If there’s one thing we like to have on our phones, it’s the ability to point and tag a track. It’s this ability which proved very popular among most and saw the launch of start-ups like that of Midomi.

In August, music tagging network Shazam, popular for their worldwide premium mobile-based tagging service, launched Shazam for iPhone. A free, bare-bones application which listened to a 30 second clip of any track you wished to play to it, sent it to Shazam for tagging, and then came back to you letting you what song it was that you were currently listening to, which artist it was by and other track-related information.

It started off a good respectable app, after all the app was free compared to the company’s £1.50 per minute phone-based ‘2580‘ service, we were getting unlimited tagging of songs, and best of all it was completely ad-free. Gradually though, with each sequential update to the app, it was clear Shazam had other plans. Plans which would eventually involve the introduction of a premium service, directed solely at the iPhone and iPod touch (with mic input). The first tell-tale sign came as the company (without announcement) added Google adverts to the app. Sure, people were a tad taken back by it at first, but in time we said – it’s Free, and the developers need a return – that was fine. The stab in the back came with the introduction of a second update to the app which took away unlimited tagging and instead limited tagging to just 5 songs .. a month.

Cue, Shazam Encore. Launched just last week, the app is a premium version of the original music tagging service and although it offers a few other additions for your $4.99, it also has a dirty secret. Would you believe it, but – it still has ads. Yep, even though Shazam willingly took my £2.99, they still want to leach off my innocent tapping mistakes (well, I wouldn’t click on an ad on purpose, would I?). I’m so livid about this, I like many others want my money back. I don’t expect to pay to see ads. Am I the only one in thinking this?

It’s not all bad though. Shazam Encore’s saving grace comes in a new feature to the software which allows tagging while your on the road. Coined ‘Drive and Tag’, now when you dock your device in your car kit Shazam will enter ‘Car Mode’. The idea being you can tag what song(s) are playing on your car stereo, hands free. You’ll also find that the app will (just like Genius) give you recommendations based on your previous tags. As well as this, you’ll probably be glad to know the ability to share your tags with the world either via both tweet or facebook status updates also made it into the premium version. The last feature I was a little curious on, and after trying it I have to admit it worked pretty much flawlessly, and this is the ability to ‘Map’ your tags. In Shazam Encore, your tags history is now recorded on a Map, meaning you can see where and when you tagged that song or track. Something I found pretty nifty!

Overall, I’m highly disappointed in this new version. Yes it has some new quirky features, but the fact this is a premium application, and it still has ads is (in my opinion) unacceptable and cannot be overlooked. Imagine if every developer decided to take Shazam’s way of thinking forward? It’s like they said to themselves; “Because we’re not asking for a monthly subscription, ads are ok” – Well, er .. they’re not. Sort this out Shazam. Seriously. Or I might just find myself moving to Midomi .. for good.

I don’t know when the last time I listened to a radio was. A week? A month? It’s kind of hard to find good stations where I live. That’s why I like CD’s for the car. But my interest was sparked by the description of Pocket Tunes Radio. Sure, there are other streaming radio apps—but this one looked good. Maybe I’d finally find a station I liked.

Pocket Tunes has surpassed most of my expectations. The interface is slick, and it sports an impressive array of features: a Safari work-around that allows background streaming, song recording, a built-in web browser, and more. The library of available stations is broad enough to appeal to most listeners; it even includes support for Sirius and XM radio! The bottom line: this app works, and it works beautifully.

Selecting a station is the first order of business. Groups (genres, essentially) include your basic Country/Rock/Indie/Pop/Classical and so on, but there are also groups for featured stations, “top stations,” college stations, and Hi Speed Network stations, among others. You can also find stations based on your location. Opening a group allows you to see the stations contained inside it; while there are many easily recognizable names, others are just an anonymous serving of alphabet soup. In any case, with 16,000 streams, you should be able to find something you like. Navigating to a station from the web is also possible.

The best part about the station listing, though: you can hide groups entirely, which helps declutter your list. Considering the massive number of stations and genres available, this feature is a godsend, and just one of many examples of the attention to detail in Pocket Tunes Radio.

