Ready to jam?
Music creation startup Roli announced the release of its free Noise app, which transforms your iPhone into a fullly-functioning musical instrument. It's available in the App Store as of Friday.
Utilizing what it calls the "five dimensions of touch" on a smartphone — strike, press, glide, slide, and lift — Roli vows that its touch-sensitive musical interfaces make Noise the most full-bodied instrument to ever hit the glass surface of an iPhone.
The Noise app essentially makes the iPhone screen a continuous sonic surface, responding to the slightest of touch or gestures.
Roli CEO Roland Lamb says the free app is actually an improvement of the company's Seaboard Rise released back in September.
"On September 9 we launched the Seaboard Rise, the world's first truly accessible multidimensional controller," Lamb explained, as part of the company's press release announcement Friday. "At the very same time Apple launched the iPhone 6s featuring 3D Touch. For the past 12 weeks we've applied our years of research into multidimensional touch and sound to produce Noise, an app that transforms the iPhone into a bonafide musical instrument."
The Noise app features 25 keywaves, 25 sounds and boasts five faders for fine-tuning. Noise uses MIDI over Bluetooth. It also enables Multi-dimensional Polyphonic Expression (MPE) via its MPE Mode, allowing the app to work with any MPE-compatible controller — an ability that's sure to please serious music creators.
The app works on the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6s, but has been optimized for use with the 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s.
