About this app

Turn your phone or tablet into a musical instrument! RD4 - Groovebox is a music making app with virtual analog synthesizers, drum machines and effects.

Compose and arrange your music in real-time. Choose instruments individually for the 4 channels. Record live or set notes with the dedicated sequencer or piano roll of each instrument.

"This is no desktop app crammed onto a touchscreen. It seems the interface has been designed around your fingertips." Peter Kirn from CDM (createdigitalmusic.com)

This multi-touch enabled app makes it simple to invent unique loops and musical phrases. Manipulate the sound of the synthesizers by tweaking the oscillators, resonant filters and audio envelopes. Add audio effects like reverb, distortion, phaser, filter and delay to your sounds.

Appropriate both for experienced musicians and beginners.

Loops you've created and exported with RD4 can also be automatically integrated into mikrosonic's audio mixer app SPC - Music Sketchpad.

Feature Overview

Mixer:
- 4 channel rack mixer
- Instrument selection for each channel
- Volume control with level meter per channel
- Direct audio effect channel assignment
- Tempo control with tap tempo
- Channel mute and solo

Sequencer:
- 2 banks with up two 8 bars per instrument
- Adjustable play modes from 1 to 8 bars and random modes
- Song Mode with a length of up to 99 bars

Choose between two virtual analog synthesizers and the drum machine for each channel:

Analog
- Modeled after legendary monophonic synths of the '70s
- For fat sounding bass and powerful lead sounds
- 3 oscillators with 6 different waveforms
- Each oscillator can be tuned precisely and has a warmth control for the typical analog sound
- Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release envelope generator
- Pitch wheel
- Low-pass filter (24dB/oct, 4-pole) with knobs for cutoff, resonance and an ADSR envelope generator

- Recording of played notes in real-time (depending on devices capabilities)
- Piano roll for editing recorded notes comfortably
- Or compose by drawing notes directly with the piano roll in 1/16 or 1/32 resolution
- Piano roll editing features: Transpose Pattern, Shift Sequence and Quantize Pattern

Bassline
- Reminiscent of the legendary 303 synthesizer
- Create bubbling basslines and screaming lead sounds
- Successor of the famous synthesizer Rubberduck from d-lusion
- High-quality low-pass filter with resonance, cut-off, and envelope controls
- Oscillator with 4 types of waveforms
- Real-time step sequencer with accent and slide

Beats
- Program beats with 10 classic drum kits: 808, 909, 606, CR-78, Linn, KR55, RX11, RZ1, DMX, DPM48
- Booming kick drums, snappy snares and throbbing percussions
- 8 channels per drum kit
- Punch control for volume and envelope adjustments
- Accent programmable for each drum channel
- Free assignable effects for each drum sound
- Channel mute, Closed Hi Hat can mute the Open Hi Hat
- Real-time pattern based step sequencer

Audio effects:
- 5 effects: Reverb, distortion, filter, phaser and delay
- Real-time controllable
- X/Y control field for each effect
- 4 effect sends
- Chaining of 2 effects

Technical features:
- Customized layouts for phones, 7 and 10-inch tablets
- Special additional rack view in portrait mode for 10-inch tablets
- Support for the Novation Launchkey Mini keyboard/controller
- USB MIDI support, connects external MIDI keyboards and controllers
- External MIDI clock sync support
- Automatic MIDI input focus when switching Instruments
- Multi-touch control
- Live session recording
- Audio loop export feature
- SoundCloud Sharing Kit integration
- OpenSL support for low latency*

* Please note that for recording in real-time with the Analog synthesizer you will need a low latency Android device with at least Android 4.2. Read more about audio latency on our FAQ: http://www.mikrosonic.com/faq

More details at: http://www.mikrosonic.com/rd4

New features

- updated to support lastest Android version
- added new demo tracks
- new drum kit 'Minimal' for driving minimal beats
- fix for 'export loop' sometimes writing broken .WAV file
- support for Pro Audio low latency feature

App Permissions

Allows an application to write to external storage.
Allows using PowerManager WakeLocks to keep processor from sleeping or screen from dimming.
Allows an application to read from external storage.