RD3 Groovebox: Get it. now.

You may find this hard to believe, but almost 60% of the traffic I get on this site goes to one article…my review of Electrum, the drum synth app. I didn’t even give it that great of a review, but apparently Android musicians are STARVING for music apps, so I’m more than willing to give you a look at all of Android’s musicmaking apps.

RD3 Groovebox by Mikrosonic is the other noteworthy sequencer/synth app for Android, and has been available for about six months already. If you were to download it now, you’d be getting version 1.1.1, the second major iteration since it was released.

It’s a dead simple app to pick up and use, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t sophisticated. It’s just very efficiently arranged. The interface is made up of three screens: Beats, Bassline, and Mixer. Let’s take a look at each…

Beats

The drum track isn’t a synth but is a beat sequencer with 8 different classic beatbox sample sets. The sample kits include Roland’s 606, 808, 909, and CR-78, the Oberheim DMX, the Korg KR-55, Casio RZ1, and the classic Linn. Each drumkit has six samples which vary slightly between them, but generally include kick, snare, two high hats, rimshot and then some other one which could be anything from a clap, to a conga, to a tom or cowbell. It’s not super versatile in terms of sample variety, but it’s more than enough of a selection of popular drum machines to play with, and you can mix the levels from that screen.

Setting up sequences is ridiculously easy. Along the bottom of the screen is a 4 step/4 bar phrase, and you simply select the sample you want to sequence, and the sequencer along the bottom switches to that sample. If you have played with any step sequencers, it’s a setup you should instantly recognize.

Bassline

The bass track is pretty much a virtual Roland TB-303. It’s got the same square/saw oscillator and some of the filter knobs. An awesome part of RD3 is that it supports multi-touch so you can tweak multiple knobs for the full filtration effect.

Sequencing the bass can be done in two ways: step by step, or by “following.” The first way involves selecting a step, and then assigning a note to it. It’s a little awkward, but once you know what to do, it instantly becomes second nature. You poke the step, you poke the note, and then you can select the octave, and pick if you want it accented or held. “Follow” mode is pretty much like having it on record, and you can play your bass phrase more or less live, and then assign octave and accent in step mode.

Mixer

You can record four different drum patterns and four different bass patterns, and then choose how you’d like them to play in the master screen. For example, you can just pick the patterns as they’re playing, have them played in order, or have them played randomly.

Also from this screen, you can select the volume of the bassline and the beats, and even apply distortion to the bass to make it sound more aggressive (or more like the classic Acid House bass, if you’re so inclined.) Finally, the master “play” button (labeled “run”) and tempo selector are located here.

Once you’re done laying out all your sequences, you can save the song and export it as a .wav file. When you export it, you’re presented with sharing options such as bluetooth, email, SMS and whatever other methods of sharing you may have installed. On my Galaxy S phone, for example this includes things like AllShare and Yahoo! email. There’s also an option to share via SoundCloud, but every time I’ve tried this so far it doesn’t work.

This video is me playing around with RD3, but I can’t actually hear what I’m doing because it’s running directly into the camera, so it’s no masterpiece, but you at least get a good idea of how easy it is to use.

Bottom line: Solid Music-creation Android apps are few, ones this good are even fewer. It’s a must-have.

Poking around with Electrum Drum Synth

Because I spent many years as a poor musician, my area of gear expertise isn’t with high quality instruments, it’s with bargain equipment (think Zoom, M-Audio, Casio, et al.), pawn shop finds, and things best classified as “musical toys.”

I keep up with the latest toy musical instruments, and delight in their exploitation. Circuit bending brightens my day, and I’m always looking out for the next Stylophone. I got the Korg DS-10 on the day it came out, I have two copies of Traxxpad for PSP, and I consider the iPhone/iPod Touch to be a full-fledged music platform.

I guess i’m a pretty discerning customer in the “Don’t Expect Much” category.

Electrum was made by Niko Twenty and is available for $3.99 in the Android Market. What you get is a 16-step sequencer somewhat like the ol’ TR-808 in design, and each sequence is built with six samples. You can put together up to 32 different sequences and create full songs. The cool part is that you can export your creations as single sequence loops or as a full song. The dumps are 16 bit wav files (mono).

A blurry, late night shot of Electrum's interface

I had originally intended to put in a couple of quick sequences that I whipped up on the “rock kit,” but I’m having some trouble doing that, so I’ll just say that there’s also 808, 909, Orchestral, Hip Hop, and Human Beatbox kits and 6 free downloadable packs. While it’s pretty light on features, the only thing it’s really lacking is the ability to import your own sample set. (See Comments)  I always find myself wishing for a sound recording sampler app so I can make my own Richard James kit of nutty noise captured on the phone’s mic. But I guess I have to wait.

If you’ve ever used BeatMaker on iPhone, don’t expect that level of quality. However, BeatMaker costs 20 fricking dollars and Electrum costs only 4. At one fifth the price of BeatMaker, you get much more than one fifth of the functionality with Electrum. Complaints are few. It does get crashy at times, it has dumped some broken .wavs for some reason, and the UI in Sequence mode looks like it’s unfinished. But it’s a work in progress and junk musicians should applaud Niko Twenty.

This is definitely one of the best music apps we have on the Android Platform, and I’m currently working on a little jam built with beats from BeatMaker, a guitar track from Ubisoft’s Jam Sessions for Nintendo DS, and some Theremin wangling from Bebot on iPhone.