Techno Acid review

We review the ethereal music-making iPhone app Techno Acid, which creates a virtual mixing desk on your touchscreen that’s impressively simple to master

Techno and acid music obviously isn’t to everyone’s taste, but there’s a certain tribal component to the fast, rhythmic sounds of this electronic genre that makes it surprisingly easy on the ear – even if you wouldn’t necessarily dance to it.

This ethereal techno-chanting is even more alluring when you can take control of the virtual soundscape, which is the purpose behind the artistic Techno Acid app.

Music making and mixing apps aren’t at all uncommon, but creating one that’s accessible to the acoustically challenged is no small task. Techno Acid manages to keep the display impressively uncluttered, and bypasses any form of musician’s jargon or requirement for musical understanding.

The screen is divided up into a grid of three-by-five squares, with four icons along the bottom edge used to lay down your beats (apologies if that sounds like an attempt to be “with it,” in this case it’s actually more of a literal description of the app’s mechanics). Your instruments, if we can call them that, are beats, bass, lead and effects, each with their own icon.

By moving an icon into one of the squares it plays a particular looped sample from that category. The samples have been carefully selected to fit together perfectly, so no matter how heavy-handed or talentless you are, the resulting music is always in harmony. Each instrument therefore features 15 high-quality loop samples, provided by DanceMidiSamples.com, which can be swapped and changed seamlessly by moving the icon around the screen.

Your workflow can be recorded, and not just the sounds. During playback the movements of the icons are displayed exactly as you performed them, adding an unexpected and very stylish visual component to the music-making action. Each composition can be saved and given its own title, and doesn’t seem to create huge files since it’s more of a composition than a direct sound recording.

A graphic equaliser is also included so you can give precedence to particular instruments if required, or tone others down so they don’t take over and pierce your ears.

What Techno Acid is lacking is any kind of output system. You might not be creating the kind of tunes you’d necessarily be interested in listening to on an iPod, but these sounds would make great custom ringtones. With an hour’s mixing and musical dabbling, you could reasonably create custom ringtones for your entire contacts list, but currently there’s no way to get your creations out of the app.

This unfortunate stonewall at the last stage hamstrings Techno Acid somewhat, which is otherwise an entertaining and fascinating way to spend a few minutes at the mix master’s table.

]]>