I recently saw a demo of the incredible new iGOG drum trigger program on Create Digital Music. This is the best drum app for the iPhone I’ve ever seen, because it processes the microphone input at the same time you’re playing to determine velocity. The drums are multi-sampled and hitting different areas of the pads also causes them to respond differently (open/closed Hi Hat, Ride Cymbal / Bell).
iGog is developed by Wave Machine Labs, the same people who created the flagship drum replacement program, Drumagog. It is $5 and available in the iTunes store and also here.
I downloaded the demo and tried it out. The mic trigger mode is amazing! I made a demo of it on youtube:
It goes crazy when you sing into the mic too, which I forgot to demonstrate. The program saves MIDI, WAVs, and allows you to loop and sequence, so it’s a great program to have on the road or to create realistic sounding drum loops.
The only drawback with this app is that it requires headphones for mic triggering mode, and performance degrades in pad mode if you use speakers, which limits the possibilities for live performance. Mic triggering only works with one instrument at a time – it would be nice if, like Drumagog, it used frequency analysis to trigger multiple samples at once. Still though, for now the sequencing and looping make up for that.
With sequencing, I would like to see an undo function, or a track editor – once you’ve recorded, it’s added permanently, so it’s easy to mess up a good sequence with a bad take. If you’re recording on different instruments, then this is easy to fix later in the MIDI file with a piano roll, but it would be a handy feature on the road.
I always wanted to create a similar drum pad app using the iPhone’s accelerometers. I would have used the three axises to trigger different samples, so that you tap on the top for bass, side for snare, and back for hi hat. I’m pretty sure this app works better than my app ever would – it also works if you tap on the iPhone body. If they could combine accelerometer data into this app though and separate samples per axis, and also allow you to transit MIDI or OSC over WIFI, this would be the ideal drum trigger.
Still though, what an incredible app, and a great value for $5! In-app purchase of free and pay per download drum kits are also available.