Smule's new social app Strum mixes video with visual and audio filters
Smule’s back with another music-themed iOS app. The company behind App Store hits like I Am T-Pain, Glee Karaoke, and Magic Keyboard on Thursday released Strum.
Though it’s an easy analogy to fall victim too, the easiest way to describe Strum is as (another take on) Instagram for video, but with soundtracks tacked on. Indeed, Strum offers an Instagram-like scrolling newsfeed of videos and gives iPhone videographers the ability to take their 15-second or shorter videos and apply all sorts of visual filters to them.
The Strum timeline
But the filters in Strum go beyond the visual. True to Smule’s form, they offer a mix of audio-processing options as well: Some filters autotune your video’s soundtrack, others add effects like reverb, and others work to convert spoken word into rap or song. The key question, I suppose, is: Why?
“We always wanted to do something with video,” Smule’s chief scientist, Parag Chordia, told Macworld. Smule, Chordia explained, is well-accomplished at fostering “ubiquitous social expression through music.” But with the exception of a few apps that offered video as a “kind of buried” afterthought, he said, none of Smule’s apps—which have combined for more than 75 million installations across devices—have focused on visual expression.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
http://www.macworld.com/article/2019764/smules-new-social-app-strum-mixes-video-with-visual-and-audio-filters.html
