Houseband for iPhone
You play the melody.
The band plays everything else.
Sing, whistle, or play one line into the mic. It works out the key and the tempo, writes the chords, and falls in behind you. Runs on your device. No account, works offline.
Now in beta on iPhone, through TestFlight.
Chords, instruments and mix — one app, no cloud in sight.
A take that keeps its own time.
Take a bar of count-in and play to the beat — or skip the click, just sing, and tap your own beat afterwards. Either way, the band follows you.
Visual metronome
Four pips walk the bar and the downbeat washes the top edge amber. Silent timing, no click bleed.
Count-in you can trust
Bars of click before recording starts — so you can lock onto the tempo first.
No click? Tap along after
Sing freely, then tap the beat you meant. Tempo, bar one and the push and pull of your timing all come from your taps.
Key and tempo on stop
Detected before you've put the phone down. Every take filed with its own facts.
Your audio stays on your device — nothing is ever uploaded.
Give the melody a feel.
Four pages set the sound: instruments and rhythm, genres, groove, mixer. Pick a take and flip through the pages behind it.
Demo tracks
Now playing
A / B
The small things, up close.
Nine controls, one screen. Pick a point, or read straight down the list.
One take, start to finish.
Seven steps, from a hummed line to a finished mix.
Try the whole thing. Tell us where it falls short.
Houseband is in beta on iPhone, through Apple's TestFlight. Leave your email and we'll send an invite.
What's in it
Recording with a count-in and a visual metronome — or none at all, then tap your beat
Importing a melody you already have, like a voice memo
Key, tempo, meter and a chord chart the moment you stop
Bright or Moody: flip the chords between a major key and its relative minor
Swapping any chord for ranked alternatives
The full band behind your melody — drums, bass and chords
Eight genre presets that reharmonize the melody
70 drum grooves and 29 rhythm figures to build your own feel
Exporting the chart as text or PDF, the mix, backing track or stems as audio, and the chords as MIDI or MusicXML
The things people ask first.
Short answers. If something here is still unclear, it's a bug in the writing — say so.
Is this AI, and does my audio leave the phone?
It hears pitch with signal processing, not a trained model, and builds the harmony from music theory. Either way it all runs on your iPhone: your audio stays on your device, nothing is ever uploaded, and nothing you record is used to train anything.
Do I need an account?
No. The app has no sign-up, no email, no profile. It needs microphone access to record, and that is the only permission it asks for.
Does it work offline?
Everything works in airplane mode — recording, transcription, chords, the band, export.
What can I play into it?
Hum or play one line at a time — monophonic works best. Voice, guitar, keys, sax, whistling. Chords played into the mic won't transcribe cleanly.
If it hears the wrong key or tempo?
If the chords sound too sad or too sunny, flip Bright / Moody — same notes, the other home key. Tap along to fix the beat, or set the tempo yourself, and swap any single chord. The recording stays unchanged — only the harmony follows.
What comes out of it?
The chord chart as text or PDF; your melody with its chords, the full mix with the band, the backing track or the individual stems as audio; and the chords as MIDI or MusicXML — into any app that takes a file. Your takes live in Houseband and go nowhere else.
How does the beta work?
It runs through TestFlight, Apple's app for beta testing. Leave your email in the form above and we'll send an invite: install TestFlight, open the link, and you have the whole app. New builds arrive on their own, and the screenshot you take in TestFlight comes straight to us with your note.
What do I need to run it?
iOS 26 on iPhone. On-device transcription needs the hardware to keep up, so older iPhones analyze more slowly rather than not at all.