You never know when or where inspiration will hit. And you also never know when or where you will find an unusual "found sound" that is worth exploring. Fortunately, the Apple ecosystem has got your back. An often overlooked iPhone feature is that they are pretty darn good at recording audio. Even using just the built-in mic and iOS Voice Memos app. 

Here is what Apple says about Voice Memos:

Voice Memos turns your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch into a portable audio recorder... And with iCloud support, you can capture audio on the go with your iOS device, then use your Mac to do even more with your recordings.

And by "use your Mac," we all know that means either Garageband or Logic Pro. I had a serendipitous moment the other day while tapping away on an empty hot chocolate can. It had a cool sound, and I came up with an interesting rhythm tapping it with my fingers. I wanted to capture it then and there No fuss, no mus. No setting up microphones, adjusting input levels, setting up headphones and a click track. So I took out my iPhone, got SIRI to launch Voice memos for me and hit record. I knew I could clean it up later in Logic. I wanted to capture that moment of inspiration before I lost it. 

The iCloud integration between iOS and Mac OS is superb, right down to even transferring location info. I opted for the simpler, more direct AirDrop to transfer the file from my iPhone to my Mac. After bringing it into Logic Pro, using Smart Tempo was a snap. Once Logic had calculated the tempo map of my impromptu performance, I enabled Flex in the Region Inspector. Flex allowed me to delete the tempo map and use any tempo I wanted, confident the performance would follow and remain in sync. 

I was free to explore and sonically manipulate the hot chocolate can rhythm I came up with a mere few minutes earlier with all that housekeeping out of the way.

Follow along in this five-minute video as I start with a raw hot chocolate can and transform it into a sophisticated processed, affected rhythmic element, paired up with an Apple Loop and Alchemy generated accompaniment.