Song playback works flawlessly over WiFi, and while I couldn’t test it over a network (I have an iPod Touch), others have reported decent quality on 3G, with occasional problems over EDGE. Some radio stations offer multiple quality levels, and Pocket Tunes then chooses one based on your connection, though you can switch to a different stream manually. Sound quality is solid, though obviously compressed, but it works for everyday listening if you’re not an audiophile.

While a song is playing, you can add the station to your favorites, search for the song on iTunes, or…best of all…you can record it by tapping the red button at the bottom of the screen. Nice! The recording feature works great, though it’s completely manual; if you come into a song five seconds late, for example, you’ve missed that part for good. Recorded songs are stored in the app, so unfortunately there’s no way to grab them.

You can also browse the web while a song is playing. This is used both to open web-based radio stations and to allow you to continue semi-normal activities whilst listening to music, since Apple still won’t allow background processes. Better still: if you want to do something other than browsing the web (like, say, playing a game or checking your mail), Pocket Tunes uses what amounts to a Safari hack that allows the music to play in the background. The background-process restriction doesn’t apply to Safari, so the app opens a Quicktime stream. Long story short: Pocket Tunes does it for you and then you close Safari and go about your business. This 3.0-exclusive workaround isn’t perfect, and I’m not sure if it works for all stations, but it’s a nice feature.

I could go on and on about the minutiae of Pocket Tunes Radio, but let it be enough that it’s a slick, speedy radio app with a massive selection of stations and some great features like recording and background playback. Yes, there are other offerings on the store, and I haven’t tried them all, but Pocket Tunes leaves you wanting little, and best of all, it just works. For $6.99, this app is worth it.

Concerts can be an amazing experience. There’s truly nothing like a live performance by an electrifying band. The experience can give new appreciation for the artist and their music. Conversely, a bad concert can turn love into disdain without any hope of recovery. Regardless, seeing artists live is a vital part of our culture.

Finding a concert, on the other hand, can be a pain. Especially if you live in an area of urban sprawl mixed with suburban wastelands peppered with the occasional oasis of college town venues just outside of its perimeter. The combination of limited shows and resources to find them can discourage an avid concert goer to the point of giving up. Then there’s the other side of things, what if you live somewhere like New York, London or Nashville, where bands play every night? How do you turn down the noise enough to avoid missing those crucial back-alley gigs? iConcertCal seems like a great answer for hometown concert information gathering and an amazing resource for the roadtrip enthusiast.

iTunes and Your Artists

For a long while iConcertCal was an iTunes Visualizer plug-in that gathered your music library information (through the iTunes xml file). It then contacted a few concert databases (like Jambase) and cd release databases to create a custom concert and CD release calendar. I have used it for about two years but hadn’t really done much with the info, because I could never remember to activate the visualizer. Lately, however, a lot’s been going on. iConcertCal now integrates with iCal on the Mac (allowing users to keep closer track of things without necessarily having to go to iTunes) and, of course, there’s an iPhone app.

iConcertCal for the iPhone features a straight-forward user interface that sorts concert information into shows by your favorite artists, shows at a particular venue that can be sorted by distance/alphabetically, and a list of every show in your area. If you just want to see a show tonight, iConcertCal will show you every gig on today’s date and sort those by venues as well. It does all this by searching the artists you have on your iPhone and by a simple syncing process to the desktop plug-in.

For the Music Lover on the Go

So if you were on a daytrip to Philadelphia and walking around downtown, you could easily find the closest gigs for that night. Once you’ve found them, it’s hard to know which artist is worth the cover charge. iConcertCal solves this problem by providing a link to the artist on the iTunes store. So you’ve found a gig in Philly and want to tell your friends there where to meet you. You can email them all the concert info right from the app. Need tickets? Also not a problem, simply click a button and Ticketmaster (or your ticket retailer) opens in mobile Safari so you can make your purchase. Then you can click a link and it opens Maps to give you directions to the venue.

