Octal: Pocket Synth

Octal is an instrument anyone can play. Press a button and you get a chord. Push the bead until it sounds right. Press a few more buttons and you have a song.

No theory, no lessons, no wrong notes, just play. The eight buttons always fit together, and the bead under your other thumb changes their mood as you play. Making music in Octal is free.

FREE: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO MAKE MUSIC

FUN FROM THE FIRST PRESS
Open the app and a short tutorial builds your first track with you, on the real buttons. You feel every button under your thumbs, and every sound answers the way you move.

A TRACK IN MINUTES
Press record and play a few bars. They loop. Double-tap the bead and eight more fan out, one for each instrument. Slide to drums, a bass or a lead and play over the top. Eight instruments, each on its own loop.

SING IT, SAMPLE IT, PLAY IT
Record any sound with the microphone (a hum, a word, a tap on a glass) and every button plays it back in key. Or sing through your chords with the vocoder.

STRINGS, BARS AND BREATH
Nylon guitar, upright bass, kalimba and flute, played by models of the real instruments, beside marimba, synths, drum kits, lofi tape and textures.

A CRATE FULL OF SOUNDS
Open a bead and every sound is there. Touch one to hear it, drag it onto the wheel to play it.

PALETTES
A palette is a whole wheel of sounds that belong together. Tap one to fill your wheel, or make your own from any of Octal's beads.

SHAPE ANY SOUND
Tone, bite, attack, release, drive, width, echo and space. What you shape stays with the track.

EVERY SCALE
Major and minor, and seven more moods for the same eight buttons.

NEVER LOSE AN IDEA
Every take is kept. Rewind through a track's history and pick up from any point.

SHARE WHAT YOU MAKE
Send the mix as an audio file, or the track itself for a friend to open and play in Octal.

MADE FOR IPHONE DUO
Closed, Octal is the whole instrument on the outer screen. Open it and you have a loop station: the buttons stay under your thumbs, and the other half becomes your track station and instrument selector.

All of this is free, with four saved tracks.

THE FULL VERSION: ONE PURCHASE, NO SUBSCRIPTION

For when Octal becomes part of how you make music.

MAKE BEADS OF YOUR OWN
The bead lab builds a sound from scratch: its color, its sound or pattern, a drum kit pad by pad, or a sample from your microphone. Anyone can play what they make in the lab; the full version keeps it in your library and your palettes.

OUT TO YOUR DAW
The MIDI file, and a zip with a stem for every instrument and the mix, ready to finish the song in your DAW.

MIDI OUT
Play other instruments and apps live from Octal, over USB or Bluetooth.

AS MANY TRACKS AS YOU LIKE
Keep more than four.

PRIVACY

Octal collects no data. The microphone is on only while you record a sample or have a vocoder on your wheel.