Description: Walk Band, which I’m assuming is a play on Sony’s Walkman or the phrase “one-man walking band” is pretty much what you think it is. It’s an Android application that gives you multiple instruments in one app. Included with Walk Band are drums, the Guitar and Keyboard with each of them having different settings as well as predefined beats for you to work with. The idea is that through the multi-pattern recording side of the app, you’ll be able to produce your own song or covers of some of your favorite songs. It’s a cool app that has a lot going for it, so let’s take a look and see if Walk Band can help you be musical on the move.
How it Works: As with everything, you’ll need to download Walk Band from the Play Store. There are two versions available, with the free version featuring many of the same feature but with ads. If you enjoy the free version, perhaps take a look at the pro version as well. Once you first launch the app, you’ll be given a look at the different instruments and parts of the app.
I wanted to get started right away, and so I chose the Drum Kit, this brings up a fairly nice-looking drum kit that’s a simple touch pad allowing you to hit each drum and symbol with your fingers.
You can play around with the drums here all you want and if you want to practice your timing then you can even enable the metronome to do just that.
You can also change the sound profile, which is something that you can do for each instrument, be it guitar, drums or the keyboard.
Other instruments include the keyboard, pictured below:
As well as the guitar, which can be an electric guitar, or just a plain acoustic guitar. There are a lot of possibilities here.
One thing I liked about playing the guitar is that you can choose your chords and more to play different notes as you would up and down the fretboard.
Don’t forget, there’s a whole bunch of different plugins you can download from the Play Store to make the experience much better.
Overall, Walk Band is a very featured application that’s really quite impressive. In fact it’s so impressive that you can cover songs like Imagine Dragon’s On Top of The World, as seen in the video below, then you can share your covers in Walk Band’s music zone.
Opinion: I play Guitar in my spare time and while nothing can come as close to the real thing, Walk Band’s representation of the three instruments on offer – Drums, Guitar and Keyboard – are all accessible yet also have a good amount of depth to them. By being able to record your playing, you can quite happily create something small on the move and then expand upon it in the studio later on. You can mix together guitar riffs, drum beats and keyboard tunes together in one file as well, which can help you test things out without having to get into the studio with everyone. For those just looking to have a good time with music and have little knowledge of how to play an instrument, this is pretty perfect as well. An all-round great application, I had a lot of fun with Walk Band and all of the add-ons available make this an app that keeps on growing.
Ratings
- Speed (4/5) – A quick app, I never had any issues with Walk Band during my time with it.
- Features (5/5) – With so many instruments on offer that each have a lot of depth and different sound profiles to them, there’s a so much on offer here. Also, the add-ons just help to take things one step further, too.
- Theme (4/5) – A clean and easy to use UI, Walk Band makes the most of the real estate it has on modern Android phones and it looks good on high-resolution devices.
- Overall (4/5) – Walk Band is a great application for those wanting to try out fresh beats and sounds on the move when away from the studio and it’s also a lot of fun for music lovers looking to create something for themselves.
Pros
- Works well on tablets just like it does on smartphones.
- Nice app to use when out of the studio yet you still want to try out some new things.
- Allows you to mix together a number of different instruments together when recording.
- Lots of instruments as well as sound profiles with more available on the Play Store makes this a very flexible music app.
Cons
- Could make better use of the extra room on tablets, especially for keyboard and guitar, but it does work fairly well.
- Way to install add-ons directly from within the app would make things easier.
Conclusion: Walk Band is one of those apps that looks great, and is actually a little better than you expected once you take a look at it and play around with it. I was really impressed with the depth that each instrument had. After all, it’s hard to recreate playing a guitar on a smartphone, but Walk Bad makes it as realistic as possible. It’s all very flexible and there’s so much on offer here that you’ll be able to create your own songs and beats for a long to come and there’s more available from the Play Store as well.