Acid on iPad: BloopMachine Launches and TDminator 2 Adds a 303-Style Bassline

Acid basslines and touchscreens get along well: a short step pattern, a resonant filter, and a few accents and slides are all you need, and fingers are good at riding a cutoff knob. This week brought two new options for iPad and iPhone that come at the 303 sound from opposite directions. BloopMachine from Fingerlab (the team behind DM1) launches on the App Store today, October 29, and TDminator 2 from discoDSP turns what was a Behringer TD-3 editor into a full 303-style bassline instrument.

Both run standalone and as Audio Units (AUv3) in hosts such as AUM, Loopy Pro, Cubasis, GarageBand, and Logic Pro for iPad.

BloopMachine: a 303 pushed past the edge

Fingerlab describes BloopMachine as a monophonic synth-sequencer "built for acid lines, glitchy textures and generative electronic music," and name-checks Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Morton Subotnick as inspiration. It isn't a strict 303 clone. The voice is a wavetable oscillator into a resonant filter, with octave, shape, decay, tone, phase, and LFO controls plus a pitch bend function.

The interesting part is the sequencer:

• Every parameter can be sequenced. Notes and octaves get their own lanes, and so do the synth controls, so filter or shape moves can change on every step.
• Variable length up to 32 steps, with tempo and swing.
• Mutate reshapes the whole patch, or the whole effects chain, in one tap. Fingerlab pitches it as a way to turn a simple sequence into "ever-shifting patterns that always stay musical."
• Five sequenceable effects: ring modulator, distortion, chorus, delay, and reverb.
• 48 patterns and a Song mode that chains them into a timeline, plus real-time audio recording for export.

BloopMachine is a free download for iPhone, iPad, and Mac (iOS/iPadOS 15.6 or later, macOS 12.5 or later). One in-app purchase, listed at US$6.99 on the App Store, unlocks the full effects section, all 48 patterns, Song mode, user presets with import and export, audio export, and undo. The free tier is enough to find out whether the sound and the Mutate workflow click for you.

Fingerlab says MIDI mapping, MIDI clock input, and Ableton Link are on the way.

TDminator 2: from TD-3 editor to bassline instrument

TDminator started as a pattern editor for the Behringer TD-3. It covers every colour variant and the TD-3-MO, which share the same pattern protocol. Version 2.0, released on October 26 as a free update for existing users, adds its own sound engine, so you no longer need the hardware to hear anything.

The new 303-style bassline has a hardware-style panel with the classic Cutoff, Resonance, Envelope, Decay, Accent, Tune, Wave, and Volume controls, plus Devil Fish-style extras: Accent Decay, Normal Decay, Soft Attack, Slide Time, Filter FM, Filter Tracking, Sweep Speed, Sub Osc, Overdrive, and Muffler. It ships with 13 programs, uses a 303-style half-step gate, and holds slides into the next note the way the original does. A Monitor menu lets you hear the internal bassline, a connected TD-3, both, or neither.

The rest of the app is built around fast pattern writing:

• A single-octave piano-roll grid with note names on every step and separate Accent and Slide rows, so the whole 16-step pattern fits on screen.
• Tracker-style keyboard entry on two rows of a hardware keyboard, with Shift+Up/Down to transpose the whole pattern. If you write patterns on an iPad with a Magic Keyboard, this is much faster than tapping.
• RANDOM generates scale-locked acid lines with octave jumps, accents, and glides.
• Live editing: notes, accents, and slides change on the next pass while the pattern plays.
• MIDI pattern switching (new in 2.0): Program Change 0–63 picks one of 64 slots, numbered like the TD-3, and notes from C1 upward on MIDI channel 16 do the same, so a clip in your DAW can trigger pattern changes. Switches wait for the current pattern to finish.
• A 64-pattern factory bank to start from, and imported banks can be browsed without a TD-3 connected.

With a TD-3 plugged in, TDminator still does its original job: full SysEx pattern editing, Backup (device to file) and Send (file to device), Synthtribe .sqs bank import and export, and MIDI export of one pattern or the whole bank. According to discoDSP's release notes, 2.0 also runs as either an AUv3 instrument or a MIDI effect, and fixes reading and writing the TD-3's high C. On iPhone, a 303 / SEQ button flips between the bassline panel and the grid.

TDminator 2 is a paid app, listed at US$9.99 on the US App Store, and runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Which one should you pick?

They overlap less than it first seems:

• Pick TDminator 2 if you want the classic 303 workflow: 16 steps, accents and slides, Devil Fish-style tweaks, and patterns you can move straight onto a TD-3 later. It's also the one to get if you already own the hardware, since the editor and backup tools alone save a lot of fiddly button-pressing.
• Pick BloopMachine if you want acid as a starting point rather than a rulebook. Per-step parameter lanes, Mutate, and sequenceable effects push it toward IDM and generative territory, and the free download costs nothing to try.

They also work well together. In AUM or Loopy Pro, try a straight TDminator line on one channel and a mutating BloopMachine part on another, then put a granular effect such as Celestine on a send to smear fragments of both.

A quick acid starting point

Whichever app you use, the same habits get you most of the way:

1. Start with fewer notes. Pick one root note and add two or three others an octave or a fifth away. Accents and slides make the groove more than pitch does.
2. Place accents off the beat. Put two or three accents on 16th-note offbeats, not on every downbeat.
3. Use slides sparingly. One or two slides per bar, into the note that follows an accent, is the classic sound.
4. Ride the filter, not the volume. Keep resonance fairly high and perform the cutoff (or Envelope on TDminator) by hand or with host automation while the pattern loops.
5. Add drive last. Overdrive on TDminator or Distortion on BloopMachine sounds best once the filter movement is already working.

For more instruments to pair with them, see our October 2026 roundup of new iOS music apps and the new AUv3 plugins for late October. Browse more synths and beat-making apps on iOS Musician.

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App Store prices and system requirements change often, so check the listing before you buy.