The iPad is great for using a mobile version of a digital turntable. If you are a professional deejay, the tablet can house hours of music, literally at your fingertips. Plus, there are dozens of compatible deejay apps that let you pretend you are scratching vinyl while you mix the perfect playlist on the fly.
ScratchPad HD is not a deejay app, but it does create the perfect sound bites for scratching, stuttering, and tweaking loops to add to your house, dub step, or drum and bass music…
The app features a wide variety of loops from a large selection of genres. Add up to nine loops to the Expression Pads and manipulate their sound by dragging your finger around on each pad. You can record your live performance and export your tracks to other apps using Audiobus.
You don’t have to be a musician to use ScratchPad HD. You just have to love music and desire to mix a beat. If you are a musician, you can use this app to add resonance to your songs, live or on a recording.
Choose between one and nine different loops from the various available genres, or upload your own through Audiobus. Then, drag and drop the loop onto one of the Expression Pads. Each pad features a variety of functions to allow you to manipulate the sound.
Stop a loop by dragging your finger downward on the Expression Pad. Similar to stopping a turntable, the loop will come to a halt. Move your finger along the top of an Expression Pad to activate four different stutter speeds. Each speed will glitch your loop in a different way. Even with all of your stuttering, the tracks will always stay in time with the beat. You’ll never fall out of sync. To scratch a loop, drag your finger from left to right on an Expression Pad. The scratch’s speed will increase or decrease, depending on how fast you move your finger across the Pad.
You can also manipulate the loops by moving your finger around on the XY Filter Pad, which comes with two different filter types, Low Pass and High Pass.
You can switch out loops on the fly while in the middle of a performance. Replace loops simply by dragging and dropping new ones into the Expression Pad.
You can also record your performance and send it to another app through Audiobus to add as a track for your song, or upload it to Dropbox and share it with others.
ScratchPad HD is available for the iPad for $4.99. Download it in the App Store today.
Do you like to play the deejay at parties? Would you use ScratchPad HD to add a little dub step to your mix?