Rassel - Pocket shaker ٤+

A great little percussion emulator. Turns your phone into one of four percussion instruments; egg, shaker, bells, and tambourine. The bells are perfect for the Christmas season, and the egg and shaker work just like their real world counterparts. The articulation and responsiveness is uncanny… even 32nd note or quick triplet fills are possible over a sixteenth note groove. And if you aren’t a drummer and that’s gobbledygook, don’t worry… it just means the app will respond to every move you make.

The only downside is the tambourine doesn’t have a function for when one bangs a real tambo against the other hand. It does the shake part real well, but doesn’t allow for the accent. Don’t know if that would even be possible in an app like this, so I didn’t drop any stars for that.

Would love to see the app expand into making shakers out of non-traditional sounds… could we get a hi-hat sound out of a shaker instrument? Or how about a triangle? A cat’s meow? The possibilities are endless!

As ad portals go, there are some pretty obnoxious ones, but Rassel isn’t among them. All you see is a little notification dot in the app itself (not your Notification Center), so it’s unobtrusive. They don't want your email from you. You don't need to log into anything. There’s no splash screen. It’s great.

And you have all these fun rattles and bells to play with, which might make your iOS device the most expensive egg shaker in the history of music … but hey, why not? Have some fun.

I think this is the best responsive percussive app out there right now. It really does feel like Im holding an egg shaker. As a percussionist I definitely think if you guys put more beads/bells into each instrument it will sound closer to playing the instrument. I think the sample or engine sounds very good, but in real life I’m use to hearing more beads in the shakers, more bells in the actual jingle, etc. Will be keeping this app handy :)