Product Spotlight: iZotope iDrum for iPhone

Product Spotlight: iZotope iDrum for iPhone

21 August, 2008 | 5.00AM

• Written by: francispreve
• Filed under: Music News: apple, apps, idrum

Now that the iPhone 2.0 software has finally reached a semi-stable state, it’s time to start digging into the music applications.

Of all the programs we’ve checked out in recent weeks, there’s one real standout: iZotope’s iDrum.

Originally developed as a drum machine plug-in for OS X – and later Windows – iDrum has developed something of a cult following among producers, thanks to its friendly UI and straightforward operation.

Porting iDrum to the iPhone (and iPod Touch) presents some unique challenges that have proven problematic for several other manufacturers, largely due to the iPhone’s tiny screen.

But iZotope has obviously given these challenges considerable thought, because they’ve taken classic drum machine programming tools and turned them on their ear, resulting in the most effective interface we’ve seen to date.

Overview

At its core, iDrum is a step-sequencer along the lines of the Roland TR series, though with a much larger and more modern collection of sounds.

Each of the sixteen possible drums in a pattern has its own track, and the combination of those drum tracks comprise the overall groove.

The uncanny thing about iDrum’s user interface lies in the fact that iZotope has found a way to allow the user to see all sixteen tracks at a glance, thus giving programmers a complete view of their groove at all times.

This is where their innovation comes into play.

Instead of displaying each pattern as sixteen lanes of drum events, iDrum shows the data in a 4x4 grid, with each block containing the pattern for a given instrument.

The first image to the right shows an example of one of these patterns.

As the pattern plays, any block containing drum information is animated – with its pattern info displayed in yet another 4x4 grid.

This may sound a tad convoluted, but in practice it’s immediately apparent what’s going on – and quite dazzling to watch at the same time.

Tapping on any drum’s “block” zooms in on that block’s data, allowing you to edit it directly, right down to the velocity information for each beat.

In this view, each row in the 4x4 grid is equal to a single beat (or quarter-note, if you have a bit of musical training).

Every row contains four blocks - which are equal to sixteenth-note events – and each active event displays its velocity level as a stack of lines which can be adjusted by sliding your finger up or down within the block, as seen in this image.

Patterns and songs

Creating complex patterns – or “songs”, in iZotope parlance – that are longer than a single measure is accomplished by zooming all the way out.

This switches the 4x4 view to display up to sixteen consecutive patterns, which is great for adding subtle variations and fills every few measures.

The series of patterns will play until it reaches an empty slot, at which point it loops back to the first pattern and repeats until you hit the stop button.

And if step-sequencing isn’t your bag and you’d prefer an interface akin to the ever-popular Akai MPC, just tap the little exploding icon in the lower left corner and boom, you’re in a fully quantized MPC-style environment (pictured at right).

Mixing tracks

Since each pattern can contain up to sixteen drums, it’s essential that iDrum allow for an easy way to adjust the volume and panning for each sound.

iZotope came up with an equally elegant way to address this function.

While viewing the pattern for a given drum, clicking on an icon in the lower left corner of the interface activates the volume and panning controls for that drum, which is displayed in a lusciously sci-fi manner.

Moving a small glowing blue sphere (pictured at right) with your fingertip adjusts both parameters simultaneously, with left-right adjusting pan and up-down controlling volume.

While I would loved to have seen the inclusion of a similar interface for pitch and decay parameters, I suspect that it’s only a matter of time before that feature appears in a future update.

Included sounds

The iDrum Club Edition version includes five color-coded categories of sounds: kick drums (blue), hi-hats (yellow), snares (red), various percussion (orange), and synths/fx (purple).

Almost every drum is useful – and more importantly, modern – and there’s an ample supply of sounds in every category.

As a result, the grooves that come out of this application sound very polished, which adds even more value to the program.

The iDrum Hip-Hop Edition uses the same approach to organizing its drums and again, the attention to current production values is highly evident, with a range of drums and synths that cover all of hip-hop’s little genre subsets.

Conclusions

By now, it’s probably clear that we’re in love with both versions of iDrum.

The most shocking aspect of these products is their price: $4.99 US each.

If this review has piqued your interest, then pop on over to the iZotope website and read up on the details.

Or just swing by the iTunes App Store and fire up your credit card.

You won’t be disappointed.

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