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Different Drummer - The $150 Drum App
Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 10:28AM Two weeks ago Different Drummer was released with a $300 price-tag. There was some amusement about this throughout the week that followed, but I didn't report on it because I had talked to the developer. He had said that this was a placeholder price, trying to hold on to the name on iTunes. They didn't feel it was really ready, and were just keeping the app at a crazy price to discourage people from buying. At the time I was told that, "It will be priced in the range of serious musical software and drum machines because it's just that unique."
Today it was updated with MIDI features and the price was lowered to $150, so I guess this is it. That price is still high for an app, but it is in-line with VSTs and other computer-based music apps. I'm trying to reserve judgement, and have requested a promo-code for review.
iTunes Description:
Different Drummer is your secret weapon in the quest for innovative beats that make sense. Using patent pending Cyclophone Technology, Different Drummer taps into the primal source of all drumming—waves. Wave motion propels almost everything you can imagine and it's the perfect controller for drumming too. Different Drummer puts out 8 tracks of drum beats which are remarkably lifelike at times and out of this world at others. To see Different Drummer in action please go to www.technemedia.com
What's new in 1.01:
- Various bug fixes
- MIDI Sync send
- MIDI Out, Start, Stop
- More drum sounds
- UI Refinements
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Buy Different Drummer on iTunes: $149.99 |
There is no video available at this time. You won't actually "see Different Drummer in action" on their website just yet, though it now says that a video will be coming soon.
Update: Developer Techné Media has uploaded two demos to SoundCloud. Thanks to Rafael for pointing me towards these.
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Reader Comments (24)
LOL
spoiler: it won't be worth $150
Looking like it will eventually be much cheaper:
http://www.technemedia.com/drummer/
Actually, I think I misunderstood, this IS the cheaper price they refer to on their page.
Yea, that message on the site is confusing. From my emails with the dev, I get the impression this $150 is the intended price.
LFOL
there, I fixed it for ya.
The iTunes link in this article goes to TriqTraq instead of Different Drummer... ?
what if i already bought it at $300?
Thanks, Alphacat! I just fixed the link.
@Anonymouse- then we will throw you a pity party.
What color balloons would you like?
It doesn't look great, but this impression is based entirely on the UI. Maybe it sounds amazing? There are a few visually atrocious apps that sound great. Still $150 is a pretty bold pricing experiment in the iOS music app world, and I can't see this taking off unless the app truly is groundbreaking.
"taps into the primal source of all drumming -- waves."
That's some good stuff. I should go to Colorado or Washington State, and then write an app that taps into the global consciousness of the universe. (http://noosphere.princeton.edu -- I *love* that this is hosted at Princeton!).
Or maybe I should do something based on the Time Cube. If people will pay $150 to tap into waves, they'll pay more to tap into the future. Private island, here I come!
wonder if they need a celebrity endorsement...who better?
http://www.dead.net/store/books/literature-biography/drumming-edge-magic
I'll wait for it on AppsGoneFree.
Between you and me, I took a lot of acid in the 90s. I never had any real hallucinations or any of that, but I did have several profound insights into the nature of consciousness and reality.
When I cleaned up I began to seriously study philosophy, theology, and the occult. I have no religion, so I make a great student of all religions. I listen to what they have to say and then it either adds to my assimilated knowledge or is discarded. Agnostic Gnosticism! So among the many weird things that I've read, I'm a big fan of Carl Jung. I've also read a similar book to the one a1 linked over to, which utilized Kabbalah's numerology for making "magick" rhythm patterns. I played around with it a bit, and there was some interesting stuff there, but nothing that really grabbed me.
Only one person has spotted this, but the discchord logo is actually a choasphere bursting out of a disco ball. The thing I learned most from my occult studies is a fondness for hiding things in plain sight, where they will never be seen. The chaosphere itself is linked to Collective Unconsciousness, the Jungian principle behind Noosphere. The logo was inspired by a highly productive mediation on the subject, shortly before I started all of this.
Yay for Micky Hart, and acid too!
Good to know the personal history, I've spent a lot of time staring at that chaosphere discoball and wondering about the origin haha
> Yay for Micky Hart, and acid too!
Both are surely in my "Top 200 Best Things in the Universe" list.
There's crazy amounts of synchronicity here ;-). Every day, discchord gets a little weirder, and a little more fun.
The app is now $149. It is absolutely mind blowing! Serious production tool-- no drum machine can come close to this. In a matter of minutes you can create the most amaizing, never heard before, impossible to achieve in any other way tracks that sound so human, organic. We had Amy Rubin (contemporary composer) jam with it at our house, the result was simply stunning. A must have tool for any musician or recording studio. I guarantee, once you experience it you'll NEVER going to waste your time on anything else!
Nice background drop, Tim. Being a perpetual student with an open mind: Yes!
When music apps come onto the scene and they are priced as if the developer isn't paying any attention; or doesn't care; or believes they have some secret sauce worth a premium, I have two responses:
(1) I imagine the number of $10 and $5 and $2 new apps I can buy for the same amount of money.
(2) I pull out Gestrument, or Alchemy, or TC-11, or Animoog, or Grain Science, or ThumbJam, or DrumJam, or Borderlands, or SampleWiz, or any of the truly amazing apps which represent a developer or team getting it in at least two dimensions, one of innovation, the other of marketing commonsense.
Right now, Lemur is on the edge of the pricing envelope at $49.99. Konkreet Performer at $24.99 would represent an app that probably has lost a lot of sales because it's not $9.99. Just sayin'
Stephen / Kamelmauz
Oddly enough, I got a message from this Valeriya Tuz person (commenting above about the wonderfulness of this app) on Soundcloud: said account has no history, no friends, no followers... at least at the time I'm posting this.
http://i.imgur.com/dt4hD.png
Sockpuppetry?
Interesting! Thanks for sharing, Alphacat.
update
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPNSSOr-UVM
still $150....who's gonna take one for the team?