> Step by step

3. Creating a track in Beat Maker 3

1 If you’ve never used a mobile DAW before, this tutorial will show you how close an experience it can be to using your desktop DAW. We’ve chosen Beat Maker 3 as our mobile DAW and loaded in an example song. You can see it flow left to right as on a ‘normal’ DAW but we’re going to create a new song ‘CM Session’.

2 Now we can add some tracks to the Session, going from top to bottom. We can add Bank (drums, plugin), Audio (sample) or Aux (effects) tracks. We’ll add a few of each.

3 To our first Bank track we want to add some beats, so we click on the pad icon (top left) and then load a kit onto the pads (in this case, the first one, Ashes Kit 01). Now we record some beats by pressing the Record button in the Transport bar.

4 Once we’re done, hit the Session icon (third one down on the left) and this will show your song and the drums you just recorded as the top track. They have auto-looped around the first two bars.

5 Now select a new track, the Sample option (second icon down) and the Plugin tab running along the top right. You get a choice of loading Audiobus, Inter App Audio or Audio Units plugins. We’ve gone for the latter and it shows which AU instruments we have available ( just like a desktop DAW!).

6 Select a plugin (we’ve gone for the Arturia iSEM), and play it via the Piano tab at the left. This will open the iSEM directly within the DAW so you can play it on the track. Record some notes ( just a couple here for demo purposes) and, double click to open a piano roll editor. Like we say, familiar stuff!