Other little touches round off this application nicely and most are an extension of the desktop iConcertCal. For example, let’s say you’re on the go with friends want to check gigs but you’d rather they didn’t see the Streisand and Manillow suggestions that will inevitably pop-up. Removing artists from your searches is a simple swipe and delete from the settings page. Little things like this illustrate precisely what you’re getting, a brand new iPhone application that appropriates a significant amount of maturity from its desktop brother.

There are certain apps that make you say, “hmmm… I wish they’d add this…” and others that inspire you to say, “Wow… that’s amazing. You know what? They should add this.” iConcertCal is one of the latter. It does a great job of lining up concerts and giving you all the info you need to find them. It does all this without the spam and questionable practices that some concert calendars employ.

There’s very little to fault in this application. My only wish is that it extended the new cd releases feature from the desktop, as I’m always on the go and can’t ever remember what’s been released or what’s about to be released for purchase. I use my movie application, Now Showing, in precisely this way to find showtimes, add things to Netflix and to buy movies on release.

Conclusion

My recommendation is for everyone that uses iTunes to download the Desktop application and look hard at what you get. One road trip justifies the purchase, one missed gig that was instead spent sitting at home justifies the purchase. There’s no risk involved. If you like what you get from the desktop app, you’ll love having the iPhone version of iConcertCal around. Looking at the iPhone app really drove home to me just how powerful the desktop version has always been. They’re both quickly becoming favorites.

Blog readers may have spotted the application ‘Wunder Radio’ being mentioned in Glenn Head’s A Day In The Life. This was actually the application that I reviewed that worked towards my acceptance into the 148 writer team, but it was put to the bottom of my mailbox and long forgotten. When I spotted Glenn’s post, I found the mail and formatted it ready for an official 148 review. Sit back – because this is a good one.

Wunder Radio is an internet radio application that streams live radio from the internet directly to your iPhone. It can do this through Wi-Fi, 3G and in some cases EDGE – meaning that whenever you’re on the go and have a connection, you can listen to radio that’s playing (quite literally) on the other side of the world.

On the outside, it has a simple yet effective design that takes full use of the generous iPhone screen. It is very similar to the contacts tab within the ‘Phone’ application (see screenshots 1 and 2) – which is perhaps why it is so easy to navigate and find your way around. There’s no need to fiddle around with advanced settings, and if you really want to dig deep it has its own section within the ‘Settings’ application. Opening this will offer you the option to change the theme, MP3 buffer time and default bit rate (see screenshot 3).

The user has the option to browse for radio channels via category (sports / music etc), genre (type of music) and location. Each of these categories has sub-categories to make for easy navigation. Sport is divided into sections such as “NBA”, “NASCAR” and “Major League Baseball” to name a few. Music genre divides all stations into 18 genres, ranging from “Oldies” to “Alternative Rock”. Finally, location is split into continents and main locations, eg. “Africa”, “North America” and “Antarctica” (I never knew that there were stations in the arctic!).

Once you have found your way through to the correct type of radio that you’ve gone through the categories and sub-categories to the radio that you want to listen to, you’ll be offered a generous choice of stations to choose from – each with their own bitrate and symbol stating how it can be streamed (Wi-Fi and 3G for all, EDGE for some) (screenshot 4). When you are in a station, you then have the chance to edit a few more settings if you wish (Buffer Time, Preferred Bit Rate etc – with explanations telling you which option will do which {lower bit rate more reliable, higher bit rate better sound etc}).

I’ve made this sound like a rather long drawn process, but it isn’t at all. As soon as you click on a station it will start to buffer and play, connecting seamlessly and as long as you’re connection is strong enough then, unless the web stream goes down, you’ll stay connected and listening. It can play when the iPhone’s screen is off, too.

One feature I’d like to take note of is the ability to add ‘favourite’ radio stations. This means that at the touch of a button, you’ll have access to all the stations that you have chosen to be a favourite – handy, as it stops you having to go through the categories again. Of course, there is a search option to reduce time wasting also.

But what sets this above other applications of the same category? There are plenty of radio applications out there, some cheaper than this. Well, apart from its seamless integration with the phone, you are not just limited to radio. You have access to scanners (monitor police bands, air traffic control) and other station directories such as the Internet Archive and Icecast Directory. Everything just works – there’s no messing about and no hassle.

