Synth Apps (8): An Exhibition 

"Synth Apps (8): An Exhibition"..."Pictures At An Exhibition"...Eh? You get it? Huh? Heh heh, yeah, I'm pretty clever are not I?
After 19 years of not touching a musical instrument, for various emotional reasons you don't want to hear about, I have been checking out some synth apps for a few months now and I want to tell you about my favorite ones. These are all free apps you can use on Android. You can pay to unlock features and remove ads on some. I made up some titles for my little demos. And I did some screen recordings and screenshots to show what they're like. Check 'em out:
1. Common Analog Synth: Fanfare For The Common Analog Synth. I'm really attracted to the Moog sound as you'll see in some of these vids. The CAS has loads of tweakability allowing you to mold you're own sounds. You can easily save your patches in the app. It works with usb midi. The paid version, ExSynth, has a few more features.
2. Rockrelay Synth FM: The Forgotten Forest. 512 cool voices in 16 banks, one bank free. Watch ads or pay to get to the rest. This voice is in the Jarre bank, it's called N.E. Story, oooo, mystical! Has nice effects. You can tweak, but you can't save your tweakings as far as I know. I'm still finding new things on these apps.
3. SynprezFM: Inner Space. This synth has a lot of sounds that remind me of the music on Hearts Of Space. The groovy host would remind listeners that this isn't "outer space" music, no, this is "inner space" music. Whoa, far out, man! I can dig it! 2 sound banks, TAG and INT, with thousands of groovy patches. It has a nice big stereo sound that I like. It's totally free, no paid version.
4. Caustic 3: Future City. Speaking of big stereo sound, this app will blow you away with it's amazing sounds. They're all so interesting and there's so many of them, you just want to keep exploring it for hours! Nice big clear sound with this app. 14 different "machines" that give you all you need including BassLine and BeatBox. Demo is free. You need to pay to keep using a midi keyboard and save your music. You can save your patches too.
5. ModSynth Modular Synthesizer: An End With No Beginning. Sometimes you come up with a riff that doesn't fit anywhere. This sounds like a good end for something. But it's all I got. Lot's of tweakabilty and patch saving. You can import additional instruments to add to the built-ins. You can arrange the modules to create the tone you want. Only a delay effect. I added the stereo panning with the WavePad editor. I use that and MixPad and VideoPad for all I do. With this and EasySynth from BJ Owings you can choose your own background. I picked green leaves. You could make it skulls and bloody daggers if that's more to your liking. Ew.
6. ORG 2020: Pretend You're In Love. I used the Nat King Cole melody of Pretend and a few notes of Buddy Holly's True Love Ways for this. Sounds like the old easy listening stuff I used to hear on the radio. ORG 2020 has accompaniments like my old Casio and Yamaha. Different drum kits, basslines and instrument sounds. Some are a little cheesy like the ol' Casio and Yamaha. I used this app for my Ode To Love opus a while back. As you can see from the screenshots there's no lack of knobs to fiddle with. I'm still finding new things. Not that many great sounds but you can upload more. The flute sound is a really good one. Nice big stereo sound as you can hear.
7. DRC - Polyphonic Synthesizer: Ryan's Brain. When I heard what this app can do I thought "Whoa, cool! Sounds like Ryan, man!" I set about to attempt to create something in the style of the Gothic Master. Some of you know who I'm referring to. (Don't say his last name lest The Master be embarrassed by this attention!) This is one dark serious app baby! Extreme tweakabilty and saving of your creations. This tune is made of these layered sounds: Moog Rising, Broken Guitar, Crash and Kick for percussion, Glass Drops, Decepticons (cool name!), and Modulated Strings. If you only want to check out two of these apps make it this one and Caustic. They gon' blow yo' mind! At the end it says I used the 10 inch tablet for all of these but with this one I used a tiny cheapo 7 inch tab because the pitch bend wasn't working in the 10 inch. It's pretty cool what a little Android can do eh? Hope you like my tribute/emulation...Master!
8. EasySynth Synthesizer: MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE!!!!!!!!! Try 'n guess what this original instrument sound is. Go ahead, guess. Give up? It's the tinny little violin sound right at the beginning...TWEAKED TO EXTREMITY!!!!!!! I made it sound like my ol' Casio MT-100 pumped through numerous amps. The screenshots show all the various options for sound manipulation, and saving is easy. Hope I didn't destroy your eardrums! Heh heh. What?