Overview
Used by numerous bands from the seventies eighties and nineties as a novelty instrument, the Dubreq Stylophone has now arrived on you iPhone. With few real features “the original pocket electronic organ” not only depends on it’s former reputation but its smooth user interface.
Features
Keyboard
This couldn’t be much simpler. A monophonic keyboard (read: only one note playing at a time) is a bit of a throwback, and doesn’t offer too much in terms of true songwriting or performance. The original Stylophone was played with a stylus, a bit ironic considering you can’t play any instrument on the iPhone touch screen with anything but a finger. The keys are responsive, and I saw none of the glitches mentioned on forums mentioning the app.
Tone and Vibratto
There are three sounds available on this app, and they are annoying, a lower version of annoying, and a higher version of annoying. I’m pretty sure that these sounds can be found on any cheap Casio Keyboard or broken computer. With the Vibrato, these sounds can be made to oscillate. These features are actually this simple. It’s nice that you can overlay one track on another, which can be accomplished as simply as activating the record control on the right side of the main screen, playing your riff, then turning it off, either changing the tone or vibrato and repeating the activation of the record function. This can be done over and over to create a more full composition.
Tempo and Preferences
You might have wanted to find the tempo feature before you started recording in order to set the beats per minute for the metronome that plays during recording on the main keyboard screen. If you’re just playing around, this won’t be important. You can turn off the metronome in the preference pane. You can also loop the playback, making overlaying tracks much simpler. Also within the preference pane is the option to save the song you’re working on upon quitting. Note that this doesn’t save the track, but reopens the app with your previous work already recorded on the main screen.
Load, Save, Clear
In that same first screen where you pressed “Play” In order to get to the keyboard itself, you will find Load, Save, and Clear. They are and do what they seem to. If you don’t clear the sounds from the previous recording, you’ll continue overlaying sounds on the same track.
Breakdown
The Good:
This app seems to replicate a Stylophone well. The interface is pretty, and easily navigated. I wish I had much more to say here.
The Bad:
I’m not sure where to begin. There is no export feature, leaving what you’ve worked so hard on stuck in the app. This in itself doesn’t doom the app, but coupled with the fact that the only sounds coming out of this instrument would drive a normal person crazy in just a little while, we have a serious problem. You’d need to combine this sound with other instruments to make it work, and this isn’t possible.
Verdict
I am not a big fan of this app. It strikes me as an overpriced stab at sentimentality for those who enjoyed the hand-held version years ago. Couple this with the fact that DuBreq launched a new hand-held in 2007, this offering smells a bit much of marketing. The feature set copies almost the exact feature set of the hand-held, and these sounds can be found in any other synth, many on the iPhone. I would recommend against purchasing this app.
