Looping and scratching audio is so familiar at this point that it may be hard to know what more can be done with the concept. But I like the looks of Touch the Wave, a new iPod touch / iPhone app. It gets back to basics with some fairly simple audio looping and repitching. The twist: it uses multiple, color-coded loop points, and has the ability (if I’m looking at this right) to download audio from URLs. The app is the work of Yuki Yasoshima, and it’s free.
Touch the Wave on iTunes App Store (in Japanese, but available outside Japan, happily!)
Touch the Wave developer page @ Objective Audio
Jordan Harris, who sent this in, writes:
I stumbled across a really awesome free application for the iPhone 3g called "Touch The Wave." All of the information on the developer’s website, and on the iTunes store, is in Japanese. But it’s a pretty useful application that allows you to loop and scratch audio with multiple loop points. It is in the iTunes store if you search for "Touch The Wave" But you’ll have to play with it for a bit as there are no English instructions or descriptions… It comes with one sample song, but supposedly you can upload your own tracks. I’ve been playing with it a little off and on, but it’s mostly just trial and error.
So, I have two questions for you:
1. Anyone with Japanese language skills care to translate some of the instructions? (Even if just a simple excerpt!)
2. What might be some alternative ways of approaching sample playback, looping, and warping?
One interesting take on audio warping is the free Nintendo DS app repeaterDS:
It’s a simple idea – repeat length on the vertical axis, playback offset on the horizontal access. In other words, you set the start point and the length of the loop, the two critical looping parameters. Doing that via a different interface changes the results, and, nicely enough, repeaterDS makes the whole affair glitchy and unpredictable.
Other interesting sample interfaces you’ve seen? Anyone with fun Max/Pd patches, etc., you’d like to show off?