A music app you’ve never heard of just won an Apple Design Award

I pride myself on staying on top of every music app worth knowing about, so it came as a surprise when one that I’d never heard of just won a major award from Apple.

Music creation app NaadSadhana won in the Innovation category at the Apple Design Awards during last week’s WWDC21.

India-based developer Sandeep Ranade describes the genesis of the app: “There were apps for guitar tuning but it is very difficult to analyze something as complicated as the human voice. This – iOS, vocal analysis – was not my expertise, but I wanted to get into it to help my friend and potentially others too. In a month, I had a simple working tuner tool and then I started working on the Indian-style tuning for our Hindustani and Classical music. I gave her the app and within two weeks she was at a score of 85% and stayed there. So I put NaadSadhana on the App Store.” 

The app has three core functions:

A full orchestra – NaadSadhana will create and play music automatically as you sing or play, on 10 Instruments, 8 Genres, using artificial intelligence.

Studio quality recording – NaadSadhana records music at studio quality, in full multi-track sessions. “In-ear monitoring, multi-track recording of all instruments, mixing studio with effects is all you need to create a studio quality recording to publish anytime, anyplace.”

Never lose your note or beat – “NaadSadhana guides your notes and tempo using visual-biofeedback. Tanpuras, Surpeti, Precision Tuner with 3 levels, Score and Statistics, Metronome, Beat Gauge, 5 Octave Keyboard, 136+ Ragas/Scales, and much more.”

NaadSadhana is available in the Apple App Store here.

Bruce Houghton is Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is also the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor at the Berklee College Of Music online.