Here are the best free synthesizer apps available on iPad!
All of the apps featured are AUv3, so whatever iOS DAW you use to make music, you’ll be able to download and use them in your projects.
Audiokit King of FM
Kicking us off is King of FM, an incredible and somehow completely free synthesizer app from AudioKit.
King of FM features hundreds of sampled sounds from the legendary Yamaha DX7, DX7II, TX81z, and SY77 synths.
You can access each of these sounds on their own, or you can meld two together. You can go on to add effects, tinker with LFOs and create complicated sequences until you’ve created something altogether different and unique.
The app comes with over 150 presets if you want to explore what it’s capable of. These include banks created by sound design legends and iOS content creators like Brice Beasley, Marc Hupkins, Jade Starr, Da Fingaz and The GarageBand Guide!
When you’re ready to dive in and do some tweaking, tapping one of the four buttons at the top left of King of FM’s interface will take you to one of 4 tabs; MAIN, PCM, EFX and the SEQUENCER tab.
For free, This is a no brainer – go and grab it right now and get stuck in!
Get King of FM here
MOOG Animoog Z
A bit of a cheeky one this as technically Moog’s Animoog is a freemium app rather than being completely free. You can pay to unlock extra editing functionality via an in app purchase and there are some additional content packs available for purchase too.
Having said that, the editing controls, and sounds that come with the free version of the app are so good that I have zero problems recommending it.
Moog don’t really miss when it comes to amazing synth sounds and nowhere is that more evident than Animoog.
Giving you access to incredible Arpeggiated sounds, Leads and unique FX nothing else sounds quite like it.
Not only that, Animoog Z is capable of MIDI polyphonic expression meaning that using controllers or working in in DAWS that support it you can access an even wider range of sounds.
Even in it’s free form, Animoog Z is absolutely incredible and well worth trying for yourself.
Get Animoog Z here
BLEASS Monolit
Monolit is a unique and powerful synth for iOS and Mac from BLEASS. They’ve essentially distilled a lot of what makes their full fat Megalit and Alpha synths down into a lightweight, easy to use monophonic synth app.
Monolit conforms to the design language BLEASS have pretty much perfected at this point, giving users a straightforward easy to use interface spread over three tabs.
Drilling down into these tabs allows you to affect all aspects of your sounds. From robust modulation controls, and full control over the in-built arpeggiator, to adjusting the two oscillators and fine tuning Monolit’s filter, the sound design possibilities here are practically endless.
If preset surfing’s more your thing, there is a factory bank with dozens of premade sounds, as well as community created banks from the likes of Electronisoinds, Gekhein, Red Sky Lullaby, The Beat Community and Doug from The Sound test Room. There are well over 100 presets here and the sheer variety of the sounds on offer shows just how powerful BLEASS have made Monolit.
This is yet another absolutely incredible app from BLEASS and it’s crazy that they are giving something THIS good away for free!
Get Monolit here
