Recording - December 2012 - 56

Bang That Beat!
These full-featured rhythm workstations offer power and punch
Review by Devon Brent
Many musicians are finding iOS devices to be useful standalone systems for creating beats, whether for inclusion in other tracks or for live performance. Devon Brent takes a detailed look at two of the very best apps out there, both of which are rapidly gaining strong followings. Hit it!—MM

Those of you who like to bang out your drum tracks in real time will appreciate the drum pad section. It offers nine large drum pads—they take up the majority of the screen. From here you can also start realtime recording or even replace recorded tracks with a flip of a switch. Finally, you can adjust the pitch in real time up and down with the pitch bend ribbon. The Mixer page gives access to all nine tracks in the drum machine, each with its own level, pitch, length, pan and solo controls, along with the ability to display the drum sequence of a selected single track along the bottom for editing. Along the top of the mixer is the name of each instrument with the ability to trigger the given sample with a tap of the Play arrow key. Tapping on the name of the drum track lets you change the sample for that slot to any of the available 65 kits in DM-1. Unfortunately, you can only load in what was destined for that slot throughout each of the kits (i.e. a Kick track will only allow you to load in the Kick from another kit. You can’t load in 9 kicks from 9 different kits across all the tracks.) The FX Page gives access to two independent effects processors, with 7 algorithms to choose from; Overdrive, delay, phaser, texturizer, robotizer, filter and compressor. Each effect has an X/Y grid with two parameters that can be modified

FingerLab DM1
$4.99; www.fingerlab.net

Nothing feels more natural to me on a tablet than working with a drum machine; its touch interface just lends itself so well for this type of instrument programming. It’s even better when companies like FingerLab, the maker of DM1—The Drum Machine, produce great software. What’s so great about it? Let’s find out. What is DM1? DM1 is a “vintage” drum machine with 64 available kits for sequencing or playing live. The interface is broken out into five pages: a step sequencer, drum pads, a mixer, the effects trackpads, and a song composer. Each of these tabbed pages is accessed from buttons along the top, along with the Play/Stop playback button, BPM settings, Drum Kit and Pattern selectors, metronome on/off button and a very cool (and aptly named) Randomizer Pattern button. The Steps page houses the step sequencer. It shows one full musical measure broken down into either 16 or 32 steps for each of the nine possible drum tracks. A simple single tap sets the track to trigger in the timeline (with a yellow square) while a quick double-tap increases the velocity strength for the step (with an orange square). Tapping on any individual track will solo that track in real time, with no limits to how many tracks can be soloed at once.
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RECORDING December 2012

http://www.fingerlab.net

Recording - December 2012

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