Fender has announced Fender Studio, a new beginner-friendly recording app that you’ll be able to download for free. Available on Mac, PC, iOS, Android and Linux, key features include one-tap recording, Fender amp models and effects and editable Jam Tracks.
An app like this has been on the cards for a while. Fender acquired PreSonus, developer of the Studio One DAW, back in 2021, but in 2022, Fender CEO Andy Mooney expressed his frustration at what he perceived to be music software’s unnecessary complexity.
“Having dabbled in recording myself, I’ve never found a DAW I didn't need an MIT degree to actually use,” he told MusicRadar. “You shouldn't need to spend more time figuring out how to use a DAW than you do creating.
”So my belief was that we can take the talent and the brand equity of PreSonus and create the equivalent of Fender Play [Fender’s guitar tuition platform] for recording - ie, a product that’s globally accessible and very intuitive to use.”
Fender Studio is that product, and sates Mooney’s desire to have an app that you can record into with a single action. In fact, there’s literally a big red button there as soon as you open it: click/tap this and, providing your device’s mic is enabled or your guitar is hooked up via a compatible audio interface, your playing will immediately be recorded.
“I’ve always said to the team, anyone should be able to just hit a single button on their phone and be able to start recording,” says Mooney now. “We’ve built exactly that. We believe Fender Studio will enable more music creation than ever before by serving the needs of today’s creators and that will drive sustained growth for our company and our industry. I’m proud of what the team has created and can’t wait to hear what gets recorded in Fender Studio.”
While Fender is keen to highlight the ‘one-tap recording’ feature as a big point of difference in comparison to other recording software (tellingly, the press release makes no mention of it being a DAW) it has to be said that a lot of what else you’ll find in Fender Studio looks very familiar. The company is happy to admit that it “shares DNA” with Studio One - there’s one-way project compatibility, in fact - and the timeline and audio editing features don’t appear to break the mould.
It would be unfair to dismiss this as simply a cutdown version of Studio One, though (Studio Half?): having the Fender ‘65 Twin Reverb guitar amp and Rumble 800 v3 bass amp immediately gives Fender Studio a USP, and there five FX pedals and an integrated tuner. Once you’ve registered the app for free using your Fender Connect account details you get six additional amps and effects, too.
And then there are those Jam Tracks for you to play along with. These 20 multitrack audio sessions come in a range of styles, and each part can be transposed, muted, soloed, sped-up or slowed-down.
There are limitations, though. The maximum number of tracks you can record is 16 (you get eight when you download and eight more when you register), and there’s no mention of MIDI or plugin support. As such, the only effects you have are the built-in Compressor, EQ, Reverb, Delay, De-Tuner, Transformer, Ring Modulator and Vocoder devices.
This is a version 1 release, though, so if there’s a demand for more advanced DAW-like features, they could come in time. Refreshingly, there’s no suggestion that this is a ‘freemium’ product, either - in-app purchases aren’t mentioned in the press release - and the extensive cross-platform compatibility is impressive.
The music software market is a competitive place, though, and it remains to be seen if Fender can challenge the dominance of Apple’s GarageBand in the entry-level recording sector.
Find out more on the Fender website.
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