There’s something about an iPhone music app. For musicians, it’s like having an instrument in your pocket. For nonmusicians, it’s a way to coax sounds — often programmed to stay on key no matter what note one actually plays — out of what may be the only instrumentlike device they ever pick up.
A main goal for many of these apps’ developers is to introduce nonmusical people to music, and musical people to different kinds of music. And when taken less as a serious instrument and more as a sampler for the wide world of music, these devices are wildly successful.
For those dying to shred, however, they leave something to be desired.
The majority of apps in this category try to cram a fully functioning instrument into an interface that, while touch-sensitive, is still only 3 inches wide. It’s about the same width as a guitar neck, so six strings fit reasonably well. Still, only a few frets can be covered at once, and even the simple acts of plucking a string and forming chords take a significant degree of finger wrangling.
Similarly, while many apps offer recording features, synching up separate apps without external recording software is difficult, unless you spend a lot of time behind a mixing console.
So the essential question becomes, are music apps real tools for artistic expression, or are they in the same league as, say, Bejeweled or other time-killing games?
“When it all comes down to it, these are all games, pretty much,” said Turner Kirk, community marketing manager for Smule, whose Ocarina is one of the simplest yet most inventive musical apps on the market. “We’d like to think of them as expressive musical instruments, even though we might be limited by hardware. But really, it’s like a toy.”
Ocarina proves that simplicity works in this environment. An actual ocarina — a simple wind instrument, frequently found with only four holes — is among the simplest music makers, and its virtual version is perfect for the iPhone interface. One has only to blow into the device’s microphone to control the instrument — almost identically to the way one would an actual ocarina.
Because it’s an iPhone, of course, users can take the experience to different levels, with the ability to change pitch, upload their recordings and span the globe to listen to others’ tunes. An online songbook lets even a beginner ocarinist play Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.
Other simple apps that have been successful include Normalware’s Bebot, where one can make a tuxedoed cartoon robot sing electronic notes by dragging a finger across the screen. Tones and settings are customizable; one option places strings across the interface. It’s always perfectly in tune and is incredibly diverting. “Because apps like this handle the difficult part of making music — producing a good sound and playing the right notes — they free the user for the fun part of the process: getting expressive,” said David Battino, co-author of The Art of Digital Music.
Even real musicians use Bebot; a recent San Francisco Chronicle article on musical applications led with Dream Theater’s keyboardist, Jordan Rudess, playing it on the iPhone during a performance in San Jose, California.
Sheer simplicity, however, isn’t the only route to success. Moocow Music, which offers apps for bass, guitar, piano and organ, suggests on its Web site that its creations can be used “as a ‘musical notepad’ for working out riffs to play back in the studio on a real (instrument).” This is true. It’s also a tacit admission that the apps are not meant to replace real instruments.
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