Waveboard: modular synth maker

A Popcorn Cooker you play with one finger. A Nuclear Whistle. Drums you can bend, called Tabla Tennis. A trombone you play by blowing into your iPad. Waveboard is a box of strange, strangely beautiful instruments — and the workbench they were built on. FREE TO TRY. ONE UNLOCK. NO SUBSCRIPTION, EVER. Ten instruments and the complete instrument builder are free, with no time limit and no ads. A single one-time purchase unlocks the other twenty instruments and song recording. That's the whole deal. PLAY SOMETHING IN TEN SECONDS Tap Load, pick a name that makes you curious, and play. These ten are free: • Blueberry Pad — slide around a touch pad that can't play a wrong note • Circus Organ — a keyboard and an organ tone, nothing in the way • Tabla Tennis — tap the drums, then bend them • Chatterbox — a 16-row sequencer that plays itself • Gridlock — a 60-pad grid of crunchy, bit-crushed hits • Sonatatron — play a chord and a sequencer chops it into rhythm • Melodica — play the keys and blow into the microphone • Space Camp — a keyboard with a touch pad that sweeps the filter • Popcorn Cooker — a whole groove from one finger • Eggbeater — a pitch you whip around a touch pad Up to five fingers at once. THEN FLIP IT OVER Every Waveboard instrument is a patch: components on a canvas, joined by wires you draw with a finger. Open any instrument to see exactly how it works, then change it. Reroute one wire and it becomes something else. Or start from a blank canvas. There are 38 components — keyboards, touch pads, trigger pads, step sequencers and sliders; oscillators, envelopes, filters and effects; math and logic for modulation; a microphone listener and a motion sensor. Wire a touch pad's X to pitch and its Y to a filter and you have built an instrument, not a diagram. The builder is completely free, and so is saving what you make with it. THE FULL UNLOCK One purchase, once: • 20 more built-in instruments — the Nuclear Whistle, Trombang, Dancebot 1982, Gold Rush, Moonflower, Deep Sea Drums and more — to play, take apart, remix and save • Song recording — capture what you play as a WAV file, play along with your own take, and get it off the iPad with the Files app Not sure? Every locked instrument can be tried first. Already bought Waveboard? Everything stays unlocked for you, free. If it ever asks, tap Restore Purchase in Settings. MIDI Plug in a USB MIDI keyboard or pair a Bluetooth one from Settings and play any instrument from real keys. Other apps can send MIDI to Waveboard too. YOURS No account, no login, no ads, no tracking. Instruments are small files in the Files app — share them by AirDrop or email. HONEST ABOUT WHAT IT IS • iPad only. It's a canvas-and-cables interface and it wants the screen. • A standalone instrument, not an AUv3 plugin. It does not load inside AUM, Loopy Pro or Cubasis. • No Ableton Link. Think sketchpad and toy box, not a synced member of a live rig. • A few instruments listen to the microphone, so Waveboard asks for it. Nothing is recorded from the mic or sent anywhere — it only follows how loud you are. First released in 2012. Rebuilt for today's iPad in 2026.