Arctic Keys for iPad
Published July 1, 2012 | 
Arctic Keys is a virtual analog synthesizer for iPad. With a dual-oscillating subtractive synthesis engine, most users will be fairly familiar with its parameters for sculpting sounds.
The user interface is inviting and friendly, laying almost everything out in the open. You don’t have to sift through endless pages in search of hidden menus, which is a considerable problem for many iOS music apps.
It also has a sequencer and although it’s rather clunky, it does have some nice features to it.
Overall, the synth sounds pretty good. The presets are decent and can easily be tweaked to suit your needs. The only problem with the presets is that the volume levels are sometimes inconsistent, which can be rather annoying.
For $5, this is a cool app with some nice features. It’s a few steps away from running with the ‘big boys’, but it’s still a nice app worth checking out.
Which ones would you say are the “big boys” of the synths/music apps? The ones I know of, and consider in that group, are Animoog, Korg iMS-20 and iElectribe, TC-11, DM1, Stochastic drum machine, Grain Science, NLogSynth, iVoxel, J.Rudess’ apps..
Just wondering if there’s something out there I don’t know of.
I was trying to find your e-mail to give you a heads up about this awesome drum app Drums XD. Check out their video on the website. Definitely my favorite!
Hey whats up man, I play the keyboard here and there and I was wondering if you know of any app that layer instruments sounds like a piano with a pad? Sorry for posting this here, but since you have a wider knowledge for music apps in the app store I figured you would know of an app that could do such a thing.
Andrea – thanks, I checked the app out and it looks pretty good! I’m currently using Rhythm pad and Stochastic DM, so I won’t be buying any new drum apps anytime soon, but it seems like a well made app.
Jonas – I’m not sure about that particular feature, but you should probably check out apps like Synth, Arctic Keys, Alchemy synth.. maybe GarageBand also has a feature like that, but I haven’t tried it out yet… I’m more into the “create your own sound” type of synths so I really don’t know for sure.