Musician’s Corner: Create Music Using Sounds From Around The House With Yellofier
by Lory Gil
April 15, 2013
Welcome back to Musician’s Corner, where we dig up the best apps and accessories for musicians and fans of music. Last week, we went hands-on with the Motörhead Phones Motörizer. Too bad they didn’t live up to my expectations.
This week, we found a fun sampling app that turns any sound into funky beats. Yellofier lets you record audio, slice it, loop it, and add crazy effects to distort it into a completely new sound.
This fun new music app features 32 different sounds that were created by Boris Blank, who is half of the electronic band Yello. It also includes 27 songs by various electronic music artists, making this free app like a compilation release from Electronic Beats.
Users start by recording a sound. Tap the Record/Slice section and figure out what sound you want to add. Then, tap the record button and let it go. You can record approximately 10 – 15 seconds of audio.
Once recorded, the app will automatically slice it into eight different parts. However, you can manually adjust the sounds by dragging the corresponding colored lines across the graph. Once sliced, each section of sound will become a different sample that can be further manipulated in the song editing section.
To edit each sound and create a four-track song, tap the “Edit Song” tab. You will see four different tracks, each with a row of squares. Tap a square to start adding sounds.
You can either use the audio you have just recorded, or select from four different sets of sounds that are included with the app. Each Yello Sound Library set includes eight different samples and eight different effects that can be manually added by taping one of the 16 squares on the grid, or by tapping the “Randomize” button. You can also adjust each square to have a different sound or a different effect to alter it even more.
Once you’ve added the electronic beats and sample sounds you like to one 16-square grid, you can make a new one either right next to it, or on another track. Each 16-square grid makes up four beats. If you want that first square to be heard throughout the song, touch and drag it across the track. There are 100 four-beat squares on each track that can be individually edited.
Once you’ve finished your song, you can export it in a few different ways. You can email it as a song to someone else so they can continue editing it in their Yellofier app. If the song is complete, you can email it as a m4a file or export it as a sound file that you can save on your computer or upload to a music-based website like SoundCloud.
The best part about this fun music app is that it is 100 percent free. There is no in-app purchase to add sounds. You don’t have to sign up to any subscription-based service. There are no advertisement banners. It is just an entertaining app for creating music from sounds you hear in your everyday life.
You can download Yellofier for free in the App Store today.
Thanks for stopping by Musician’s Corner. If you have any suggestions for apps or accessories you think we should feature, just drop me a line or leave a comment below.
This week’s Question: What is your favorite genre of music?
