I came across this app browsing through the music category of the App Store. It is by far the UGLIEST iPhone/iPod Touch app, but it’s actually quite useful and best of all, it’s free! TapTheBeat determines the BPM of a track by tapping the beat on the iPhone/iPod Touch and comes in handy when determining the BPM when doing remixes. 

This video demonstrates how you can have Intua’s Beatmaker connect to your computer to load your own samples via BeatPack. The video then shows how you can chop a looped sample into equal parts and map them to Beatmaker’s pads. Here’s what I do:

1. Load BeatPack on my computer.
2. (0:00-0:58) Setup a shared directory and an upload directory (hint: for security purposes I’d suggest a new folder with only the sounds you’ll use for the current project).
3. (1:10-1:27) In Beatmaker’s Home Screen, select the fourth button on the top (looks like a cycle symbol) and press Add Server to enter the IP address of the computer hosting the samples (hint: BeatPack will hint you on the computer’s IP address).
4. (1:27-1:42) The address should now appear in the list of BeatPack servers. Select the server address, then hit download to navigate to the shared folder and download your samples.
5. (1:42-1:54) In Beatmaker, enter pad mode. You can clear the currently loaded kit, by pressing the Clear button. Press Select and choose the pads you want to map the chopped samples to.
6. (1:54-2:12) Click Chop to open the downloaded sample(s). They should be in ‘My Content’ > ‘BeatPack Content’. (hint: it may take a few clicks to select Chop for whatever reason)
7. (2:12-2:38) Press Select again to deselect the pads and audition the sounds.
8. (2:38-End) Edit the Zone (or sample start and end time) by entering Graphical Edit mode.

TIP: BeatPack must be left open to download the samples.

Just a quick video I put together to demonstrate some features included in Intua’s Beatmaker, an application that allows you to make your own beats on your iPhone or iPod touch.I admit, the beat comes out a bit tacky, but the idea was to give you an idea on the whole process goes down from auditioning and tweaking the sounds on each pad, to drawing out the patterns in the song sequencer. Here’s what I did:

1. (0:00-0:21) Open Beatmaker and load a sound kit
2. (0:25-1:17) Enter pad mode and audition the sounds
3. (1:17-1:45) Record a pattern in pad mode (hint: each pattern is 1 bar length)
4. (1:46-1:51) Enter sequencer mode and draw in the first pattern
5. (2:12-2:46) Edit individual pad’s volume
6. (3:00-3:12) Enter the step sequencer and duplicate pattern (hint: new pattern becomes pattern 2)
7. (3:24-3:42) Layer more sounds on pattern 2
8. (3:46) Re-enter sequencer mode and draw in patterns to create 4 bar loop

TIP: By default, Quantize is on. To turn it off, Pad Settings > Record Button , then click the Quantize button.