95 LoFi: Generative Beat Maker

Three attractors write the track; a policy that learns as it goes keeps what works. 52 bars onto tape, never the same twice. Free app, one-time AUv3 unlock.

95 Lofi writes complete tracks. Press write and you get 52 bars — an intro, three main sections, two lifts, a breakdown and an outro — played by a dusty-keys synthesizer and a soft drum kit, then recorded onto tape. Keys, bass, a melody line, a pad, the kit, and the record surface underneath it all.

Nothing is sampled. There are no audio files in this app at all — the Rhodes, the kit and the vinyl crackle are all synthesised as they play, which is why the whole thing is a few hundred kilobytes.

The music comes from chaos maths. Three Lorenz attractors shape the melody, the rhythm and the mood. Two logistic maps run underneath the drums and the bass so they wander independently of each other: turn the logistic control down and the hats repeat every bar, turn it up and they never do.

Chaos on its own is noise, so a small model filters it. It is rewarded for consonant intervals and rehearses over the changes before writing. The CHAOS / TASTE slider decides how much say each one gets.

Nine styles, and they are properly different. Chillhop and Jazzhop sit where you expect. Boom Bap hits harder and drier. Study Beats takes almost everything away. Drift slows to a crawl. Lo-Fi House pushes past 106. Celtic and Medieval are not jokes — modal progressions, different cadences, nothing else on the shelf sounds like them.

The tape deck is the other half of the sound: a wow-and-flutter transport that never quite runs true, vinyl crackle with real pops and decaying tails, hiss, bit crush and saturation. The crackle is seeded, so the scratch lands in the same place on every play and every export.

Every track is built from its seed. Write the seed down and you can have that exact track again, note for note, whenever you want it. A seed from the browser version rebuilds the same track here.

You can play over it, too. The pads are the notes of the track's key rather than a piano keyboard, so nothing you touch is wrong, and the sixteen-step lane runs in time with the track and follows your host. Both play any part you like — keys, bass, melody or pad — through that part's sound and out on its MIDI channel. Choose which sections the lane plays in, just the breakdown say, and preview it without starting the track.

Turn on RADIO and it keeps playing, picking a new key, mode, style, sound kit and tempo for each track.

You also get:

• 9 styles, 8 modes, 12 keys, tempo, swing, density and humanise • A three-layer voice: an FM tine, one or two detuned bodies, and a sub • 16 presets and 9 sound kits, from Tape Deck to Music Box, plus random patch • Six-part mixer, chorus, a long dark reverb, synced delay and sidechain pump • A tape deck: tone, wow and flutter, crackle, hiss, bit crush and drive • MIDI in, so your keyboard plays whichever part you have selected • Export a MIDI file, a WAV mix, or stems — one WAV per part plus the record surface on its own (in the app; in a host you record the audio there) • A note and a MIDI channel for every drum, not one channel for the whole kit • UI scale, so the panel is not tiny on a big iPad • Live spectrum and waveform, and the chaos engine drawn as it runs

Two Audio Units, an instrument and a MIDI processor. Each part sends on its own MIDI channel and every drum has a note and a channel of its own, so one instance can drive a rack of them. The MIDI version passes your keyboard through instead of swallowing it. Both follow your host's tempo and transport, and one install registers both.

The app is free and nothing in it is held back. Using the Audio Units inside other apps is a one-time purchase, and each AUv3 session plays for two minutes first so you can try them properly.

No account, no ads, no subscription. Works offline.