A music studio in your pocket — and on your desk.
WBTRK is a music tracker for iPhone, iPad and Mac, inspired by LSDJ and the Dirtywave M8. Write phrases, stack them into chains, arrange twelve channels into a song, then play it live — anywhere, offline, with nothing leaving your device.
Download on the App StoreWhat it is
A tracker is a sequencer where music is written as text in a grid: each row is a step in time, and each cell holds a note, an instrument, and effects. Trackers powered the demoscene and the Game Boy era, and they're still one of the fastest ways to write electronic music — especially with two thumbs.
WBTRK brings that workflow to the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac. The synth engine, the sequencer, and your songs all live on the device: it works in airplane mode, sends nothing anywhere, and asks for no account. Songs export as .wbtrk files and render to .wav audio, MIDI files and per-channel stems through the normal share sheet. On the Mac and the iPad, WBTRK Studio lays the whole song out in one window — the song, a chain, three phrases side by side, a table, the instrument, effect and mixer tabs, and a piano — and a keyboard, a MIDI keyboard or a game controller drives all of it.
Made in Sweden by hejluxom.
What's inside
Going deeper
Mix twelve channels live.
Every channel gets a fader from 0 to 150%, with mute, solo, pan and an AUv3 insert — six strips at a time on iPhone, all twelve at once on iPad and Mac, plus the master. Faders slide under your thumb, double-tap a pan to re-centre, and it all saves with the song. Press play right on the page and balance the track as it runs.
Loop one channel, free the rest.
Place an STP to mark a loop start and a JMP to send a channel back to it. That channel cycles on its own — a held drone, a drum ostinato — while the other channels play the arrangement straight through. Each channel follows its own path on one shared clock.
00 00 03 ·· 08 ·· STP
01 00 03 ·· 08 ·· 10
02 01 04 06 09 ·· 10
03 01 04 06 09 ·· JMP
04 02 05 07 ·· 0A ··
Make it breathe.
The RANDOM effect rolls fresh dice every time a note plays. Turn on any target — pitch, octave, detune, volume, the envelope, pan, or whether the note sounds at all — and give each a chance and a range. Two notes are never quite the same. The fastest way to humanise a stiff pattern.
Play it by hand.
On iPhone and iPad, open LIVE MODE from the project page and your phrases become pads on six scenes, one per channel, all sounding at once. Tap a pad and it launches at the 1/4, 2/4 or 3/4 point of the bar, on the bar line, at the end of the phrase — or right now. Six effect keys per scene, two live at once: press a key to hold its effect, tap its LATCH corner to leave it on. When a take is good, KEEP writes it back into the song.
Automate a whole row at once.
Put AUT on a row beside the instrument and the effect you want to morph from. The next different instrument of the same engine, or the next slot of the same effect, is where it morphs to — every parameter travels there across the rows between, on a linear, exponential, logarithmic, S, stepped or held curve. A drone morphs without being struck again.
The whole song in one window.
On the Mac and the iPad, WBTRK Studio shows everything at once: the song, its chain, three phrases side by side, a table, the instrument, effect and mixer tabs, and a piano that lights the notes as they play. On the Mac the window zooms as a whole and the mouse drags any value; on the iPad your fingers work as on the iPhone. Every edit also has a key — arrows move, digits type, ⇧ + arrows nudge, the letter rows play.
Start from a sound.
Over 450 ready-made sounds across every engine, sorted by what they are — basses, keys, bells, strings, pads, leads, drums, atmospheres. Tap the ▶ to hear one, tap its name to put it on the instrument. They all sit at the same loudness, so nothing jumps out of the mix, and the save key keeps your own version right beside them.
Drum patterns in seconds.
Pick a kit and type or play in the beat: every hit shows by name in the phrase — KCK, SNR, CHH, OHH — up to four on one row, and each drum rings on its own, so a kick never chokes the open hat before it. Eight kits are built in; any slot takes another sound from the library or a sample of your own.
Different speeds, one clock.
Drop a TEMPO effect to shift a channel's speed by a set number of BPM — faster or slower than the song, and only that channel. It holds until another TEMPO changes it. Run a half-time bassline under a double-time lead; everything stays locked to the same pulse.
How to use it
Three ideas carry the whole app: notes live in phrases, phrases stack into chains, and chains line up across twelve channels in the song. Everything else — instruments, effects, tables, live mode — decorates those three.
Three gestures do the editing everywhere: tap moves the cursor, double-tap places a value (or clears one), and hold and slide changes it — up and down steps the value and plays it as it goes, across is the big step, and lifting your finger writes it. With a keyboard on iPad or Mac the arrows move, the digits type, and ? on every page explains what you are looking at.
