Film yourself playing.
One tap.
Live2play is an iPhone camera built for musicians. Open it and the camera is already live and vertical. One big button starts the take. The clip lands in your Photos.
Inspiration leaves while you fiddle with settings — so there are none in the way.
See what it records
Both clips are straight out of the app — no editing pass.
Nothing from YouTube loads until you press play.
What it does
- One-tap vertical reel. No dialogs between launching the app and recording. Auto-saved to its own Photos album.
- Clean audio, your choice. Built-in mic, USB-C interface, Bluetooth — or a clean master mix streamed from your computer over WiFi instead of room noise.
- On-device tracking. Body, hands and face are tracked entirely on the phone to drive an on-screen overlay. Frames never leave the device.
- Gestures become music. Move to play the built-in synth, or send MIDI to your computer over the local network.
- Loops and collage. Layer takes into a synced loop grid with time-stretch, and burn the result into the recording.
- Go live. Push the take straight to YouTube Live or any RTMP server you point it at.
- Built-in editor. Trim, merge and re-render clips on the phone.
Two ways to run it
Just the phone
Nothing else needed. The synth lives in the app, your movement plays it, and the mic or a USB-C interface carries the sound. One tap and the take is in your Photos.
For anyone who wants a reel of themselves actually doing something.
Wired into your rig
The phone becomes a camera and a controller for the setup you already have — Ableton Live, REAPER, an interface, whatever routes your sound.
- Audio — your master mix reaches the phone over WiFi and is written straight into the clip. The recording carries the real mix, not the room.
- MIDI — gestures leave the phone as a Network MIDI session. Connect it in Audio MIDI Setup, enable it in the DAW, then MIDI-learn any parameter and move.
- Tempo — the phone follows your DAW's MIDI Clock over that same session, so loops, arp and the metronome sit on your grid. Ableton Link tempo can be relayed too.
Seven ways to play
Each mode reads your body differently and sends a different thing.
- FX — hands become faders. The obvious starting point: bind a filter, a send, anything.
- Beat — strikes trigger drums, quantised to the bar.
- Air — hold a fist, hold a note. Open it and the note releases.
- Piano — hand position picks the note, snapped to the key and scale you set.
- Scene — the app watches what's actually in frame and lets objects drive the sound.
- Flow — motion across the whole frame feeds a generative bed. Move slowly and it breathes; this is the one that suits a yoga or movement session.
- Crowd — tracks several people at once, so a room can play the same bed together.
Add the loop grid and the collage on top and it doubles as a video-DJ instrument: layer takes in phase, warp them with a gesture, and burn the result into the reel you're recording.
Get it
Live2play for iPhone
The camera and the instrument. iPhone, iOS 17 or later.
Coming to the App Store
Free, no account, no ads.
beam for Mac
Optional. Sends your DAW's mix to the phone over WiFi, remote-controls the camera from across the room, and relays Link tempo. Open source, MIT.
Signed and notarised by Apple — it just opens, no Gatekeeper warning. macOS 12 or
later. Or build it yourself: cargo build --release -p beam.
Privacy, briefly
No account. No sign-up. No ads, no analytics, no trackers — the app ships with no telemetry SDK at all. Video and audio are processed on your iPhone. Nothing is uploaded anywhere unless you start a live stream to a server you chose.
Support
Something broken, or an idea? Email [email protected] — include your iPhone model and iOS version and we'll get back to you.
Requires iPhone with iOS 17 or later. A camera is required, so it does not run in the Simulator.