Dawcade

Dawcade

About this app

*Early access pricing — Dawcade is at an entry price while the app is still growing.

Dawcade is a complete music studio built for touch. Sketch a beat, jam with playful instruments, record, arrange and mix — everything runs on your device, no account, no subscription, no ads.

PLAY
20 touch surfaces, each one a different way to play: Melody, Grid, Chords, Tonnetz, Strum, Stringboard, Circle of Fifths, XY Pad, Bowed, Harp, Kalimba, Sketch, Bloom, Orbits, Bounce, Arc, Otomata, Shepard, Flipper and Fruit Machine. Every surface snaps to your chosen key and scale, so everything you play stays musical — and a chord readout names what you're playing while you play it.

SESSION PLAYER
Don't feel like playing a part? Hand it to the band. Drummer, Percussion, Bass, Keys, Piano, Guitar, Synth and Strings players write parts straight into the slot, following your song's key and chords. Steer them with a few controls instead of drawing every note, then keep what you like.

SOUNDS
• 27 instrument engines: analog-style and digital synths (virtual analog, FM, wavetable, vector, supersaw, phase distortion, granular, spectral, chip, noise), acoustic and electric piano, organ, strings, brass, woodwinds, guitar, bass, bell, pad and vocal
• Physical modelling and samplers for your own sounds
• 21 sampled acoustic instruments: world strings, mallets, keys and winds
• 73 drum kits: classic drum machines, vintage rhythm boxes, acoustic kits, hand percussion and glitch kits
• All content is bundled — everything works fully offline

BEATS
A fast groovebox-style step sequencer with variable step length and resolution, accents, scene chaining and per-pad sounds. Tap in a beat in seconds, then refine it in the editor — or play the kit by hand on the Radar, Pads and Percussion surfaces.

RECORD & ARRANGE
• Session view with clip launching and scenes, plus a full arrangement timeline
• Record audio and MIDI, overdub, loop, punch in
• Piano roll editing, quantize, note probability, velocity tools
• Audio warping, time-stretch and transient quantize
• Full undo/redo across the whole project

MIX
• 24 effects: EQ, compressor, multiband compressor, limiter, gate, transient shaper, chorus, phaser, flanger, delays, plate and algorithmic reverb, distortion, amp cabinet, bitcrusher, auto filter, resonator, vocoder, spectral FX, beat repeat and more
• Per-track insert chains plus a master bus chain
• Automation lanes, macro controls, mixer with sends
• Instrument and effect screens open as movable windows, so you can watch more than one at a time

EXPORT
Bounce a stereo mix to WAV, export individual stems, save your arrangement as a MIDI file, or pack a whole project into a single file to move it or back it up.

CONNECT
• USB and Bluetooth MIDI: play with your keyboard or controller, low-latency
• Dawcade Link: sync two devices over Wi-Fi — one leads, the other follows scenes and tempo
• Built-in metronome, count-in, swing, tap tempo

DESIGNED FOR TOUCH
A fast, focused interface that works great on phones, tablets, handhelds and dual-screen handhelds.

Dawcade saves your projects and music locally on your device. No sign-up required. Anonymous usage statistics and crash reports help us improve the app — see our privacy policy for details.

What’s new

Big update since 1.1.4:
• New look across the whole app: console UI, play surfaces, synth and FX screens
• 2 new Midi Fx games: Chord Racer and NoteBreaker
• Session Player upgraded: new players, cards, phrase bank and screens
• New "World" samples instrument and "multi-zone" sampler
• Whole sound library now installs with the app, no downloads
• Fixed a startup crash on some older phones, plus recording and clip fixes