120 BPM: No Mixmaster Marvel, but It Has a Beat and You Can Dance to It

120 BPM is an app for the iPhone that scales up fairly well for use on an iPad. The software lets users compose their own House music using a variety of different styles and selecting from a library of loops. Users can also add loops of their own. Compositions can be uploaded to the cloud to share, but a more useful feature would be the ability to convert a composition into an audio file that could be emailed to others.

120 BPM, an app from Little Worlds Studios, is available for 99 US cents at the App Store.

Want to exercise your musical chops on the iPad? An app from Little Worlds Studios called "120 BPM" will let you do it.
The app, named for the beats per minute in a typical House music tune, allows you to mix instrumental loops to create pulsing compositions in four musical styles -- Electro, Dance, Funk and Pop Rock. Think "GarageBand," only on a smaller scale.
One style, Electro, is included with the initial price of 99 cents. If you want the others, you'll have to cough up 99 cents each for them.
You create tunes by dragging loops to musical tracks. Up to five simultaneous tracks are supported by the app. That means up to five instruments can be played at the same time.

Fast and Smooth Editing

Tunes can be created in the app's My Studio module. At the top of My Studio is a toolbar. With it, you can choose a loop's musical instrument, control the overall volume of the tune as well as the volume for each track, modify its tempo, move or duplicate loops, save a composition or load a saved one and undo or redo actions performed in the studio.
At the bottom of the studio screen is a button for starting or pausing a composition and a slider for moving backward and forward in the piece. There's also a timer for displaying where you are you in a tune in terms of time.
Along the left side of the display are the loops for an instrument. Each instrument has six loops. The loops are identified by color and number. So, for example, drum loops are green and loop six lays down a beat with bass and snare drums. The method makes the loops easy to identify in the track area.
To hear a loop, you tap it with your finger. To add it to your composition, you drag it to the track area to the right of the loop column. If you want to remove a loop, simply drag it off the screen.
Moving and copying loops is fast and smooth. You poke the copy-move button. Then tap the loop or loops you want copied or moved and drag them to that location.

Annoying Orientation

Each musical style has its own set sounds for the instruments in its loops. A guitar in a Pop Rock loop, for instance, will sound differently from one in a Dance loop.
In addition to using the loops packaged with the app, you can create up to six of your own loops using the iPad's built-in microphone. Although you can't record more than six loops, you can record over an existing loop when you want to get rid of it. What's sorely missed in this feature, though, is a way to do some rudimentary editing of a homemade loop. Even just a tool for clipping the ends of a loop would make the feature more useful.
When you finish with a composition, you can save it to the iPad or send it to the cloud. The number of songs that you can save to the iPad tops out at eight.
The app's link to the cloud is through the My World item on its main menu. There you can post compositions to the Web, add the compositions of other 120 BPM users to a list of favorites or browse what other users have uploaded to the app's cloud.
While sending songs to the cloud is fine, a more useful feature would be the ability to convert a composition into an audio file that could be emailed to others or stored in a place likeDropbox.
120 BPM is a native iPhone app. When its interface is enlarged from iPhone to iPad view, its graphics don't suffer too much. However, it locks itself in a landscape orientation with the iPad's home button on the right side of the screen. Rotate the iPad so home is on the left and the app doesn't budge to accommodate the shift.
Although it's doubtful that the kind of synthetic music produced with 120 BPM will stir the souls of music muses, it's still a diverting app for the iPad and one well worth its pricetag