Want to hear it first? PRJ → load song opens the app's folder with the demo, night market — half a minute on seven channels with a drum kit. Then build your own:
1 · Write your first phrase
The phrase page is the note grid. Hold the first note column on row 00 and slide your finger up or down: the note steps and plays as you go, a longer move across jumps an octave, and lifting writes it. Then double-tap rows 04, 08 and 12 — a double-tap places the last note again — for a simple one-bar riff.
Press the play button to loop the phrase while you edit. A phrase row can hold up to four notes — a chord — plus an instrument and two effects.
2 · Pick a sound
Hold the INS column on your first note and pick instrument 00 from the list. Then open the INS page and tap global presets: every sound in the app, sorted by what it is — tap the ▶ at the end of a row to hear it, tap its name to use it. Or tap the engine's name for the list of engines — try PULSE for that Game Boy bite — and shape it with the volume, envelope and engine controls. The circled ▶ on the ENGINE row plays the instrument with one tap.
3 · Stack phrases into a chain
A chain plays phrases in order. On the CHA page, double-tap row 00 to place the phrase you just wrote, then place it again on rows 01–03. The TRSP column transposes a row in semitones — hold row 03's TRSP and slide across to +12, and the riff jumps an octave for the last bar.
4 · Arrange the song
The song page is twelve channels wide, shown six at a time on iPhone and iPad — the ch 1-6 / ch 7-12 buttons switch halves; the Mac shows all twelve. Double-tap channel 1, row 00 and your chain lands there. Press play — that's your song playing from the top. Add a bassline: write a low phrase (try the SUB engine on a new instrument), chain it, and drop that chain onto channel 2. Want a channel to loop on its own? Drop an STP where the loop starts and a JMP to send it back — that channel cycles while the rest play on.
5 · Add movement with effects
Back on the phrase page, hold the FX1 column on a note and pick an effect slot from the list. On the FX page, tap the type's name for the list of all 31 — VIBR wobbles the pitch, ARP rolls a chord, DELY echoes, RANDOM rolls fresh dice on every note, TEMPO shifts the channel's speed — and steppers set its parameters. Each note carries up to two effects, and effect slots are shared, so one tweak updates every note that uses it.
6 · Balance it on the mixer
The MX page lays out the channels side by side — six at a time on iPhone, all twelve on iPad and Mac. Slide each fader to set its level (up to 150%), mute or solo channels to focus while you work, pan them across the stereo field, and drop an AUv3 effect into any strip or onto the master. On iPhone and iPad the MASTER row sets the level of the whole song. Press play right here and mix it as it runs — every setting saves with the project.
7 · Tables, when you're ready
Tables are the deep end: a 16-row sequence attached to an instrument that runs on every note. The TRANSP column re-pitches per row (a +0 / +3 / +7 cycle is an instant arpeggio), VOLUME shapes per-row dynamics, and the FX column switches an effect on and off as the table runs. Assign a table on the instrument page and every note using that instrument comes alive. The GROOVE row on the same page gives the instrument its own swing — a preset, or write the ticks per step yourself.
8 · Make it move over time
Give an FX slot the AUT type and put it on a row next to the instrument and effect you want to morph from. Then, further down, place the instrument you want to arrive at — with a note, or the instrument alone if the first note is still ringing — and a different slot of the same effect type. Play: the sound travels from one to the other across the rows between, on the curve you picked. A filter opening over a whole phrase is one AUT and two rows.
9 · Play it live
On iPhone and iPad, open live mode on the PRJ page. Every scene is a channel and every pad is one of your phrases — tap EDIT to fill them. Tap a pad and it launches on the next bar line (or right away, or at the end of the phrase — the quantise buttons decide), the six effect keys punch an effect in while you press one or latch it from its corner, and the ★ scene is the one the set counts from. Nothing you do here changes the written song; KEEP writes a take back when you want it to.
10 · Keep it, share it
Your song auto-saves on the device and reopens where you left off — no save button needed. When it's done, the PRJ page saves it as a .wbtrk file (open it on any iPhone, iPad or Mac running WBTRK Studio), sends it by AirDrop, Messages or Mail with share song, renders the whole song to a 16- or 24-bit .wav, writes a .mid file, or bounces every channel as its own stem for a DAW. Start fresh any time with new song.
The full manual covers every page, all 21 engines, all 31 effects, the sound library and drum kits, LIVE MODE, the Mac and iPad window, the keyboard and controller keys, Ableton Link and the AUv3 plug-in in detail — with a FAQ. What changed in each release is on the revision history page.
Tips: the OPT page has 28 themes, seven typefaces and a colour-by-colour theme editor. Every page's ? explains exactly what you're looking at. And if you make something — send it over, I'd genuinely love to hear it.
Support & contact
Questions, bugs, ideas — email [email protected]. Common questions are answered on the support page.
WBTRK collects no data, so there's nothing to unsubscribe from and no account to delete. Details in the privacy policy.