Our favourite iPhone apps
There are a lot of blog posts like this, and probably an iPhone app to collate them too. But that’s not going to stop us from telling you about our favourite ones in the studio. Please note – almost none of these apps have a practical or useful application. None of them will help you chat with your friends, or help you get a train, or find the nearest coffee shop. But they are fun.
This is an awesome theremin / Chaos pad type instrument. Drag your fingers over the screen to create lovely synth sounds – each finger produces a different note, so you can create chords with four fingers, and then slide them around. And the robot on the screen pulls funny faces like he’s making the noise from his mouth. It also has a range of synth sounds, scales, effects and options to make this a genuine, viable instrument, and not just a studio-annoying irritant.
Ever wanted to run across the roofs of skyscrapers, jumping from building to building before they collapse beneath you? Of course you have. And now you can do so on the train, in glorious 8-bit style graphics, courtesy of Canabalt. What does the name mean? No idea. Just keep running.
I once saw a documentary on Bjork – she was walking across an Icelandic beach, wearing headphones attached to some handheld device, composing some kind of music. It looked awesome, and I was jealous – I wanted whatever it was she had. These days, I just fire up Beat Maker. It’s truly jaw-dropping. Sample the sound of the world around you. Edit the sample. Loop it. Sample something else. Loop that too. Add some hand claps. Whistle into the mic of your iPhone. Add some effects. Play some other samples in reverse. Wave goodbye to the rest of the day… Well worth the hefty £12 price tag, given that is has almost all the functionality you’d need from a sequencer / sampler / music making software.
Pointless and violent and addictive. Throw a crash test dummy down an increasingly unlikely set of painful obstacles, and score points for the resulting injuries. Head and spinal injuries score very highly. And you can put your own face on the dummy if you have very low self esteem.
Image from Technovelgy.com
Another musical app, but this is probably the nicest. It turns your iPhone into an actual ocarina – you blow into the mic, and the resulting wind noise is converted into amplitude. You then use your fingers to cover the holes, just like a real ocarina.
We’re also all agog about the augmented reailty apps that are springing up – see here – but they’ll have to wait until we get a new iPhone.
Posted in Misc., Seen+Heard, Thoughts
by Noel