Yesterday I posted up news about a new DJ sampler tool that has been released by Against the Grain Media, along with the help of DJ Krafty Kuts! It’s got a rather long name, but essentially it’s a bank of samples that you can trigger if you have your iPhone/iPod Touch connected to your mixer whilst doing a DJ set.
The idea is simple yet elegant – rather than having expensive hardware doing this (like a professional sampler), why not use the iPhone? Well, I think this is a reasonable idea, and given the high-quality sound that comes out of the iPhone, should be suitable for anyone but the most picky DJ! I was sent a copy of the app for review, and have been giving it a try – now of course it’s slightly out of context, since I’m not doing a DJ set right now – but in my mind I could be 🙂
Using the app is simplicity itself. You go to the start screen, where it advises you to put your iPhone in to flight mode – after all, don’t want any unexpected message alerts or calls coming out the iPhones audio pipe now, do we! Once that is done you press start, after which you are provided with a series of screens, each containing a bank of buttons:
Each button can be triggered repeatedly, and also in parallel with other buttons (ahh, the wonders of multi-touch!). And that’s about it! You’d stab these buttons in at appropriate points during your DJ set, and maybe the only thing missing I can see is a simple loop feature that you can then pitch up and down, to beat-match with the music. I guess with that you’d also need a master tempo control to stop a voice turning into high- and low-pitch distorted voices 🙂
Anyway, I digress – it’s a simple app that does what it says on the tin, and for those reasons I’d say it’s good value – £2.99 seems fair to me.
Verdict: yo, yo, yo, DJ that’s hot!
Against the Grain Kraftys Kuts DJ Tool / £2.99 [iTunes link]