Fingerlab has released DM1, their ‘advanced vintage Drum Machine’ for iPad.
It features 24 electronic drum kits. 12 classic vintage drum kits, plus 12 in-house produced electronic kits, edited and mastered at Fingerlab’s studio.
Here’s what the developers have to say about DM1:
As electronic musicians ourselves, we, at Fingerlab, have developed DM1 with the intention of delivering the perfect mix between fun playability and powerful sonic capacities. We always keep in mind the importance of a beautiful design with the right balance of powerful abilities while avoiding clumsy, overbusy interfaces.
DM1 offers 5 main sections:
- STEP SEQUENCER – turn on and off steps in your sequence with the tip of your fingers
- THE DRUM PADS – play and record beats
- THE MIXER – features settings for volume, pitch, sample length, custom drum kit element for each channel, mute and solo mode.
- THE FX TRACKPADS – effects include: Phaser, Overdrive, Delay, Texturizer* and Robotizer* (* for iPad 2 only).
- THE SONG COMPOSER allows you to quickly make a song with the beat patterns you have created. Drag and drop the patterns onto the timeline.
Specifications:
- Graphic design by Jonas Eriksson
- Smart ergonomy for fast creativity and fun
- 24 vintage and produced drum kits, mastered at in-house Fingerlab Sound Studios
- Mixer page with pitch, length and level rotary controls, and custom drum kit per channel
- Extra fast drum kit loading
- Playable pattern selection for extra creativity
- 9 Big Drum pads, quantized recording and MPC-like Repeat touch-stripe
- Step Sequencer with multi-touch matrix
- Duo FX Trackpads for real-time sonic destruction and multi-FX
- Mode song with intuitive editing
No mention is made of MIDI support.
DM1 is priced at $7.99, but is currently available for $1.99 in the App Store.
That looks pretty good. I love how simple it was to chain the patterns into a song. I might just have to get this.
Just picked it up for the 1.99
It is fast to use and intuitive.
However, there are some limitations that make it fall short of "advanced" in my book:
1. no velocity or accents.
2. 16 steps per pattern ONLY!
3. When you try to pitch-shift the hats or cymbals up, there aren't any anti-aliasing filters, so it sounds like garbage.
If you want a quick step sequence drum machine, I'd say at 1.99, the price is ok. The samples in GB's drum machines are better sounding, what is lacking there is the step sequencer.
Actually there are accents, just double-tap a step for an accented step. Easy.
Just picked this up. The pattern sequencer and song mode are really cake to use. It has a good array of drum samples too. What's missing for me is the ability to pan each drum and a pattern length feature. Also, as an iPad 1 owner, I wish they would have let me at least try and run the additional effects. This says to me that their DSP code isn't very efficient at this point. This app is a pretty good jam tool and I'll probably use it for guitar practice. I have a lot of iOS drum machines (iElectribe, FunkBox, Molten, MoDrum, ReBirth, TechnoBox2) and the ease of use of DM1's song mode sets it apart.
Some really nice UI design here! And it looks like a great instrument too. Looking forward to trying it.
I don't get the iPad 1 limitation.
I hope this develops further. Looks great and easy to use, but it seems like it needs to see version 2 before it's really 'advanced'
As it has been brought up two times already: the pattern length is changed by swiping over the LED line.
I find it beautiful, too.
no Midi support yet, though.
Oh! Thank you for pointing that out. I just strung some patterns of 7/16 & 5/16, and it runs without a hiccup. Of course, swing is not able to parse those kinds of patterns, but I'm quite relieved to realize sequence length is properly "advanced".
Apologies, all. I was mistaken about not being able to change the pattern length (less than or equal to 16 is possible). And with stringing different patterns together and looping, you can get lots of evenly spaced groupings. Though it may have been mentioned in other threads, this is the first I'd heard of it.
Thanks!
Nice app!
Impression after 5 mins:
-Plus: Easy to use, nice for a quick jam, intuitive interface
-Minus: Lots of horrible clicks when turning the pitch knob in the mixer… no way you want to touch those when doing any kind of live jamming. Would be nice to be able to route only the instruments you want thru the FX busses instead of all or nothing.
Def. a keeper at the current price. 🙂
“I don’t get the iPad 1 limitation.”
Isn’t it sort of obvious that it doesn’t have the power to pull off those effects?
..yet other apps pull off these (and more) effects on hardware as 'old' as the iPhone 3g (Beatmaker, Filtatron, sampletoy, Jasuto, to name a few).
So the only thing that is obvious is that their code is not as efficient.
No, it's sort of obvious this software doesn't have its code-base optimized.
Just think a moment about software like Nanostudio, Akai Synthstation, Intua Beatmaker (2), Moog Filtatron, etc..
They pull off these kinds of effects on hardware as 'old' as the iPhone 3g. Thus, the iPad 1 hardware is perfectly capable, the DM-1 app, however, is not.
FYI, recent update adds 5 more kits of which includes 909.
May have limitations right now, but still fantastic app to get your groove on. Not complaining for 1.99.
Great App!!!!!! Everything you want apart from sampling. Although you can just export it using iTunes and putting it in GarageBand. Well worth it!!!!!