Best iPhone 2.0 Applications: BeatMaker
It’s one of the more expensively priced items on the App Store, but BeatMaker (direct iTunes link; BeatMaker Official site) is a steal at $19.99 for anyone who has ever wanted an Akai MPC2000. I’ve just tinkered with it for a few hours, but it is by far the coolest and most engaging original application for the iPhone / iPod Touch. It has a pad area where you can record, a sequencer section where you can orchestrate an entire song, an effects panel where you can tweak your tunes live, and best of all you can download the free BeatPack program for your Mac to download and upload exported .wav files of the songs, the project files themselves, or you can create your own BeatPack Kit using audio files from your computer. Here’s a full set of screenshots of BeatMaker. And here’s a shot of sequencer mode:
I put together a sample song to give you an idea of what this app can do:
WARNING: This song sucks, because it is just a hodgepodge of different things looped together, but I wanted to put together a demo of the different types of sounds and beats you can get with the built-in kits and just about an hour of tinkering. I basically put together one sequence and then loaded different kits in with different effects applied.
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August 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
This is not so good, and very expensive for the services that offers.
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
$20 for a full sequencer is expensive?! Really?
August 5th, 2008 at 11:21 am
How easy is it to work in that size? I had a Windows Mobile sequencer on my HTC that had a really unique interface to get around the size issue. It was $70 though, so I guess more to the point I demo’d a WinMo sequencer.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
it’s pretty easy. On the sequencer mode you can click on individual sections and zoom in / scroll around with the iPhone’s flick and scroll.
I mean, it wasn’t difficult for my large ogre-like fingers, so it cannot be that bad.