Just had to give Apple Music Memos a try.

Apple Music Memos records your performance, figures out the tempo and chord progression, and plays back the original audio plus a bass and drum accompaniment. Pretty neat.

After installing Music Memos on my iPad, I went up to the studio, turned on my Yamaha PSR-S950 arranger and launched Music Memos. I decided to try a 4/4 song with a simple chord progression — Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl.

What did I learn? First, Music Memos needs a little time at the beginning of a track to figure out the tempo. It displays a vertical line which presumably shows the downbeat or chord change. If you try to keep good time, it will follow your changes. If…

Well, I ain’t no Hal Blaine when it comes to timekeeping! Turn on the S950’s metronome, set it for 110BPM and try again. Unfortunately, the loud sound of the metronome seemed to throw off the chord recognition, etc. Music Memo provides visual feedback of sound level by sending out waves (like a pebble in a pond) around its record button. I decreased the metronome volume so that it wouldn’t trigger Music Memos’ sound detector. The much louder piano sound still picked up.

The third try was the charm. I played a four bar lead in to give Music Memos a good, solid beat before kicking into the tune. I laid down a basic track by playing a piano chord on each downbeat. The second thing I learned is Music Memos does a good job with chord inversions, but doesn’t always recognize a dominant 7th. It got the root and major/minor triad OK, not the flat 7.

With the basic track in place, you can edit the chord progression and make fix-ups. I couldn’t find a way to straighten out timing which is why I resorted to the metronome method. Music Memos desperately needs a metronome even if it is a silent, visual metronome. Apple shouldn’t have any trouble adding this feature to the app.

Now for the fun part. There are two icons at the bottom of the screen: bass and drums. Tap the icons to turn on the accompaniment. If you hold an icon, Music Memos pops up a chart that let’s you change the overall characteristics of the bass or drum accompaniment. You can choose simple vs. complex, etc. I left the settings on the defaults.

OK, plug in the Boss MicroBR recorder, hit RECORD on the MicroBR, hit PLAY on Music Memos and lay down the organ part. True confession. The rehearsal was nice and loose. With the red light ON, things got yippy. It took six takes to get an acceptable demo track. (Hats off to the Wrecking Crew, again.)

Music Memos can probably do more tricks and it will take a little time and practice to work with it. (Drum accompaniment when laying down the initial track?) Here’s the quick demo track just to give you a taste. Total cheesiness is intentional! Musical Doritos. Cha-cha.