If you have a beloved Android smartphone (or even tablet), here’s some rare news: a new Android-exclusive music maker is available. Polaris gives you quick and easy sequencing, modulation, synthesis and sample manipulation in a sleek, minimal interface. And it looks perfect for quick sketching while flying on the bus or spending free moments.
It’s not that Android is completely lacking in music tools – think, for example, of FL Studio Mobile and SunVox (both cross-platform), plus BandLab, Roland Zenbeats and the classic Android app RD4. But for anyone upset that, for example, Ableton Note went iOS-only, here you get Android-exclusive answer. That’s good to see, especially since the iPhone can command a big price premium, especially in certain markets.
There is a nice set of features:
- 6 songs
- Sequencer with modulation per step (volume, cutoff, decay, pitch)
- Step length control per track (for polymeters)
- Step trigger conditions – so you can only play once every 2 or 4 loops for example (weirdly hard to do in some working surface software, cough!)
- Sample engine with user sample import
- Synthetic engine with two oscillators
- Multimode filter with its own envelope
- Distortion
- Reverb and send delay
- Sample set / presets included
It’s a nicely balanced feature set, with some notable features but nothing overwhelming. it also has a clean, minimal design that fits well with the Android design language – without being obtrusive. I also love the design and graphic work around it; it’s really beautiful.
Developer Baptiste Le Goff wrote that he’s just released a getting started guide so you can see how it works.
I think you have to import samples instead of recording live, which seems like an oversight, but otherwise this looks really phone-friendly.
It is also stupid cheap – €3.99. This seems like a good way to prevent piracy; this is nonsense. It also means that it could help equip your studio or classroom with a variety of cheap Android tablets and – some of you have beautiful Android smartphones that I know you’d like to use:
Meteora Polaris
Check it out, Android users:
Arturia veteran Baptiste is a dedicated Android evangelist, and if you’re curious to try Android dev yourself, he even has a completely free dev course on musichackspace:
Basics of Android Audio Development – On Demand