You could call it a real ‘Apple’ application. Wunderful.

Note: many carriers, including 02 and AT&T will charge for excessive data usage and in some cases forbid it. Be gentle. Enjoy radio.

“Let me take you to Strawberry Fields, nothing is real…” The “nothing is real” in the psychedelic production for this 1967 Beatles hit included a haunting flute-like instrument. If you’re familiar with the song (And who of a certain age isn’t?), you know what I’m talking about and can probably even hear the instrument in your head right now. That signature sound emanated from a wonderful electro-mechanical device known as the Mellotron. Now, iPhone and iPod touch owners can emulate the sound of the Mellotron with Manetron by insideout.

The Mellotron used an early, innovative method of reproducing the sound of acoustic instruments; it played back prerecorded tape loops housed inside its console. Press a key on the piano-style keyboard and a tape head would engage to play the loop for that pitch. The Mellotron was originally produced from the 1960s into the 1980s and the design changed somewhat over time. The sounds for the Manetron app were recorded from a Mellotron M400 manufactured in the 1970sl which featured three interchangeable banks of instruments. The three included on the Manetron are flute, violins, and cello.

Manetron not only brings app users the sounds of a Mellotron M400, it’s of instrument serial number 714. There’s a certain snob-factor to this perhaps but it’s also indicative of insideout’s attention to detail. For example, the app features a full seven seconds of recording for each pitch of each bank sampled at 96KHz/24 bits. As a result, the sounds produced by the Manetron are glorious—in a retro, low-fi sort of way replete with subtle wow and flutter and the idiosyncrasies of the performances used to create the original tape loops.

Speaking of attention to detail, the main screen of Manetron has a switch that lets you include as sonic backdrop the mechanical whir of the original instrument—I assume of ol’ SN 714 herself. (Now, that’s low-fi!)

Two aspects blemish Manetron’s otherwise stellar performance. First, there is a noticeable, annoying click when you lift up a key. I’m not familiar enough with the intricacies of the original Mellotron to know if this is part and parcel of its sound (something like the click of the Hammond B3 organ). Even if it is, I would certainly like the option to disable it. Second, the samples are not looped. At the end of seven seconds, a note simply and abruptly stops. This makes it impossible to create a longer sustained “pad.” (Interestingly, no click mars the end of a note held out to its full length.)

Of course, Manetron also suffers from the same problem as all music apps that incorporate a piano-style keyboard. How do you access the entire range of the instrument without creating keys of a size that only Ken or Barbie could play? With Manetron, you get an octave plus a third on the screen at any one time. You then move up and down the keyboard from there using arrow keys at the top of the screen. For me and my sausage-sized fingers, Manetron’s keys are too close together for effective playing. I would prefer that it only showed an octave-worth of keys at a time.

The ultimate solution for this problem is of course for Apple to allow an external MIDI keyboard to be plugged into the iPhone. The utility of many music apps, including Manetron, would skyrocket if it did so. In fact, the iPhone would instantly become a serious music-making platform—that is, if you remember to put it into Airplane Mode first so an inspired performance doesn’t get interrupted by a phone call.

I love an app that does one thing and does it extremely well. That’s Manetron except for the annoying click heard when you release a note. Fire it up and you’ll be instantly transported back to the days of King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, and The Moody Blues. Now, if there were only a way to play Manetron while simultaneously enjoying a virtual lava lamp app.

A number of music apps featuring piano-style keyboards have appeared for the iPhone and iPod touch. All wrestle with the problem of how to squeeze a large range of piano keys onto a tiny screen. Amazing Piano by OrientMaple tries to crack this nut by providing the user with an onscreen QWERTY keyboard. Press a letter key and a corresponding piano note plays.

The app has two modes. In practice mode, you pick one of Amazing Piano’s 27 built in songs. these include the usual suspects, like “Edelweiss” and “Song of Joy, ” and each can be played at three tempos—slow, medium and fast. Once you’ve selected a song and a tempo, letters scroll through a target in the middle of the screen one by one. As each does, press the key for that letter on the QWERTY keyboard and a note of the melody plays. Free mode, as its name implies, let’s the user “noodle around” on the keyboard.

