Although it would be pushing it a bit to say that the experience of making music on an iPhone or iPod touch can rival that of a laptop, using an Apple handheld to create some tunes is eminently possible and hugely engaging.
The App Store is full of software that enables you to do it, but MusicRadar wanted its users to tell them which titles really stand out.
Voted for via the site, Facebook and Twitter, the top five music-making apps on the iPhone are as follows - and you can click through to MusicRadar for another five, too.
1. Simple Is Beautiful DrumTracker
£1.19/$1.99
If you're looking to put a vintage drum machine or two inside your mobile, this will do the job for you. You get classic 808, 909 and LM1 kits (plus others) and further drum sets that are suited to hip-hop, jazz and rock. You can create 16-step patterns and then string them together into songs.
2. Frontier Design Group iShred
£2.99/$4.99
Put simply, this gives you the ability to play the guitar on your iPhone. Select your chord via the display at the top, then play individual strings (or strum all six of them) down below. You can perfect your guitar tone with the selection of stompbox-style effects and record your songs for posterity.
3. Smule Ocarina
£0.59/$0.99
This one pulls the clever trick of actually turning your iPhone into a playable instrument – one that you can physically blow. Different notes are 'fingered' by covering the appropriate virtual holes, while tilting the phone adjusts vibrato rate and depth. Amazing.
4. Opal Limited Bloom
£2.39/$3.99
By strict definition, Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers' creation isn't really a music-making app – it's a generative 'experience' that you can either 'play' (by tapping the screen) or leave to its own devices. It's certainly engrossing, though, and a perfect antidote to stressed-out commuting.
5. Amidio Inc Noise.io Pro
£8.99/$14.99
On its release, this was billed as the first iPhone synth. Featuring a hybrid FM/subtractive synthesis engine, it doesn't come with any knobs, instead making full use of its host hardware's multi-touch capabilities. To get a taste of what Noise.io has to offer, try the free version first.
For the rest of the list, head over to MusicRadar.
