polychord

Polychord is back! Celebrating over 15 years on the App Store. Big update, please read to the bottom for important details. Over the years it has been tempting to rewrite Polychord, but ultimately it deserves to be treated like a classic. Polychord has a unique tone and personality, and it's one of those apps that has just kept working. People keep discovering it every day. There've been lots of things we've wanted to fix and improve over the years, and the time was finally right. Here's what's new: # Looping # You can now loop chord progressions, and even strum key melodies. Tap loop, wait for the count-in, and then tap loop again. Press clear to remove it. You can save separate loops to the hot-keys by pressing and holding them. This allows you to quickly switch between loops – like for a verse, or chorus. # Full Drum Synth Control # Polychord's classic drum synth is now fully customizable by voice. Change the kick to a booming long decay. Make the high-hats tight and crisp. Crank up the noise decay on the snare. This opens up a ton of variety for Polychord's auto-accompaniment. # Bitshift # Love the chip-tunes sound? Now all the instruments include both bitrate and bits controls, so you can close your eyes and go on an 8-bit quest. # Arpeggiator Improvements # You can now control the number of octaves arpeggios climb / descend. And you can choose whether the arp follows the chords or a scale! We've also given you a 'swing' parameter. # Fatter, Nastier Saw Waves # Our analog modeled Saw Waves got a lot more ooomf. You can still filter them if you want, but now you also have the ability to great some great, powerful analog sounding tones. # Chord Inversions # You can now choose between several voicing for chords! And if your arpeggiator is following the chord's notes, it will honor your inversion choice. # More Chord Palettes # The simple Major/Minor palette selector has been upgraded, and there's now a large set of custom palettes you can choose from. Play around in a cinematic palette, or turn up the swing on the auto-accompaniment and plunk around in the Jazz palette. Write something with a Motown feel, or explore the new power chord types in the Rock palette. Opens up a ton of new areas to play in. # MIDI # Much clearer selection of MIDI destinations. Choose virtual MIDI to play synths on the same device, or physical for low-latency USBC MIDI to your computer. But maybe the coolest new feature is the ability to split your chords into multiple MIDI channels, so you can control a whole quartet in DAWs like Logic Pro, from the press of a single button. # Projects and Song Export # Polychord now has a full project window, where you can rename, duplicate, and keep track of all the recording takes. And when you're ready to share, the process is way more native and familiar – bounce a performance and a system share sheet will let you AirDrop or save your song directly to Files. # More to explore # We've tightened up a ton of details. The BPM selector is way more intuitive, and even lets you tap a tempo. Unobvious controls have been improved for clarity, while keeping the design intact. The internal synth and sequencer have been hardened, timing improved, bugs squashed. # Deprecations (Important) # In this version we say farewell to AudioBus and SoundCloud APIs. So long and thanks for everything, and on to the next chapter of iOS music making. We're also saying goodbye to the alternate color scheme. Overall we aimed for this release to be about preserving what everyone loves about Polychord, while building a foundation for the future, fixing bugs, making improvements, and adding features that users will love. It's not a ground-up rewrite, not a remodel – it's a restoration. We hope you love it. (And please remember to rate & review!)