Propellerhead's new iPhone app Figure has just found its way into the Apple AppStore.
Figure is based on the
Reason sound engine so you know its going to sound awesome. Imagine that,
Thor and
Kong sitting just in your pocket, waiting for that moment of inspiration to strike.
Figure provides you with a three instrument loop sequencer; one part drums (powered by Kong) , one part bass (powered by Thor) and one part lead (also powered by Thor).
The app itself is separated into four different sections that will aid you on your way to creating some awesome beats and loops.
The 'Pattern' section allows you to select your sound and play in a part (drums, bass and lead). This is the main window that you're going to be working with when you're making beats in Figure. When working with the synths in the Patteren window you are presented with three basic controls and an X/Y pad for performance and recording your loops. The controls allow you to select the rhythm pattern of the part, the range of the notes on the X/Y pad and how many notes that you can play in a certain scale. The role of the X/Y pad is pretty obvious, it lets you to play in the notes and make your loops.
When your working with drums in the Pattern section it's slightly different, in place of these controls you are provided with four smaller X/Y pads that control the variation of each drum. You are also given a rhythm control the same as the synth parts.
Moving onto the 'Tweaks' section, this section allows you to sculpt your sound using various preset perimeters such as filter, delay, chorus distortion, etc. You are given another X/Y pad here but this time it's multi touch. Just turn on the parameters you want and tweak away. The Tweak section really helps expand the range of sounds that you can use within Figure. It takes advantage of the Reason synth engine and alows you to take that preset and mould it into something of your own.
The 'Song' section gives you the option to change things like tempo, key and shuffle. it's pretty self explanatory really, change how fast your loop is, change the scale or mood of the loop and adda bit of shuffle to give it a little funk.
Finally the 'Mix' section provides you with a three track mixer and a side chain compressor (which uses the same engine as the Master Compressor in Reason). The mixer is also based on the Reason mixer but to be honest it's just a mixer, it sets the levels of each part. The pump control on the mixer page lets you dial in the amount of sidechain. There's not really much more to the mixer page so I'll leave it at that.
This is a really nice app the GUI looks nice and the workflow is really straight-forward which makes the app extremely easy to use. Propellerhead have done an amazing job on this app, you'll be up and making beats in seconds.
But with that all said the app is not perfect, there are tonnes of features missing in Figure that we expect as standard from most music apps.
There's no way of exporting your creation as audio when you're done, not unless you're willing to hook up your iPhone to an external recording device. This should be in all music apps that offer you sequencing capabilities. It's just common sense.
The most annoying flaw in Figure is that you can't save your project. Say you've made this awesome loop and you're really proud of it, it's finished and you want to move on to a fresh creation. You cant start a fresh beat without clearing the old one. There's no save feature.
It's also not a universal app so if you have an iPad then you can only run Figure in that ugly x2 mode. I've gone into this many times before so I won't bore you with it again. There's no reason (no pun intended) that this cant be a universal app.
Another thing that annoys me is that there's no pan section on the mixer, I suppose it's not a nessesity but I'd like the option to separate the sounds a little and give the mix that little extra room.
Other little addition that need to be considered for this app are wifi sync (WIST maybe?), core midi would be a nice addition too and maybe the ability for Reason owners to export the loop as a Reason project file.
But then again even though Figure's missing out on some vital features it's still a blast to play around with and for 69p in the AppStore I'm going to stop complaining, shut up and enjoy that awesome little loop sequencer that Propellerhead has given us.
All in all I'm going to give this app maybe an eight out of ten. If figure had audio export and a save feature then it would most definitely get a full ten.
Get Figure from the Apple AppStore for just 69p!