Amazing Piano’s approach allows a person unfamiliar with a piano keyboard to play music just by knowing the English language alphabet. While it’s an interesting feature, it doesn’t seem very useful. Actually, it introduces an unnecessary level of complexity. This becomes clear when you compare Amazing Piano with a similar app, Junpei Wada’s FingerPiano. It too let’s a novice play songs on piano but in a more straightforward manner by using scrolling guides. This means, with FingerPiano, you don’t even need to know the English language alphabet to play.

The piano sounds that Amazing Piano produces are lifelike enough in that they’ve apparently been sampled from an actual acoustic instrument. However, they sound as if they were recorded at a fairly low resolution. Consequently, there is a harsh grittiness to them that can become irritating.

Amazing Piano suffers from several other significant weakness as well. First, it takes two fingers to play a sharp or flat note (a black key on a piano-style keyboard); you have to press and hold the equivalent of the shift key on the app’s QWERTY keyboard as you then press a letter key. This is a true hassle. Second, you can’t play notes directly on Amazing Piano’s onscreen piano-style keyboard. Third, you can’t pause a song you’re trying to play.

I honestly can’t think of a single reason why anyone would bother to buy Amazing Piano, especially when a similar but significantly better app like FingerPiano is available for a dollar more.

It’s challenging enough to shrink a QWERTY keyboard to fit onto an iPhone or iPod touch screen, but how in the world can you possibly squeeze a piano-style keyboard into the same itty bitty space? That’s been the challenge for creators of music apps like Grand Pro and Pianist. Most display only about an octave slice of keys on the screen at any one time. Pianofly Pro Synth by miniMusic does the same, but the app features an interesting means of letting the user move up and down the keyboard from there. The player simply swipes to the left or right while holding down a key. This allows for fluid access to an entire 88-key keyboard.

The one complaint with this approach is that Pianofly’s keys can sometimes accidently slide under finger. Also, an app that restricts the onscreen range to an octave still results in awfully small keys. Pianofly is a polyphonic instrument, allowing you to play more than one note at a time, but don’t plan on banging out the chords for “Bennie and the Jets” unless you have skinny fingers.

As it’s name suggests, Pianofly Pro Synth is one part virtual piano and one part synthesizer. However, if you buy it thinking it’ll create realistic piano sounds, you’ll be disappointed. Other apps that playback recorded samples of actual acoustic pianos sound much more realistic. Instead of samples, Pianofly uses FM synthesis to build sounds by combining basic waveforms. This approach is not well suited for emulating acoustic instruments. In fact, when I let a small group of music faculty from the college where I teach try out the app, they simply laughed at Pianofly’s trumpet, violin, and electric guitar sounds. But oohs and ahhs replaced the laughter when they then tried the presets from Pianofly’s synthesizer-oriented instrument bank.

The instrument bank contains eight pages, each having ten presets presented as icons. Double tap on a sound icon and an edit screen appears that allows you to edit up to three “nodes” per sound. Each node generates a waveform, with the user being able to choose among sine, triangle, sawtooth, and the like, for each. The nodes can be combined to build complex sounds. The waveforms generated by the nodes can also used to modulate one another in interesting ways. This is the heart of FM or frequency modulation synthesis.

Pianofly also allows the user to alter the amplitude envelope for each node. This is the attack, initial decay, sustain, and release of the sound. For example, a snare drum note has a faster attack than, say, a flute.

Taken together, Pianofly’s abilities as a synthesizer make it a great a choice for musicians interested in electronic sound production. Its “flying keys” approach to moving up and down the register also provides an interesting solution to a significant problem encountered by all apps that incorporate a piano-style keyboard. Just don’t buy it for its piano sound.

I remember when, for my last birthday, I got an iPod dock from my brother. My iPod was off being repaired, but the dock could use a built-in radio as the alarm, too. What the heck, I thought; I’ll try using it instead of my cell. I fiddled with the tuner until I found NPR (I hate waking up to blaring music) and went to sleep. The next morning, I was jolted from my bed by the roar of some obnoxious music noise—being an idiot, I had forgotten that our local NPR station only broadcasted for a few hours at a time.

