The Gridwalker scene turns the sounds of the outside world
into an avant-garde improvisation.
With RjDj, all the world is a sound stage. The innovative app transforms the live sound input from an iPhone or iPod touch into impromptu musical compositions.
RjDj Album includes six "scenes," each of which uses different algorithms to process, twist, and manipulate the sounds around you into something new. (RjDj Single gives one scene to try out for free.) Some of the scenes keep samples of the incoming audio partially intact but add layers of distortion or shimmering synthesizers--in the case of Eargasm--or syncopated echoes and pitch adjustments in the case of Echolon. Those ambient experiences contrast with scenes such as Noia, which uses incoming sounds to trigger drums, bass, and keyboard noises; or Gridwalker, which uses the loudness of your environment to influence its Philip Glass-like composition.
Depending on your surrounding, noises, and the active scene, RjDj can be extremely serene, surreal, or mildly disturbing, but almost always interesting. Individual scenes can get old rather quickly, but more are promised in future updates.
When you come across a soundscape you particularly enjoy, you can record RjDj's sounds to replay later. This is a great feature that doesn't yet live up to its potential. The high-quality WAV recordings show up in a list within RjDj, but aren't accessible from the iPod library. There are limited controls during playback, and you can't listen to RjDj recordings while working in other apps. Nor can you transfer recordings off the iPhone (although the developer says that's planned). That's a big disadvantage, because the WAV files take a lot of space, and musicians or sound designers won't be able to use these cool sounds in any of their own work.
Innovative sound-warping and -replacing algorithms create unique ambient and musical pieces. Can record sound creations.
Can't transfer recordings off the iPhone or iPod. Included scenes grow stale quickly. Can't listen to live audio or recordings while working in other apps. 