Small iPhone for music making

Cyndilov

Looking to get an iphone 12mini or SE3 for music making - mainly to quickly capture develop ideas when I’m out and about, or in addition to my iPad at home (perhaps as a controller or sorts). Will definitely be looking to run Loopy Pro, AUM and Koala, as well as maybe other touch-surface as instrument apps also.

Is the small iPhones too small? Anyone got any experiences to share?

Nighur

I use the SE3 and manage quite well using lots of MIDI generative sequencer apps, but I have thin and pointy fingers. It’s a small device with enough juice.

andowrites

I use the SE2020 as well as iPad and desktop, and am yet to be limited by it, but I like to keep things simple too.

SevenSystems

Xequence works brilliantly for me for composition & arrangement on my iPhone 12 Mini, but I also have pointy fingers 😃

qqq

I have an XS, and find most apps not very usable but some are fine. A lot of AUv3s don't even run on iPhone, and the ones that do are often hard to work with.

Surprisingly Drambo works well because the UI is scrolling based. Koala is no problem. With Loopy Pro you can make a layout work well enough. Some of the simpler AUv3s like Gadget's will work OK.

SpaceCraft is an excellent iPhone choice. Someday it seems like there'll be Borderlands Granular for iPhone and that'll probably work well too

Kewe_Esse

Think of it like one of these:

I use an XR, and if it wasn’t for the occasional phone call or message it’d be more or less the perfect toy. I recommend leaving out the sim card.

The lightning/headphones adapters tend to have 24bit DAC built in if you plan on making field recordings and that matters to you.

FruityLoop

I personally think even the standard iPhone is just too small to work with. I got a 15 plus to use alongside iPad though, and I have since abandoned the iPad completely - I do everything on the 15 plus. Some apps struggle - Digistix 2 splits each page in two making it awkward to work with for instance. Others use the three finger zoom option such as Scaler 2 - without the zoom, buttons are too small to target with your finger. The majority of apps work just fine, but it does limit your app choices a little too - a lot of good apps are iPad only still, such as the recently released Klevgrand OneShot.

catherder

There are some “oldies but goldies” like TC-11 or Xynthesizr that are great on the iPhone.

mistercharlie

The iPad mini is pretty great for music, and you can run all the apps. You can even do things like running Ableton Note and Koala side-by-side, which is my new favorite combo.

stefkeB

Ableton Note and Drambo run OK on an iPhone SE 2020. Cubasis is not really fun on the small screen. But I prefer an iPad mini for everything mobile. Drambo is my favourite on this device. I was intrigued by Cubasis, but hardly use it these days (although sounds and arpeggiators out of the box sound more punchy than what I can come up with on Drambo). But Drambo's workflow is hard to beat for me. And that transfers reasonably well on an iPhone.

pedro

I’ve recently upgraded for a 14 (base model) but before that I used an SE (2016) for 8 years. Only 4” (tagging @jwmmakerofmusic )
What I used it for (musicwise):

• lots and lots of voice memos for ideas that popped into my head
• field recordings (normally into audishare)
• quick tests, previews and limited tweaking of drambo (it totally works on 4”, but for complex patches I’d rather build on ipad and tweak/sound check on the go with SE)
• You can use it as a remote controller for the ipad/mac/anything midi). Haven’t used that past testing for fun cause I have better controlleres
• There’s lots of tiny apps you can use to waste time, while having fun and making music, instead of scrolling through tiktok or whatever. Leaves you satisfied instead of empty

I might be missing something, but the above was more than enough for me to ask from such a small device that didn’t require oversized pockets, for the modicum amount of 500€/8years

Edit:
A few downsides:

• I only got the SE 48Gb, so space management was a constant worry—but that’s on me not being rich
• Only recently did apple allow multi export of voice memos, it had to be one by one (uggh). I understand they have limited resources to develop such a common feature, but c’mon… all these years?
• On the subject of exporting media audioshare is flawless. Same can’t be said for something that should be so easy as photos. Try exporting 40Gb of photos from the phone, connected to (windows) itunes in one go. There’s that stupid folder system, and it keeps failing after a while. Had to do it in batches and keep track of which folders I already tranfered. Took me a whole afternoon 🤬
• Although you could technically do it, it takes some superhuman level of OCD to make some detailed midi editing, or more than basic arrangement on such a small screen