This will of course be showing up in every single electronic music blog out there, but I had to note it here: Propellerhead's Rebirth, a software simulation of the classic Roland 808 and 909 drum machines along with the 303 bassline, has been born yet again, this time for the iPhone. It's 6.99 in the app store, and I'm about to find out if it's money well spent...(though certainly the concept has me quite psyched).
The original Rebirth program, released in 1996, was revolutionary: software synthesizers/emulations pretty much didn't exist at the time, except some primitive forms bundled with the DAW's of the period. It could probably be argued that Propellerhead started the whole movement right there.Which is rather fitting, considering the source material-- three early-eighties analog instruments by Roland that pretty much defined dance and hip-hop music, and who's influence on all genres of electronci music is as strong as ever today.
More info here: http://rebirthapp.com/
Ha, I remember when I used to rock this in OS 9. Good memories. How does the iPhone app stand up?
ReplyDeleteit's both identical and also, as you might imagine, much harder to use. the drum-selector dial, for example, never seemd to go where i want it to, and my finger obscures the whole thing anyway when i'm trying to move it. i love the concept and it's fun when you're not fighting the screen....and I do think Rebirth in any forum is just a great piece of software, if mainly for retro/nostalgic purposes.
ReplyDeleteRebirth is what introduced me to electronic music and blew my mind away, I would still use it today, too bad mac osx something doesn't support it anymore and I don't feel like running some extra software just to run it...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I really wish it could run on OSX....seems like a crime that it can't. There are other emulations out there of course, but ReBirth was the first, and I love how it integrates everything together so nicely.
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