Working on Fiddlewax over the past 2 years has been an incredible experience. I’ve built dozens of experimental instruments to explore new ways of making music and packaged up the best ones as fine-tuned iOS apps.

But what really brought me here was a desire to help more people make music and not be intimidated by many of the trappings of traditional music education and instrumentation. Learning key signatures, practicing scales, and reading sheet music are all great skills, but they too often get in the way of talented would-be musicians’ first steps.

Each medium for making things comes with its own set of constraints and opportunities. The digital realm is particularly unique, as it offers the ability to ship a product to hundreds of thousands of people around the world at nearly zero cost.

Of course, the greatest constraint of digital things is that they are trapped inside hardware, and in the case of mobile apps, that hardware is very generic, flat, and small. So it seemed wise to embrace the fundamental nature of screen-based interaction, rather than make instruments that attempt to look or work like their tangible, affordance-rich cousins.

But what apps lack in physical feedback they gain in their ability to dynamically change. Any note can be modified to fit within particular keys, scales, and timing grids in realtime. Instrument timbres and dynamics can be swapped or replaced with anything you can imagine. Riffs can be infinitely looped, merged, and layered as you play.

The culmination of my efforts was put into Firo (shorthand for Fiddlewax Pro). Firo is a digital “band in your hand” instrument where everything is accessible from a single screen so you can focus on creating music from any perspective. Start with drums, push-button chords, or structured notes, then add loops, improvise a solo in a pentatonic blues scale, add basic effects, or experiment with various tempos, sounds, and layouts. Save songs, hookup Firo to other apps via MIDI or Audiobus, and export files for use in other powerful music tools. It’s intentionally designed from end to end.

I’m super proud of Firo and all it can do; it’s not a cheap toy or a flashy trick. Firo is a digitally native musical instrument that enables anyone to create their own music, from scratch.

Fiddlewax hasn’t been just a side project for me; it’s been my full-time job for the past two years. And integral to running a successful business is keeping it afloat financially. While Firo has been a profitable app (with its glory days in the top iOS app rankings and tons of great reviews), the overall revenue isn’t quite enough to justify dedicated development.



That said, my desire to help more people make music is stronger than ever. So instead of flipping the business switch to off, I’m deciding to set the price to free on all Fiddlewax apps. If the $20 price tag got in the way of you trying out Firo before, I hope you’ll finally see for yourself what it’s all about.

I wish all the music makers out there my very best. Keep playing and sharing your songs with the world!