists its Pro plan at $7.99 a week, $14.99 a month or $46.99 a year. Fifty-two weeks at the weekly rate comes to $415.48, so take the yearly plan, if at all.

Pro Metronome, on both stores and free with in-app purchases, keeps time and plays nothing.

Guitar apps

Real Guitar has acoustic and electric guitars, a solo mode and a chord mode, a 22-fret neck and a library of more than 1,500 chords, along with 100 lessons and a recording mode.

A guitar on a screen is fine for working out a chord sequence on a bus. It will not teach your fingers to fret a real string. If you own a real guitar, the apps you want, among them Ultimate Guitar and Yousician, are covered in the best apps to learn guitar.

Synth apps

The free ones with nothing to buy are FM Synthesizer [SynprezFM II] on Android and AudioKit Synth One on iPhone and iPad. SynprezFM II has 1,024 built-in patches, can load sounds made for the Yamaha DX7 and takes a MIDI keyboard over USB or Bluetooth. Synth One describes itself as completely free and open source, with no adverts or in-app purchases and more than 300 presets.

FL Studio Mobile is for paying once and making whole tracks. It includes eight instruments, among them MiniSynth, SuperSaw and Transistor Bass, with an on-screen keyboard and drum pads. Roland Zenbeats is free to start: its listing says the free version covers the essentials and a synth with 60 presets, and that a Roland Cloud membership unlocks everything from $2.99 a month. DRC models classic analogue synths with up to eight voices. It is a free download with purchases on Google Play and $8.99 on the App Store.

KORG Kaossilator is played by moving a finger across a pad, with a scale setting that keeps every note in key and a sequencer that layers five parts. It is $19.99 on either store, where the iPhone version is called iKaossilator. Minimoog Model D, on iPhone and iPad only, is Moog’s own app version of the synth it introduced in 1970, at $29.99.

A trombone and a touch grid

iBone is a trombone. Its listing says you touch or blow to make a sound and slide a finger to change pitch. Seven songs are included and more are sold in packs. MorphWiz, created by Jordan Rudess and Kevin Chartier, is a grid you slide your fingers across. Its listing says it was partly inspired by an instrument Rudess plays on stage with Dream Theater. Both are on the App Store only.

Which store has which app

Prices and labels are the ones the US stores show. “Not there” means no listing turned up on that store.