Welcome to Club Me: iPhone DJ App

Sometimes the list of iPhone apps seems to get a little too long and absurd, but I finally found one that I can really get excited about. Record001 is perfect for helping me satiate all those constant urges to find a turntable and some vinyl. That's right folks, the iPhone finally has a DJ app.



In the last thirty years, DJing has changed meaning and form so many times that I need a dictionary, a couch and several ibuprofen to make sense of them. At one point, it referred solely to the musical selectionists and hypists that controlled what people listened to on the predominant form of entertainment: radio. Then, it began to refer to "personalities" or quasi-musicians that had gone beyond the radio, armed with turntables and libraries of music to perform outside of the confines of the radio station studio. DJs and DJing remained there for the better part of a decade, losing much of the derision that accompanied these human musical facilitators while their craft became seen as more of a "creative" act, as opposed to critical or consumptive.

With the advent and proliferation of digital media, however, DJs and DJing have once again entered a phase of great transformation and redefinition. Now, many DJs (or MP3Js as they are derisively or self-stylistically called) use digital technology and even "perform" via podcasts and internet radio broadcasts. "DJ" no longer refer simply to European men in unfortunate sunglasses staring out above the viewer to an exotic-seeming, Ibiza sunset or Hip Hop artists who became producers or started car repair shows for cable TV, but rather everyone and their unborn child that compiles music, playing it for unseen visitors on pages, forums and stations the world-wide-web over. Even for DJs that continue to perform amidst living, breathing individuals that have, presumably, paid a cover or fulfilled a drink minimum, Digital technology is playing a greater role, whether it be in the software programs used create set-lists or even perform a range of DJ tasks or the MIDI and other devices used to alter, transition or even transform existing songs.

But, put your dual-deck iPod DJ device aside, because the Japanese design and software group, Delaware, has unveiled a new application called Record001 for the iPod Touch and iPhone that incorporates many of the traditional vinyl elements of DJing into a touch-screen application. Now, you can cue and play, choose track placement with a stylus graphic interface, backspin or reverse track progression and even incorporate scratches and other effects into songs. Not bad. In fact Record001 just might be the greatest app since the lighter thingy that moves when you tilt your iPhone. Oh, and it certainly confuses the term "DJ" even more. But that's okay. I'm on a couch now, the ibuprophen are taking effect and I have a brand new app to entertain for, well, ever?

Delaware's Record001 is available for $1.99 at the Apple Store.

For full reviews of the best DJ Software programs available, be sure and check out our DJ Software site. Or you can keep on going with these other blog posts:

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