What about phase?
Support

Get in touch

Questions, problems, ideas — write and you’ll get an answer from the person who made the app.

mulch.cam.us@gmail.com

Please include your iOS version and, if it’s about a specific take, roughly how long it is and which process was selected.

Frequently asked

The app asks for the microphone. Why?
Only to record your takes, only while you record. Audio never leaves your device unless you share it yourself.
Why does it ask for my location?
Freshly recorded takes are named after the place you recorded them (“Take · Kastanienallee”). It’s optional — decline the permission and takes are named by date instead. Nothing is transmitted to us.
What happens after the 14-day trial?
Playback stays free forever: demos, your saved takes, every process and control. Recording new takes and sharing ask for the one-time $0.99 unlock. Nothing you made is ever taken away.
I paid on another device — how do I unlock here?
Open the unlock sheet (the TRIAL line at the bottom of the page, or tap record) and choose Restore purchase. The unlock follows your Apple ID.
What format does sharing use?
Plain WAV, and Share offers two of them. Bounce mixes the process down to stereo — what you actually hear, drift and all — as a several-second render (a preview of the process, not the full unbounded piece). Source take is the original mono recording, unprocessed, ready for any editor or sampler.
How do I delete takes?
Each tile in the takes list has a delete button, with confirmation. Deleting the app removes everything it stored.
The wheel shows two rings. What am I looking at?
Left channel is magenta, right is cyan. The rings draw each channel’s actual pattern for the selected process — when the channels drift apart in time, you see exactly how far.

Where “phase” comes from

In 1965, the composer Steve Reich was working with a tape recording of a street preacher known as Brother Walter, caught mid-sermon on the phrase “it’s gonna rain.” Reich cut the phrase into a loop and set it running on two tape machines at once, meaning to keep them in unison.

No two tape decks run at exactly the same speed. The loops drifted apart, fell out of sync, swung back into alignment, then drifted apart again — an accident Reich named phasing and spent the rest of the decade turning into a technique, from “It’s Gonna Rain” and “Come Out” through “Piano Phase,” “Violin Phase,” and “Clapping Music.”

“What about phase?” is an independent app inspired by that lineage of tape and phase music. It has no affiliation with, and is not endorsed by, Steve Reich or his publishers.