Such is the temperamental nature of radio stations when you live in the middle of nowhere.

I wish that I had my iPod with me at the time. More importantly, I wish that I had discovered the Public Radio Tuner app sooner! Granted, it can’t be used as an alarm. But what it does do is give me access to the NPR programs that I’m used to—and better yet, it’s not limited by my location. The Public Radio Tuner includes an index of stations from across the country, so you can sample news from nearly every major city in the USA. Talk about freedom of choice!

The Public Radio Tuner is internet-based, so if you’re using a cellular connection, you may experience some difficulties. (The new version, released recently, pledges to address these issues.) As an iPod Touch owner, I was naturally bound to a WiFi connection. I was pleasantly pleased with the results. The sound quality was great, and I always find public radio enjoyable.

The first step is picking out a station. The main interface is a state-sorted list of all of the available public radio stations. Unfortunately, there were only two stations listed from my home state of Maryland, but other states have an enormous amount of variety—New York has twenty-seven! This variety is part of what makes the app valuable. I could sample classical music from a dozen different stations across the country, or I could hear different takes on the standard news feed by swapping between Alaska and Ohio. Sometimes, a lot of the stations have the same basic program, but it’s still nice to have the options. You can search by city or station name, or you can ask the app to find the geographically closest station. Stations can be added to a favorites list for easy access. The interface is very clean, and everything works as it should.

That’s about all that the app does, but it’s still a very valuable option. I mentioned reports of iPhone troubles earlier, but the latest release adds stability for cellular connections. Ideally, you could hook your iPhone up to your car’s speaker system and listen to NPR regardless of where you happened to be driving! Besides stability (which is obviously a major function of apps like this), I’d like to be able to see the name of the program I’m listening to. I don’t know how feasible it is, but it would be nice to see the name of the musical selection playing, for example, instead of just the station name.

If you’re a fan of public radio programs, you should definitely give this one a try. It’s a simple app, but it’s effective at what it sets out to do: pulling the nation’s vast catalog of public radio stations into the palm of your hand. (If you want “ordinary” radio stations, though, you’ll be out of luck.)

It should be noted that you want the Public Radio Tuner – NEW!, not the Public Radio Tuner. The app has switched developers, technically, though it’s still the same group behind the app. Updates (such as the recent stability-improving one) will only be delivered to the NEW version.

We’ve all had it happen. Even if you’re not a musician, you’ve probably been driving down the road and had an idea or an outline in your head for that presentation. By the time you get home or to the office, things seem flat. For a songwriter, being without an instrument presents the same scenario. While I won’t recommend playing with Star Guitar during your commute, it does provide an interesting musical solution if you don’t happen to have your guitar or keyboard.

Amidio Inc. should be a familiar name to musicians in the iPhone community. They created one of the most popular apps for serious musicians with Noise.io. After trying their hand at a dance application, Amidio make their return to the genre. Star Guitar is a sequencer and recorder that lets you easily select a variety of 144 chords when recording a song idea. In the default mode, pressing play begins playing a sample of a rhythm guitar pattern. When you choose a different chord, the application will switch on either the next measure or half-measure (which ever one comes first). You have your choice of all the root note chords, their sharps and flats, minors, sevenths (dominant, major and minor), sixths and sustained 4th chords. This provides all the variations one should need to track a song idea. If you need a F#minor7b13 chord it’d probably be better to make a note of where to insert it when you get back to your studio. Rhythm patterns can be changed by a slide gesture above that area and variations of the particular pattern can be selected with a simple tap. On the other side of the interface, beats per minute may be changed with a slide and the guitar type with a tap. When you get back home you can see the exact fingering of the chords by tapping the top blue display.

There’s also a manual “smart-strumming” mode that surprised me greatly by really working well. You simply tap on the root of the chord you want to play (instead of pressing play) and Star Guitar keeps up really nicely.

Once you’ve been familiarized with the guitar side of the app, you can begin recording. The app allows you to record your voice with an external mic (including the iphone headset). A metronome is provided for keeping time and a mute button allows you to pause patterns for dramatic effect. Once you’re done recording, Star Guitar allows you to export your song via wifi. The app is also compatible with Intua’s Beatmaker for even more extensive music creation without the need for a pc.

