[tweetmeme]A while ago, a new app development company Tapparatus showed up with something really fun to use. iSaidWhat?! was an app meant to be used as a way torecord what your friends said, and mix the sequence so it sounds like they said something else. I got the app, and instead of reviewing it from a technical standpoint, I tried to actually make it work in the real world. After over a month of having it on my iPhone, I’m sad to say, that I haven’t been to fabricate an experience that would exhibit the app’s true functionality. But does that mean that it’s not a good app? Far from that. Let me explain.

iSaidWhat’s interface, while pleasing in many ways, is not the most intuitive ones out there. You start with a “New Recording” screen, with the record button glowing red, ready for any input. While recording, you can see the sound wave, and based on that can even make adjustments to the input gain. Another plus about recording with this app—that has nothing to do with its ‘trick your friends’ purpose—is that you can overlay a script over your recording window. Once you’re done, end the recording, name it, and then you’re presented with a “Recordings/Arrangements” window. Again, this is not the ‘home’ screen of the app—there is none. The app does well to guide you through a complete workflow, but going through the steps yourself takes a little getting used to.

So you tap into your recordings, and create snippets. Tapparatus has created the best possible user interface for creating snippets. Tap inside the soundwave, bring up the croppers, and adjust it so that you have what you want to snippetize. You can play that area of the soundwave, and even pinch to adjust the size of the soundwave—get up close and zoomed in allowing you to separate sounds from a single word. There couldn’t be any better UI to edit a soundwave using your fingers—it’s that good.

Once your snippets are done, it’s time to create an arrangement. In the arrangement window, you not only have access to snippets of this particular recording, but any and all snippets you’ve created within the app. So you can use snippets from multiple occasions. Just drag around to rearrange, tap to play each snippet, or tap the global play button to see what the entire arrangement sounds like. You can then directly export it to Facebook, Twitter, or just email it. Tapparatus has a video of it up on YouTube, should you want to see what it’s like.

The only problem is, you have to be enterprising (and possibly lame) enough to follow your friends, recording what they say, pluck out good stuff, and play it back to them. I tried this on two occasions, and the thought of going through our conversations just to provide for a few laughs didn’t seem entertaining. If you think you can trick your friends into saying stupid things that you can creatively join together, the app is well suited to the purpose. You can pump up the input gain to pick up even the softest of sounds, the app records while the iPhone’s screen is blacked out, and picking out snippets couldn’t be better.

Which is sad, because I think there’s a lot more that this kind of a user interface could do, and that we’re missing out. There is for instance no way to ‘remove’ bits of audio from a recording. So if you were wanted to record a live podcast and publish it from your iPhone, you would have to make clips, arrange them, and then publish, instead of just removing the few messed up bits. There’s also no way to import audio from the iPod, so you can’t have a background track for your recording, or even a start/end track. I suppose Danny at Tapparatus knows best, and wants to concentrate on its core functionality rather than making it a mess.

This kind of an app really gives you hope of what’s going to be possible on the giant surface of the iPad. The iPhone is fine for small tasks like doing mix-ups, but it’s still too small to do any serious audio editing. Take for instance the latest ‘Soundboard’ feature. While in the arrangements view, you flip the device into landscape view, and all your clips turn into blocks much like a on a professional soundboard. Tap on one to make it play. Tap it again, plays again. Could come in handy on the iPhone itself. But imagine this on a larger device like the iPad, and a live audience. The potential for such an app is immense, and I think Tapparatus has the goods to take it to the next level.

As of right now, the app costs just $0.99 at the App Store, and is definitely a fine mix of lickable pixels, functionality, and potential fun.

Giveaway

But your fun could start with a free copy of iSaidWhat?! right here on SA! Yep. I’ve got like 5 codes, and will give them out to enterprising commenters who can tell me a good way to prank someone. Like, if you got the app, what would you do with it? Two of the codes will go out for retweets as well. Giveaway ends in two days. Standard rules apply. Ends in two days.