Archive for category Music Apps

Gibson Learn & Master Guitar App: Free Tuner & Metronome

Mar 4

Posted by Alan in Free iPhone Apps, Music Apps, iPhone Guitar Apps | No Comments

The Gibson Learn & Master Guitar app (free, link) is a guitarist’s Swiss army knife. And it’s as free as a bird now. The app has 4 features that should come in hand to all guitarists, a tuner, a metronome, chord book, and lesson videos.

The chromatic tuner uses the iPhone’s microphone and can tune any instrument. It also has settings for alternate guitar tunings as well. The app can play tones so that you can tune by ear.

For the rhythmically challenged, the app comes with a metronome that beats out the time along with a lever for adjusting BPM (beats per minute). There are settings for multiple time signatures as well—the standard 4/4 as well as 2/3, 3/4, and none). The coolest feature is the ability to tap out your own tempo. Simply hit the Tap Tempo button several times at the speed you want, then app will compute the tempo after a few seconds.

Also featured is a basic chord book that shows you how to place your fingers to form chords as well as high-quality videos of various guitar lessons (Internet connection required).

Gibson Learn & Master Guitar is a free download from the iTunes App Store.

Review: Riddim Ribbon, A Music Game From the Makers of Tap Tap

Feb 14

Posted by Tim Barribeau in Music Apps, iPhone Game Reviews, iPhone Games | No Comments

Riddim Ribbon featuring the Black Eyed Peas ($2.99, iTunes link) is a new music game from Tapulous—the makers of the ultra-popular Tap Tap music games. Can they replicate the successes of their first franchise? While there’s plenty of music yet to come to the app, we weren’t impressed with Riddim Ribbon in its current state.

Riddom Ribbon is a combination racing/music game. You guide a sphere along a twisting race-course, attempting to follow a path marked for you on the track. Along the way you pick up spheres, hit jumps, avoid obstacles, and interact with the music. At certain junctures in the course, the path will branch, giving you an option to play different remixes of the song. There are also jumps which take you to an elevated path, and add audio effects to the song. If you stray from the path or hit too many obstacles, the music warps and slows.

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Tapulous Debuts New Music Game: Riddim Ribbon

Feb 8

Posted by Tim Barribeau in Music Apps, News, Tilt Games | No Comments

From the same company that brought you the mega-successful Tap Tap series comes Riddim Ribbon, a new music game that marries remixes and racing into one package.

The first version of the game is Riddom Ribbon: Black Eyed Peas ($2.99, iTunes link) which includes three songs by the Grammy award winning artists, with extra levels available for $1 each.

Riddom Ribbon is a tilt-controlled racing game, with you piloting a small sphere around a course, avoiding obstacles and hitting bonuses. If you stray from the correct path the music starts to slow-down and warp, and every so often you’ll come across a split in the path which will change the remix of the song depending on which path you take.

Given the massive popularity of the Tap Tap games, you can expect Riddim Ribbon to be a major seller.

App Review: SoundMatrix

Oct 15

Posted by Tim Barribeau in App Reviews, Music, Music Apps, Music Made With iPhone and iPod Touch | 1 Comment

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SoundMatrix ($2.99, iTunes link) is an addictive synth music app based on the popular ToneMatrix Flash application. SoundMatrix puts a grid of gray squares on your phone 16 wide by 18 tall. Each column represents a beat, and each row a note (with the bottom two percussion). As you use your finger to mark the squares, it sets up a musical sequence. It’s a bit hard to explain, but if you play with the free Flash version, you’ll get a feel for it quickly.

As simple as this little sequencer is, it’s utterly addictive, and I’ve lost hours of productive time to ToneMatrix. Bringing it to the iPhone makes it the ultimate time killer. If you’re stuck waiting, regardless of how long, there’s enough entertainment here to keep you going. If you happen on a sound pattern you’re really happy with, you can email it to yourself and save it for posterity.

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There are also a ton of options, for changing tempo, pitch, and other settings. The slew of different synth sounds are for when you’re bored of the standards, but they’re not particularly special and sound like something from the cheap Casio synthesiser your parents bought you when you were 8.

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What we didn’t like was the small note buttons, which were often hard to hit, and the price. This is a free application online, and if Flash worked on the iPhone, you’d be able to play it there. Paying $3 for a native version seems quite steep, though maybe with the advent of Flash Authoring, which allows easy conversion of Flash apps to iPhone apps, a free version will make its way out soon.

Conclusion

Overall, we can recommend SoundMatrix as an entertaining musical time waster or for general musical inspiration, though it’s a touch more expensive than we would like.

SoundMatrix is a $2.99 download from the iTunes App Store.

Review: Concert Vault Streams Live Concert Recordings (Free iPhone Apps)

Oct 11

Posted by Ben Eveloff in Free iPhone Apps, Music, Music Apps | No Comments

There are many applications like Pandora and Last.FM in the app store that allow you to stream music, but Concert Vault (free, iTunes link) is the only one that streams music from an extensive database of live concert recordings. And these are not recordings from a bunch of no-name bands, these are legendary acts like The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Stevie Ray Vaughn, The Grateful Dead, The Ramones, Janis Joplin, etc.

Concert Vault Jimi Hendrix Experience

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Concert Vault contains entire concerts from artists, and each concert is broken up by individual track, so you don’t have to scan through the audio to find the song you want to listen too. Also, each show is accompanied by a summary of the concert and information about the artist.
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Music Made With iPhone Apps: Part III

Jun 8

Posted by Alan in Music Apps, Music Made With iPhone and iPod Touch, iPhone Music Apps, iPhone Musical Instruments | 1 Comment

Another excellent song created from iPhone music apps and sliced together using Final Cut Pro:

Musical instrument apps used:

Link to video on Vimeo.

(Via Just Another iPhone Blog)

Presidents of the United States of America’s (It’s Lump!) Entire Catalog in $3.00 iPhone App

Feb 21

Posted by Alan in Apps From Music Artists, Music Apps, iPhone Applications, iPhone Music Apps | No Comments

The Presidents of the United States of America (PUSA), a two-time Grammy-nominated group behind the hits “Lump” and “Peaches,” is offering up its entire catalog in a $3 iPhone app called The President’s Music – PUSA.

The app’s pricing is interesting because it is much cheaper than their music in the iTunes Music Store, which is $0.99 per song. The app’s music can only be listened to using the app, while the songs available in the iTunes Music Store are DRM-free. The app has a “buy song” button that lets you purchase the song using the iPhone’s wireless Music Store, so there is a subtle but clever sales pitch going on.

Unlike most bands, PUSA owns the rights to its music and can do pretty much whatever it wants with it. The band promised to keep the app updated with “Extras and Exclusives, a regularly updated playlist of demos, live tracks and other oddball stuff.”

The President’s Music – PUSA is a 99-cent download in the iTunes App Store.

Music Made With iPhone Musical Instrument Apps

Feb 5

Posted by Alan in Music Apps, Music Made With iPhone and iPod Touch, iPhone Music Apps, iPhone Musical Instruments | 3 Comments

One of the growing categories for iPhone apps is musical instruments. Ocarina is probably the most well known in the genre. But are any musical groups using these apps to perform music?

A group called iBand (www.iband.at) is using the iPhone and iPod Touch to write and perform music live. Their website currently has two songs available for download, “Vitality” and “Life Is Greater Than the Internet,” both made with instruments available in the App Store.