When musicians hear about a product like this, the first thing they ask about is sound. Even when things aren’t geared toward a final recording, you still want the aesthetics of your recording to be something you wouldn’t mind playing for a colleague. Star Guitar does a good job in this respect. More variation in sounds, especially on the electric guitar side would be welcome, as would a few more strumming patterns.

Star Guitar does what all the best productivity apps do for the iphone, they bring a dawning realization of mobile freedom. The main interface provides much more functionality than I possibly would have guessed from a screenshot. Even so, after just a little while playing around and reading the help screen and I was completely comfortable. The app was also very stable on my iPhone.

There are really only a few negatives that I feel are worth mentioning. First of all, interfaces are a very personal thing. My tastes don’t run toward marbled fretboards, but I don’t believe it significantly detracts from the application. Some people may not like the splash screen. While this is also not an issue for me, I understand that application load times can seem really long when you’re ready to show your wife a new song and all she can see is a sexy lady with a guitar. I will say that the main interface is very snug. Amidio kept the chord buttons just big enough for easy switching without fumbling and that means there’s not a lot of room for other things. Most things work really well, but I can’t help but think that a few things (like the playback button, mic, file manager button, metronome and help) might benefit from being on a separate screen that’s accessed via a sideways swipe. This might limit some power users, but it might also allow other areas to be bigger for those with larger fingers. I also encountered some occasional problems with the wi-fi server, but those may have been on my end.

The quality of musical applications on the App Store has really been a pleasant surprise. Star Guitar continues this trend by giving musicians a way to capture ideas at a moment’s notice. Taking the initiative to extend functionality by partnering with Beatmaker to make both apps that much more powerful shows Amidio’s dedication to the platform as a whole. All this is a boon to users with any musical aspirations. Whether music is a hobby or a full-time job, the next time the Muse comes calling, you can answer with your iPhone.

Chordica is a very easy to use music making app. It lets you play the piano in several different keys and offers several adjustments to the way the keyboard sounds. It has no recording capabilities and only has the piano sample built into it, but it promises to provide a different means of playing music than the norm.

If an app like Noise.io overwhelms you with its myriad of options and you’re still interested in making music on your iPhone, you might want to try Chordica. It’s simple user interface only gives you a handful of options, but it sounds good and is fun to play. It numbers its keyboard instead of showing you notes which removes the necessity to memorize complex notes.

It’s not all perfect though as Chordica definitely has some quirks. There’s no way to get back to the main menu once you’ve chosen your key and the interface doesn’t always give a lot of feedback. For example, it doesn’t show you when a button has been pressed. While the various options to change the form, rest, and key are welcome, it’s not always obvious how they affect the music. There’s little help within the app and the author’s web site, while offering a skeleton of a full featured site, isn’t fleshed out yet.

Chordica may one day rival an app like Noise.io in its capabilities, but for now it’s essentially a simple keyboard with a piano sample. It can definitely be fun to play, and the musically inclined might find it useful for making music on the go. It’s not as friendly or helpful as one would like, though, and its limits and keyboard quirks put it at a distinct disadvantage compared to the competition. If you want to try an innovative way to play music, though, it’s worth checking out.

Noise.io hypes itself as the first real musical synthesizer for the iPhone. And it is one hell of a synthesizer. It’s nearly endless controls let you tailor just about every thing to do with the sound generation in this app. Amazing flexibility. The sound processing and variability are just amazing and nearly endless. Take a look at the Youtube videos below for some examples.

Here’s a demo video that gives you an idea of what you can do with this amazing app:

The developers have also included the ability to share the presents you create and to download presets others have created. You can go to their web site and see a list of the presets available to download. Take a look at the full list of features here.

Kaossilator-type pitch scale mapping is a new addition to the app in this latest version. It adds some interesting possibilities to the pad. Here’s a demo of that from the developers:

I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what this synthesizer can do — but I’m already amazed. For one it’s a huge app and I have yet to get a crash from it. In addition they’ve done all of this amazing processing and there’s not a lag to be found. Those feats alone should earn the developers an extra star. Nice work.

