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DopplerPad app for iPhone and iPad


4.6 ( 5546 ratings )
Music
Developer: Retronyms Inc
1.99 USD
Current version: 2.2, last update: 6 years ago
First release : 21 Jul 2009
App size: 4.41 Mb

Quickly create and perform musical hooks, phrases and loops with a variety of custom synth and sample-based instruments. Make samples on the fly and weave them into compositions.

DopplerPad is an expressive touch instrument designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Use rhythmic and melodic automation to create phrases by freely moving fingers around the musical touchpad.

Drags and taps come to life with responsive visual feedback, making the groove visible.

Some of DopplerPads features include:

* 37 Instruments Including Leads, Bass, Sound Effects, Drums, and Samplers
* Two Musical Touchpads
* Visual Feedback to See the Groove
* Two Recording Modes: Overdub and Replace
* A Mixer for Cross-Fading, Muting, and Playback Control
* Save Loops and Phrases. Load Them into the Performance
* Gate Arpeggiator to Create Expressive Rhythmic Patterns
* Create Samples Anywhere with External or Built-In Mics
* Adjustable Tempo and Loop Length
* Programmable Scale to Stay in Key
* Adjustable Octave for a Full Range of Notes

New in version 2:
* Effects: you can now apply effects to any instrument on a pad.
* Create your own custom effects using delay, distortion, filter and more.
* Effects are expressively controlled on the Y-axis of the pad
* A full-fledged instrument editor lets you create your own custom synth instruments! Control oscillators, Filter, LFO, Envelopes and more.

Pros and cons of DopplerPad app for iPhone and iPad

DopplerPad app good for

This app is great. It looks cool and is fun to play. There are plenty of great features. You can create a custom scale by eliminating certain notes. This makes it easier to freestyle and stay in tune. It also lets you do fun things with sampled sounds. There are plenty of instruments and effects. There are some great videos showing off what the app can do. Look at them and see for yourself. Ive tried several other music making apps and this is the best Ive found so far.
This app is by far the most versatile music app I have used for creating and recording music on the iPod.
With apps like this we are really beginning to see the power of the iPhone. The interface is great, I found it to be very intuitive and without reading any of the documentation I was creating music in minutes. That being said, I did eventually take a quick glance at the documentation which seems to be well written and thorough. I threw on my headphones and spent a couple hours playing with this yesterday. Great job guys!
Future is going to be stellar for this app. Right out the gate the workflow is fluid and unique. With small tweaks and additions this interface will own for unique composition! Very pleased.
Im a novice musician, so I was shocked by how easy and quickly it was to create awesome sounding loops. The sound quality is great and I found the interaction to be very intuitive. One of my favorite features is the sampler. You can record audio from the iPhone mic and overlay it onto your loop. Very easy to drop hours at a time playing with this app. Im looking forward to seeing whats next. Highly recommend!
The beauty of this app is in its elegance and smooth workflow. Its great for coming up with complex grooves in full orchestration...on the flyI You can even chop samples like it was made of butter. I can imagine one day it will run on a full sized tablet computer and be even more superb! While I can notice some performance hiccups here and there, it does not prohibit the creation of beautiful melodies, loops, rhythms, or basslines.... even here at version 1. Cant wait for more!!

Some bad moments

I have been (trying) to use this app for the last several months. While fun to use, I find it is very frustrating in its lack of ability to create real music. It is very easy to make small mistakes that ruin the whole loop that you are working on and there is no way to go back and unravel what youve done. Overall a neat sketch pad, but maybe not worth the money and effort if you really want to make music.
definitly a good start but this more in style of a "dj" toy than what I thought itd be a production tool. I agree with other reviewers that the sounds are pretty horrible.. there much improvement that can happen there. Also it would be nice to add quantizing, deletion of single notes and parts instead of the entire timeline.. and a mixer. I also dislike the way a sound overlaps during recording. makes it more difficult to record clean. hope u guys can make this app worth the $9.99 your charging with future update.
This thing doesnt really do much when you get right down to it. Seriously needs an "undo" option, because if you mess something up you have to redo the whole loop. Not worth 9.99 at this time...
The foundation of a good product is here, but DopplerPad is missing the following key features that would make it a viable iDevice musical app: - The ability to undo record operations. - Better quality instrument recordings. - Exporting of your recordings. - Importing instruments. - Switching the orientation of the interface. For some reason, they have DopplerPads interface 180 degrees from what most apps commonly use. With this layout the power cord and audio out are right in the way of your hand. - A more consistent volume control. As it is, when you place your finger down on the screen, the sound is always louder than it will be when you drag it about. You cannot keep it at a similar pressure to maintain a constant volume. It would be nice to be able to set a pressure or volume level. There are more fixes that need to be made, but these are the ones that have to be addressed right now. If they were, DopplerPad would go from a novelty to a creative musical app.
Update 3: STILL waiting for the tempo control to work. Makes me sad.. As it is at this point this app is beta quality and not a great value compared to others that are completely functional. Since Im unable to use it at all, I had to drop the stars to 2. Update: still waiting for tempo issue to be addressed. Agree with other reviews that without a piano roll or at least an undo-- its near impossible to create perfect loops-- the overlap you can hear when your timing is off is annoying also. I tucked away this app after the day I bought thinking wed get a oops, my bad quick fix update.. Am let down that yesterdays update didnt fix or acknowledge these problems. Its a killer design dont let it fizzle out.. A lot of potential.. Again just not workable yet..
Heads up - its more like a game than a music production tool. If thats what you want then by all means go for it. Just to point out a couple problems: 1. Destructive editing and no undo 2. Lame and cluttered sample editing function 3. Overall poor sound quality and absolutely useless effects that are all just variations of delay I expected something more and ended up deleting it off my iPod pretty quickly.