UK based musician Colin Hallett released the new K-One Synth, built with AudioKit. Inspired to create an iOS synth, he made it quickly. It only took him one month to build the synth with AudioKit.

As musician/developer, Colin makes music under the name Kailin. You can hear his music and learn more about his projects on his website.

We sat down with Colin during the midst of his launch craziness, to bring you the full scoop:

What inspired you to create a synth app?

I make a lot of synth music using both hardware and softsynths and the original inspiration was to learn how things work under the hood. I’ve tried lots of different iOS synths and though there are loads of amazing and powerful ones, there wasn’t a particular one that was exactly how I wanted, in design or sound. I wanted to create something with classic sounds and a simple intuitive interface – I’ve never been a fan of menu diving when working on music.

How long did it take?

It took about a month. I drew up a basic plan of what I wanted and how it should basically look and just started tackling each part one at a time. It’s just me working on this so I could move quickly from ideas to implementation.

What was the biggest challenge in making K-One?

It was probably just staying focused on the larger project – it can be so easy to jump down a rabbit hole of over thinking and constantly polishing a tiny detail emerging hours or days later bleary eyed and not having moved forward at all! I do the same when working on music, spending ages on the perfect hi hat when I should just be stepping back and seeing the whole project.

How did you discover and use Audiokit in the app?

I’ve always wanted to make synths and audio plugins and as I’m sure any audio dev will tell you – working with audio is complicated! I discovered AudioKit when searching for ways to start playing with sound in an iOS context. For K-One it has been immeasurably useful. The code has been a fantastic learning and reference resource. Digging through the AK framework gave me a very useful insight into how to structure and organize what I was doing.

Do you have any advice for developers who want to make AuV3 apps?

The infamous lack of information on AuV3 can obviously be a stumbling block. There are loads of talented people working out how to do things and though it seems like a convoluted mess there are plenty of resources and articles online which I could draw from.

What’s next for you?

I just want to keep learning and continually combining sound, music and developing. I love the very different modes of creativity in music and developing. For me, music is chaos and uncontrolled, whereas developing is so much more focused. Practically, I want to start making stuff that more fully utilizes the range of control inputs that are available on modern devices whilst linking it back to more traditional synthesis and FX!

Great job, Colin!

Get K-One Synth now:



Learn more, visit the Kailin website:

Kailin / K-One website