The Lowdown
This simple, interactive music playback app is great fun to use and has good samples and tracks to appeal to drum & bass fans. There’s no in-app recording though, and the fact that there are only three tracks at present to choose from is limiting. Plus, it’s currently only for iPhone. Still, that doesn’t detract from the fact that it’s a compelling time sink!
Video Review
First Impressions / Setting up
First impressions of the app are good. The app is simple to understand and easy to use, borrowing heavily from the refreshed look on iOS 7. The main screen is where you’ll spend nearly all of your time, the central set of buttons trigger quantized sample loops with familiar drum & bass sounds and patterns. These cover the necessary ride and crash cymbal hits as well as neat drum and snare rolls with a useful selection of different drum loops as well.
These are flanked either side by a series of FX buttons that provide a simple HP/LP filter, echo, pitch up/down and a couple of buttons which affect the playback of the selected track at the top of the screen. One track-related button kills the drum playback of the track, while the other switches to an alternative version of the track – meaning you can chop up two versions of a similar bassline.
Below the button deck are a series of one-shot FX style triggers (two buttons per label), firing lazer, riser and white noise style sounds over the mix. I found it best to leave these to be triggered either randomly or on purpose by a stray thumb during my sessions with the app! At the top of the screen are three buttons allowing you to launch (on beat) three different sections of the selected track. During the track playback you can go wild with the buttons below adding fills, loops and samples over the top to your heart’s content.
At the moment the app comes packaged with three different tracks, all at the same BPM so they can be blended on beat perfectly by the app. Something to note here is that when you have mixed into a new track, the sample pads and FX buttons have different sounds tailored to the track that is playing. There is no pitch control or cross fader functionality here; the aim of the app is to keep things simple so you can mess with tracks immediately and not worry about the finer points of traditional mixing!
The app is well thought out and is incredibly simple to use, of course with this there will come the usual snobbery by those who will dismiss this as a toy app and giving power to the non-music making masses. I don’t care though, I found it great fun to use and missed my train stop (twice) on the same day as a result of involved finger-jabbing on the app!
The best way to use it would be to slide your fingers over the buttons rather than try to trigger a single button at a time, this means you can effortlessly glide between loops and lock on the FX with great results. Admittedly, you won’t be winning awards for any carefully constructed music making with Junglator – however as an addictive way to get your drum and bass fix it scores highly with me.
Ideally the app would come with some in-app recording feature so you could capture your efforts for later playback – perhaps even incorporate into a set using one of the DJ apps available?! The usual social media connectivity would be a neat way for the app to gain more coverage too, allowing fellow Junglists to share their blends on Twitter, Facebook and the rest. The app development team have indicated plans to extend the app further with those and other features as well as Audiobus support too.
A neat inclusion would be to allow the speed of playback to be altered/nudged, this might give users the ability to blend in the output of Junglator into a live drum & bass DJ set through a mixer channel. I think it would make sense for the app to use some of the other tools iOS provides, like the accelerometer to control the HP/LP filter perhaps?
Let’s not forget, this is the first version of the app and as such the development team are just finding their way in the app store and iOS world. Hopefully, with a decent adoption of the app the feature set will be developed further and the library of tracks will grow over time. Tracks included at the moment are Jungle Eyes by Alexx F, Sparta by Osiris and High Styla by DJ Embassy.
The app has an iOS 6 requirement, while it will work on larger display devices it is optimised for the iPhone 5 display.
Comments
It’s great, suffering only at the moment from the lack of material. My hope for this app is that the major drum & bass labels will start to take notice of this app and approach the developers to either offer their tracks for remix/distribution or perhaps to develop a bespoke label-specific version of the app. So, if you know any record label employees please point them at the direction of this app!
The approach taken by NinjaJamm of bundling tracks for a slight discount through in-app purchasing might be the best way for Junglator to go in the future. Obviously, this depends heavily on the quality of the artists and tracks.
Even as-is though, I thoroughly recommend it to drum & bass fans, as it is great fun, sounds excellent, and has been really well implemented. The simple Apple-friendly interface with clear labelling of the buttons and similar clear style is likely to win some attention in the app store, particularly with Apple staff. DJs or non-DJs will thoroughly enjoy playing with this, especially if you hook your iPhone up to the biggest, loudest sound system you can find…
