A touch-sensitive slab of glass has the potential to be an incredible musical instrument. Actually, it has the potential to be any number of incredible instruments. Sadly, most of the music making apps we've seen so far have been facsimiles of instruments that have existed long before multitouch, from the dinky virtual drum sets of GarageBand to the myriad analog synthesizers you'll find available in the App Store, faithfully reproduced in miniature.
The unoriginality isn't surprising. Reproducing existing instruments and familiar music interfaces is far simpler than inventing new ones entirely, or rethinking them in light of our new devices. Occasionally, however, someone will do just that. Pacemaker is one of those rare cases. It's not just a DJing app--it's DJing reinvented for the touchscreen. With a brilliantly simple UI and an exclusive pipeline into Spotify's catalog, it could well be the easiest way to mix tunes ever.
Pacemaker doesn't look radically different from other DJing software. Though sparser and more colorful, the user interface is dominated by two big circles, just like we've seen elsewhere. The difference is that instead of strictly standing in for the turntables of yore, Pacemaker uses these circles as the main interface for mixing magic. Tap a small icon and the bright blue platter turns into a purple menu, letting you loop a chunk of your song with a single touch. Tap the "fx" icon and the circle transforms again, this time into a dial for adjusting treble or bass, say, or adding a dollop of reverb to the track. (The app is free, with the extras like loops and effects available as in-app purchases for a few bucks.)
In other words, where most DJ apps waste precious real estate with useless virtual turntables, Pacemaker cleverly integrates both its menus and controls into the same layout. It's a terrifically elegant solution--and one that never would have had any reason to exist before the touchscreen.
For Jonas Norberg, the inventor of Pacemaker, coming up with a DJ interface that felt native to today's touch devices was the whole point. As his team was plugging away on the app, designers everywhere were talking about the move away from skeuomorphism and interfaces that relied on visual metaphors from the physical world. It was a conversation he followed closely. While heavy skeuomorphism could make any app gaudy, when it came to DJ software, it posed functional problems. DJ setups are typically the size of a desk, Norberg points out, and cramming every knob and slider on a 10" screen would never be ideal. "It felt stupid to mimic reality," Norberg says. "Buttons have to behave like buttons. They can't swell and move around."
Norberg has been consumed with the idea of simplifying DJing for the better part of the last decade. The original Pacemaker, debuted in 2008, was a kooky piece of hardware that packed a suite of sophisticated mixing tools into a handheld gadget. It was a triumph of consolidation, but it didn't exactly bring mixing to the masses. "If you want to democratize DJing, $850 is a pretty high price point," Norberg admits.
Around the time that first incarnation of the company was going bankrupt, the iPhone was taking off, and Norberg was sense that apps could be the way forward. Out of nowhere, BlackBerry got in touch and asked the Pacemaker team to develop a piece of software for the PlayBook tablet, a request that Norberg has heard came directly from Mike Lazaridis himself. Despite that slate's ignominious fate, the effort laid the foundation for the iPad app that came out this month.
While the decision to ditch skeuomorphism dictated much of the look and feel of the final app, Norberg and his team were constantly asking what they could get rid of to make DJing easier. One thing you won't find in Pacemaker, for example, is a "cue" button--the tool DJs use for setting loop points in a song. Instead, Pacemaker lets you drag a playhead to a particular point on the wave form itself; to jump back to that point, you just have to tap it. As another example, where previous DJ apps confusingly had two "sync" buttons, one for each turntable, Pacemaker just has one. Touch it and your songs will find their way in sync, no matter which track you're fiddling with at the moment.
Some experienced DJs might chaff at that level of simplicity, but for the rest of us, it makes for a far friendlier experience. It's a tradeoff Norberg was more than willing to make. Those circles--which his team cheerfully refers to as "cakes"--are a good example of how the team was willing to compromise. "If you had the controls in a grid instead you could control two parameters at once," he says. "But a grid is no fun." And that, in essence, is a tidy explanation of what makes Pacemaker so great. It harnesses the power of truly thoughtful design to give people something fun, in a category that all too often slides into the realm of frustrating.
Of course, a DJ is only as good as what's in his crates, and there, too, Pacemaker is doing something fairly radical. In addition to throwing on whatever songs you've got loaded on your iPad, Pacemaker is the first DJ app to partner with Spotify, allowing subscribers to mix songs from its extensive catalog. How exactly did a DJ app start-up score a deal with the world's hottest streaming music service? "Nagging," Norberg says. It didn't hurt that both companies are based in Stockholm.
The team plans to update the app with new features in coming months. In some cases, that could mean additions like more effects and longer loops that bring the app closer to par with its competitors.
But those updates could also include new tools and innovative features that DJs have never seen before. Having moved on from the realm of faux 3D knobs and skeuomorphic turntables, it will be far easier for Pacemaker's developers to incorporate whatever weird interface elements they might find on multitouch frontiers. "DJing and touch haven't really evolved yet," Norberg says. "I think we're in a good position to mess around with that a bit."
