Sounds of the Universe, iDrum maker iZotope brought the story full-circle with iDrum: Depeche Mode Sounds of the Universe. The app lets non-musicians remix and recombine rhythm loops, synthesizer sounds and vocal snippets from the album any way they want. Think of it as somewhere between the Guitar Hero mini-game in your Frosted Flakes, and the Pro Tools hardware and software used by real rock stars. iZotope has posted a demo video of the Depeche Mode iDrum in use on YouTube.
The Depeche Mode app is the sixth version of iDrum to hit the App Store. The app is limited compared to what you can install on a Mac, but the restrictions make it easier to create musical, entertaining Depeche Mode remixes that sound good instead of grating.
iZotope's history is interesting: Founders Mark Ethier and Jeremy Todd are MIT grads who channeled their computer science, music and engineering degrees into free software, aimed at computer musicians and producers, which emulated the character of vinyl records. Since 2001, the self-funded company has grown to include an entire line of audio production, music and broadcast software and hardware products, as well as a successful audio DSP (digital signal processing) business that has provided technology to bigger companies including Adobe, Sony and Avid.
By next year, it'll probably be mandatory for major music acts to release an iPhone remix app. Who knows? Maybe the next Weird Al Yankovic will record his or her parodies using iPhone snippets of hit songs, instead of an accordion.
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