Recording - February 2016 - 42

with 2000+ samples, 290 presets, and dozens of loops. You can audition and purchase additional sound packs at any time: the current choices include (deep breath!)
8o8, Acoustic Grand, Atlanta Urban, Brass Riffs, Choirs, Disco, Electric Piano, Electro
Pop, Funk, Guitar Loops, Latin Percussion, Mello, Scratch, Talk Vox, Trip Hop, Vintage
Blues Guitar, West Coast Urban and World Percussion. I have Acoustic Grand, Choirs,
Latin Percussion, and World Percussion, and they all sound excellent!
As well as the option to record directly into a pad, you can import sounds from
your own library into BeatHawk using AudioCopyPaste or via iCloud (which is compatible with Dropbox, GoogleDrive and OneDrive). Once you get one of your
sounds into the app you can apply timestretch to it if you choose, which adds another layer of rhythmic flexibility. BeatHawk can import FLAC, WAV, MP3, MP4, or AIFF
sound files.
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Song Mode
The SONG button brings up a new
screen (shown in Figure 6) with a timeline, a grid of your 16 patterns on the
left, and a mute grid for the 16 tracks
in each pattern on the right. You can
either drag and drop patterns onto the
timeline and work from there to create
your song, or you can simply press
Record and trigger patterns on the fly to
record your song in real time (this
option is very cool!).
Once you are happy with the results
you can export the project as a stereo
file, as multitrack stems to load into a
DAW, or as a MIDI file. All audio is
exported as 24-bit/4.1 kHz WAV. The
Song Mode is fast and flexible -a joy
to work with.
Content-bundled and optional
The app comes with two UVI Sound
Packs, EDM Factory and URBAN
Factory-a hefty 780 MB of content

Miscellany and final thoughts
BeatHawk plays well with other apps in the iOS music environment. There's external
keyboard and MIDI-over-LAN support via CoreMIDI. You can jam with multiple iPads
using Korg's WIST Sync protocol over Bluetooth. Finally, BeatHawk can be used as an
output in either Inter-App Audio or AudioBus. While UVI recommends an iPad 4 or
newer/iOS 8 or newer, BeatHawk runs pretty well in iOS 7.1.2 on my iPad 2.
UVI has really thought this app through. BeatHawk is a very powerful music production studio, with professional quality sounds and an intuitive interface that lets you
move as fast as you want to. Sure, somebody is going to complain about the lack of
per-track effect plug-ins and the basic non-destructive sample editing, but this isn't a
DAW. It's a fast and focused tool for realizing ideas in the moment, without the technology ever getting in the way or disrupting the flow. In my humble opinion, we need
more instruments with this point of view.
There are only two things on my wish list. It would be great if there was an option
that allowed you to take samples you either loaded or recorded into the app, and turn
them into REX file loops, so you could take full advantage of the time stretching and
slicing functions of the app. Also, I hope that UVI will continue to support BeatHawk
in the future and add more sound packs from their vast sample collection across a
wider range of musical styles, as well as adding the ability to import sounds using the
"open in" function of AudioShare.
Personally I use BeatHawk on two iPads (iPad 2/iOS 7.1.2 and iPad 4/iOS 8.2),
as a sketch pad to try ideas out very quickly, as a composition platform for beatbased projects, as a real time chordal / melodic instrument and percussion / drum
kit sequencer / looper in improvisational performance settings, and as a beat /
sound mangler in studio production settings.
I am very happy with this app and highly recommend it for anyone working with sound
design or tempo based music production, who likes to get their flow on in real time, and
truly appreciates transparent technology. BeatHawk is a very powerful instrument, it
sounds great, and it won't disrupt your creative flow.
Price: $9.99 (in-app purchases $1.99 and up)
More from: UVI, www.uvi.net
Dino J.A. Deane (deane@recordingmag.com) is a multi-instrumentalist, sound
designer, and conductor who pioneered the art of live sampling in performance. He
writes a monthly blog about music and technology called Traveling with Electronics.
Learn more at www.jadeane.com/blog.
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RECORDING February 2016

http://www.uvi.net http://www.jadeane.com/blog

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