And there’s no way I could write a review that does this app justice without weeks of research. If you are into electronic music hopefully I have given you a reason to go look at this app a little closer.

If you are not really into electronic music creation – well here’s a great place to start. You aren’t going to find a better synth for 10x the price.

As for my musical ability, I can dream I guess.

RjDj Album is a fantastically interesting app that has me fascinated. The basic idea of the app is that instead of listening to a song, you listen to a scene. That scene you are listening to is influenced by the sounds the application picks up from the microphone in your iPhone. Seems odd, but you have to hear this, it’s fantastic.

The bad thing about this is that it doesn’t work that great if you keep your phone in a pocket as the mic gets muffled. I haven’t had a chance to try the app with the supplied iPhone headphones with the built in microphone. I do not know if it works with those. Also note that if it doesn’t this app is only for the iPhone — not the iPod Touch.

I am really enjoying this app. There’s a demo available, give it a try and see if you like it. If so, get the full version, RjDj Album to get additional scenes.

RjDj

Category: Music
Released: 2008-09-29
Price: FREE

Ocarina is sort of a social app jam session. The app gives you a simple music instrument and you get to play a world-wide concert. While the musical instrument is fun to play, the real fun is exploring the songs others have posted.

The app does a good job of emulating a simple wind instrument, the ocarina. You actually have to blow smoothly and correctly into the microphone to get it to play properly. Too bad the iPhone didn’t come with a spit valve. Be careful there.

When you play, your song is automatically played for someone else in the world — maybe not immediately but at some point. If the user likes it and hits the heart button, you will see notification on the about screen.

After you finish your masterpiece, you can go to the performance section – a rotatable and zoomable world globe – where you can see and hear other people’s performances. The performances are both visual and audio — as the notes play, green discs float up from the performers location.

Here’s a great performance of Ocarina:

In addition, you can share your musical scores online at the Ocarina score generator page and view what others have shared.

Overall Ocarina, while not the most exciting musical instrument on the iPhone but it does use the network connection on the iPhone to it’s fullest to create a fantastic social application. It’s a lot of fun.

Leisuresonic’s Cosmovox is a different kind of musical instrument application. It doesn’t try to emulate a pre-existing physical instrument, it’s creates it’s own. And does so very successfully.

Included are a variety of scales and controls. All of them modify the sound coming from your iPhone. Hit up the YouTube video below to get an idea of the sounds that can be created.

Once you have your scale and other settings tuned in you control the instrument by moving the phone. The accelerometer is used to change the note that you are playing. It doesn’t take a lot of skill to do — but does take a lot of skill to sound good. But it seems that just about anyone can produce something that at least sounds interesting.

A couple additional features I’d like to see. One is the ability to save presets so that you can come back to them later. Kind of like saving instruments. The other is the ability to record the song for later playback or to play along / layer songs.

Cosmovox is a great little musical toy. It’s priced at $1.99 which is a pretty good deal. While it is a toy, and I doubt anyone would use it as serious instrument, it is a very fun toy especially if you are, like me, very lacking in musical talent.

Developer: iZotope
Price: $4.99 per edition
Version Reviewed: 1.0

iDrum is an interesting take on using the iPhone for music creation. Part fun tool and part drum beat composer, this application is lots of fun for anyone who likes to think they have a little bit of hidden musical ability. Very little ability in my case.

iDrum has been released, initially in two editions. Hip Hop Edition (App Store) and Club Edition (App Store) they each offer unique sound samples and an identical interface.

The application is navigated from the top down from the top list of sample kits, then from there to the song view, from there you can navigate to a single pattern (also known as island), from there you will see the individual parts. This sounds very difficult but it is fairly easy and quick to navigate once you have gone through the process a couple of times.

Here’s a demo video that shows you all of the various screens in the application and how they form together to make a song.

Overall the sound quality is excellent and the program itself it fun and easy to use. While this may not be the application to use if you are a music composer, I find myself playing with it for long stretches of time like I’m some mad drummer. Give this on a shot, I think you’ll like it.