Guitarists that have used any of Line 6 Pod products are probably familiar with an application called Riffworks. Included in the box from Line 6, Riffworks is a guitar recording application that, until now, was Windows only.
Riffworks was shown as a beta at Macworld Expo earlier this month and company President Doug Wright was at NAMM last week. We talked about the application and the decision to bring Riffworks to Mac OS X.
“From day-one we wanted to be cross-platform, it was just a matter of manpower,” said Wright. “It’s important for us because Apple is marketing music so well — they are making it a part of the culture.”
Unlike GarageBand that allows editing of recordings and sounds, Riffworks focuses entirely on allowing guitar players to get their ideas into the computer. Guitar players can set the tempo and start recording just by playing their guitar using RiffWorks Junt technology, according to the company.
“It’s about playing your guitar,” said Wright. “I don’t want to be an engineer just to play my guitar.”
With its easy to use interface, Riffworks includes many extras to help guitarists get a good song and recording. InstantDrummer allows you to pick a groove and it will play drums tracks complete with fills — adjusting the Intensity knob allows you to go from mellow to aggressive, depending on your mood.
Riffworks also allows you to record multiple layers and export the mix once you’re done.
“It wouldn’t be Riffworks if it was hard to use,” said Wright.
Riffworks will be available by the end of the first quarter and will sell for approximately $129. Wright confirmed that the application would be made for the new Intel Macs as a Universal Binary when it is released.