Meet Bandmate — Hum a melody. Build a song. Sound like a band

Music

Bandmate

Hum a melody. Build a song. Sound like a band.

Every feature, from the first launch.

No account, no login, no cloud. Everything runs on your device and works fully offline — nothing in this post is hidden behind a wall.

What Bandmate does

Bandmate is a phone-first songwriting studio for people who can sing or hum a melody but can't yet play instruments. Hum a tune; Bandmate records and analyzes the pitches. Build a song structure (verse / chorus / bridge) one block at a time. Suggest chords from a curated catalog of pop / folk / R&B / country progressions. Save and share.

What's in v1:

— Hum recorder: tap, hum 8 seconds, get back a sequence of detected pitches plus a one-line key/scale guess. Uses Apple AVAudioEngine pitch detection (autocorrelation) — entirely on-device. — Chord builder: pick a key. Bandmate shows the 7 diatonic chords (I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii°). Tap to play through AVAudioEngine sine synthesis. Stack chords into a progression. — Progression library: 30 hand-curated progressions (Axis of Awesome I-V-vi-IV, Pachelbel canon I-V-vi-iii-IV-I-IV-V, twelve-bar blues, Bo Diddley beat, Doo-wop I-vi-IV-V, ...). — Song structure builder: drag blocks (intro / verse / pre-chorus / chorus / bridge / outro), assign a progression and a melody hum to each, see total duration estimate. — Lyrics pad: a syllable counter that tells you how many syllables each line has versus the matching melody, so words and tune align.

Free. Optional Bandmate Plus ($9.99/yr) adds extended progression library, MIDI export of progressions, and tempo + drum-track tap.

A look inside

Tap any screenshot to open the full-resolution version.

What's inside

Hum recorder — On-device pitch detection.
Chord + progression builder — Diatonic chords, tap-to-play.
Song structure — Verse-chorus blocks with assigned hums.
Lyrics pad — Syllable counter against melody.

Why we built it

Suno hit $300M ARR letting you type a description and get a song. Many would-be musicians don't want 'AI makes a song' — they want 'I'm the artist, AI helps me execute.' The bridge between humming and DAW (Logic, Ableton) takes years; Bandmate halves that.

What makes it different

Bandmate is the only mobile app combining (a) on-device hum-pitch detection, (b) a curated progression library, (c) a song-structure builder with hum-as-melody slots. Suno generates whole songs; Bandmate teaches songwriting. GarageBand is a DAW; Bandmate is the writer's notebook before the DAW.

Who it's for

Built for anyone who values fast, private, on-device software with a calm, focused UX.

In one line: Hum a melody. Build a song. Sound like a band.

Try it

See the Bandmate app page for the full feature list, the info table, and support links.

Use Bandmate, found a bug, or have a feature request? Comments are open below — anonymous is fine.