While I'm teasing myself with the thought of the lovely Beatmaker app which somehow seems at expensive (but isn't really) at, ooh, all of 12 quid, I saw this x0x-style drum machine app pop up for £2.99 on the App Store, and... I'm a bit underwhelmed.
The x0x 16 button grid pattern was classic in the 80s, was classic on the Electribes when they borrowed it for their Blackpool Illuminations-style implementation, and is still classic now we've moved on to virtual synths and drum machines - sign of a great interface.
IR-909 uses the 909-style version, where clicking it once has the instrument at medium volume, clicking again at full volume, and once more to turn it off. The x0x pattern itself isn't so bad, but the other buttons are teeny-tiny, and you're likely to solo an instrument rather than select it.
The drums themselves all sound pretty good, including representative samples from Roland classics TR-606, 707, 808 and 909, including some kits by roventskij called Karv and Techhouse which are brash and clashy in a modern sort of way. The 606 isn't quite as meaty as I'd like but I'm a particular fan of that one. Here's a quick sample of the beats, just recorded straight into the line-in of my Macbook from my iPod Touch.
(download)
There doesn't seem to be any way to change the overall volume, so it's stuck at dead quiet - I had to ramp up the gain and normalise this to get the beats above to a decent level. Changing the general music volume didn't have much of an effect.
Some of the important things like changing the tempo don't seem to work. I've pressed it loads, and only managed to knock the pattern down by 1bpm. The shuffle was the same, stuck resolutely at a dead straight 0%.
Changing the kit also seems to change the steps in the pattern, so you can't audition the same pattern with different samples. Also there's no way to load your own at the moment, something that the Beatmaker people have got sorted already.
In classic x0x style, if you select another pattern before the current pattern ends, it waits until it's finished before flipping to the new pattern, so it's easy to jam fills. It seems to store your patterns even after you've closed the app too, although there's only four to play with.
There's some fiddling you can do with the samples, chopping the start off them and randomising the pitch, which are kinda nice and all that but I'd rather the developer concentrate on getting the basics and the UI sorted out first, although given Apple's current long wait times for approving iPhone application updates, I could be waiting a while.
There's loads more possibilities with the iPhone's touch screen - can't wait for that Tenor-ion inspired
packlsound1 app - and who will be the first to make use of the accelerometer in a music app?
