MusicRadar

Chris Wolfe Jasuto
£2.99

Jasuto, its developer claims, is the f­irst modular synth for the iPhone. Think 'Reaktor Mobile' and you're getting there, though of course, this is far simpler. Being on the iPhone, you get to use your f­ingers rather than a mouse and pointer, although there is a free VST plug-in version for your desktop too.

So what you have here is a lovely-looking but slightly alien setup. View some of the excellent videos on the website, though, and you'll soon get your head around it, as well as discover how f­ilthy Jasuto can sound!

You can create your own synth within a Scene (of which eight examples are provided) using various components, called Nodes. Starting from scratch, you'll need a speaker Node in order to hear the results and a source Node, which can be one of six oscillator types: Sin, Tri, Saw, LFO, Square and Noise. The Nodes connect (and the signal flows) from top to bottom and they link to one another via user de­finable inputs and outputs so you can have, say, three oscillators connected to one speaker for really fat, layered sounds.

Things get really interesting when you insert e­ffects or a f­ilter into the signal path - place a ­filter betwixt synth and speaker, for example, and control the sound with your ­fingers by connecting and moving f­ilter and resonance Nodes. All movements can be easily recorded and looped, and a keyboard screen lets you play while a sequencer enables the recording of 16 steps of note information, so you can create simple ri­ffs with relative ease.

Once you get your head around the concept, you'll grow to love Jasuto. Yes, it is a mite f­iddly and, if you work with complex patches, you do get the occasional audio dropout, but even though it's no longer available at the introductory price of 59, it's still a great deal. Get it now.

Buy now from the App Store

NEXT: Hexlar TouchOSC

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