Filed under: Audio, iPhone, iPod touch, First Look, App Review, Music
Count The Beats: Hey DJ, play us a song...
Here in the UK, it's getting pretty chilly on the willy compared to a month ago, or so. The warm memories of the summer are slowly dwindling to the reality of earlier, darker evenings (the clocks have just gone forward) as well as tentative first visits from our old friend Jack Frost. Generally speaking, the cold grasp of winter is steadily fastening on us (or not).So when I heard my main man Dan the DJ couldn't make the party (or at the least lend me his decks) I turned to the next best thing, Sonorasaurus - the first complete deejay setup for the iPhone / iPod Touch.
At this point you may be wondering what a DJ app has to do with 'Count The Beats', or, in fact making music on an Apple platform, but it quite literally has everything to do with it. Come on, we all know that deejays are real musicians too, right?
Comprising two independently controllable decks and a mixer with built in effects, Sonorasaurus is a fully functioning virtual DJ setup. You load songs into each deck, via the built-in HTML server feature, over Wi-Fi (unfortunately you cannot access your iPod library directly due to restrictions put in place by Apple), and then simply begin deejaying.
"What's the big deal about that," I hear you say? Well, for those not in the know, deejaying is actually a pretty tricky task, and literally requires you to match the beats of two different songs together (beat-matching). In reality, this is usually done with vinyl records where the tempo/speed of a song is altered (scratched) to sync up to the tempo of another song so that they can mix. With Sonorasaurus this is achieved using the touch input of the iPhone / iPod Touch.
The 'play bar' on each deck is used to alter the tempo/pitch of a song while the 'jog area' allows swipe input to dynamically alter the pitch of a song (nudging forward, back, or to slow down, speed up a song). This is where the main 'beat-matching' occurs.
Each deck has built-in customizable effects (distortion, echo, reverb etc), and high, mid and low filter passes to make you sound just like a real pro. One well thought out feature is a gain control for each deck, so you can raise/decrease the volume of a song if it's just a little too quiet/loud for your session.
Sonorasaurus ties this all together with a eye-catching interface that is easy to get your head around and use.
One draw back, at version 1.0, is that you can't have separate outputs for each deck (being that there is only one output on the iPhone / iPod Touch). So you better be on your toes whilst mixing in front of the gang at your pumping house party because they will be able to hear you doing your "beat-matching" and scratching (which, typically, would only be heard by the deejay). However, for a future release, the developers are working on building in support for a Y splitter cable which would rectify this problem.
In our quest to see if the iPhone / iPod Touch will become a real player in the musicians tool box, we think Sonarasourus has something valuable to offer, especially to DJ's practicing their "beat-matching" skills (and those 'try hard geeks at their house party's). Sure, it may not replace a set of authentic decks playing fresh vinyl, but on a shoe string, Sonarasourus goes a long way to getting the tunes out there DJ style.
Watch out for Sonorasaurus hitting the App Store in the coming weeks.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
staceybarb5 said 7:15AM on 10-29-2009
Ahh nothing like a house party when its cold out to warm the soul.
I have used a few DJ apps, your right Sonarasaurus looks like the most promising.
I use the I've used Cadence app at a few parties as my DJ to just play all the fast dance music and then all the slow music ..etc..
can be found here http://www.cadenceapp.com
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Level 5 said 7:21AM on 10-29-2009
Hmm... this got me thinking about a Serato remote (or even full service) interface on the iPhone. Alot of possibility with something like that.
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josh said 7:34AM on 10-29-2009
Correction - the clocks have gone back, not forward.
The app does look good though.
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Scott Earle said 7:43AM on 10-29-2009
The clocks just went forward? Thinks ... spring forwards, autumn back.
Nope! They just went back :)
(And yes, I am also poking fun at the fall/autumn thing. Call it British humour or something!)
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Cello said 7:47AM on 10-29-2009
Wow a post on TUAW before US morning time!
Just my appreciation on behalf of those who live on the other side of the Atlantic.
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Bill Hurst said 8:58AM on 10-29-2009
If you can't use the local files, you have to take your notebook with you, which has much more power, the ability to support multiple ouitputs, and a larger interface. But it does not have a touchscreen. So in my opinion it would make more sense to have a remote-interface-only app, which could communicate via OSC with the main app. take a look at mrmr (http://poly.share.dj/projects/#mrmr) for example. this is definitely something for the real musicians toolbox. there are other nice OSC-Apps in the Store already, btw.
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Andy said 12:24PM on 10-29-2009
Chilly on the willy?
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andy said 1:55PM on 10-29-2009
was thinking the same thing. I'm from the uk, but this has to be one of the worst opening paragraphs I've read in a very long time.
Jeff Ramos said 4:24PM on 10-29-2009
So you can't cue tracks? Sort of pointless then. The best bet would to output the main mix to one channel and the cue to another channel so you can beat match that way. Although it just doesn't seem right without normal cueing.
Also the "pitch" bar just seems to increase tempo and not change pitch. Which is not normal but good in any event since most DJs key lock when they use the tempo slider. A bit weird. Definitely need to iron out a lot of kinks before this is really useful.
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Greg said 7:21PM on 10-29-2009
Umm, this isn't the first complete DJ set up for iPhone. You should check out Hot Wax and Quixpin, both which have been out for months. Hot Wax just got updated too. Both have features and drawbacks, like any app will. There is also Touch DJ by Amidio which looks cool, but is also in the unending review process. It's exciting to see these apps start coming together though. I've been wanting something like this for years and was actually considering buying the Tonium Pacemaker, but having something like this on my phone is just awesome.
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