Czech manufacturer Bastl Instruments is known for making quirky, affordable and portable synths and noisemaking machines: just a few weeks ago, it announced the release of the Kastle ARP, a 'pocket-sized patchable synthbox' geared towards producing buzzy arpeggiated melodies.
What Bastl isn't well-known for is developing software, hence our surprise when we discovered that the manufacturer had announced the release of an iPhone app. We're all for it, though, especially as it looks like one of the most unique sound-making apps we've come across in a minute.
Outsidify uses your phone's speaker and microphone to create feedback loops and capture resonances from the world around you. You can create feedback using the sounds in your environment or load audio clips into Outsidify to be played through the onboard sample player.
Feeding the phone's output back into its input, you can change the tone and feedback amount via an XY pad and delay the sound from the mic using the delay slider. In addition to playing back samples, the player can loop them, chop them up and adjust sample playback speed from 0.25x to 4x.
Load up sounds into the app, pop your phone inside anything that will resonate or reflect the sound it produces - pop it in a coffee mug or even point the speaker into your mouth - and you're able to record a layer of resonance on top of any sample. This effectively turns your phone into a kind of effects processor that uses the world around you to manipulate any sound you like.
Outsidify can also capture impulse responses, so you're able to capture the acoustic profile of any space and recreate this later using convolution reverb plugins like Logic's Space Designer.
Outsidify is priced at $5.99 and runs on iOS 15.2 and above on iPhone 6S and later.
