Review: RjDj for iPhone

I first heard about RjDj from Mogwai ‘s guitar player Stuart Braithwaite (that is, through his Twitter account… it’s not as if I hang around with indie rockstars). RjDj is an app for music making and listening. Simultaneously. Reality Jockey Ltd., the firm that developed RjDj, calls it ‘reactive music ‘, and I like the term.

What does RjDj do? It is a simple concept: it takes the sounds surrounding you and plays them back modified and altered. It is based on ‘scenes ‘, which could be understood as different formulas the app uses to treat the sound. For example, Echolon (one of these scenes) bounces the sound from side to side, shifting it ‘s pitch while doing so. Most of the scenes, as Echolon, are free. Some others you have to pay for, most of them priced at $10 or $20 dollars.

Sounds dull when you read about it, but the experience of using RjDj is quite unique. I specially like to use it when walking downtown: buses roaring, people talking, whistles blowing, cars honking; it all gets mixed up and becomes what I dare to call music. Just looking at usual scenarios like kids playing in a park turns into a totally different thing if you do so while listening to it through RjDj. And you wouldn ‘t believe the recording I got from a 10 minute visit to the supermarket.

The cute icon on the springboard lets you know you ‘re going into a very friendly environment, with puffy creatures pointing things in pastel colors. All you have to do is pick a scene, press play and start enjoying your listening experience. Also, right from the iPhone app or from their site, you can set an account to store your recordings. For this uploading, I prefer to wait until I get home and do so through WiFi. And yes, the site is also a social network where you can share recordings with other users. There ‘s even a ‘Like ‘ star next to each file.

RjDj advises to use the application with a headphones&mic headset. I rather plug my in-ear headphones and let the sound in through the iPhone ‘s built-in mic with the device resting inside my pocket. This way, my jeans scraping the audio input along with my steps provide something of a beat base. And, hell yeah, even the way you move, shake or tilt your iPhone will have an effect on your sound output.

There aren ‘t many apps out there that take full advantage of pretty much every capability of the iPhone. RjDj involves the use of audio ins and outs, data processing, Internet connection, GPS positioning (your recordings are geotagged) and the accelerometer. It runs smoothly on my iPhone 3G, and I ‘ve seen it working with no problem at all on a friend ‘s first generation device. Just recently Reality Jockey released version 1.0.9.12, which is iOS4 compatible; as well as a couple of other features only available for users of the newest software versions. We vintage people on 3.1.3 are on 0.9.12, and that ‘s the version this review is written about.

RjDj is available at the app store for free.