Tag: Musical instrument »

The innovative musical app, Borderlands Granularby Chris Carlson, lets you explore music by using granular synthesis - a technique where you superimpose small fragments of sound, or grains, to build compositions. The app has recieved a new update that includes a lot of new features.

Now musicians get real-time audio input recording and granulation as well as resonant filters for each grain cloud. You can also save and load Scenes, which keep track of your clouds, sounds, and automation as presets.

Borderlands Granular is available for $9.99.

Hearing about an adventure/music/rpg is enough to pique my interest, and that's exactly what Arman Bohn's Arranger is setting out to be. However, reading over a few of the more descriptive elements has gotten me more than interested. It's gotten me downright excited, actually.

"The game is an Adventure/RPG that combines elements from classics like The Legend of Zelda, WarioWare and the original Sierra adventure games," according to the developer. Now if that doesn't get people's attention then I suppose there's no hope for the world. The mini-game laden adventure is looking pretty fantastic in a simple, retro-esque sort of way. Players will be controlling the tiny musician as they attempt to save the world in a less-then-typical fashion. Rather than direct combat or level-grinding, they'll be gathering a number of musical instruments in order to craft a tune that will avoid whatever this particular catastrophe entails.

Arranger is still a little ways out, being slated for a Summer 2012 release, but it definitely looks like something to keep an eye on. If the trailer below is any indication, it just might be worth the wait. It's also apparently going to have some great music.

Ridiculous and physically impossible musical instruments, with equally ridiculous and physically impossible names, can only mean one thing: Dr. Seuss. Or in this case, a Dr. Seuss Band.

Players can choose from a set of five different horns, then decide whether they'd like to mess around making their own music or try to go for the high score while recreating tunes from one of ten original songs from Hop on Pop to The Cat in the Hat. The sounds each horn makes can be tweaked by adding bizarre attechments such as fishbowls and train whistles, which fits right in, honestly. It's even possible to exchange various horn parts to create some truly weird... things that make noise.

This suitable-for-all-ages piece of musically interactive childhood has just recently seen a price drop, so now anyone can compose their own Seussian melodies on their iOS device for free. Sounds awfully tempting...

I won't pretend to be a legitimate guitarist, because I'm most certainly not, but Perfect Guitar Song Book seems like a very useful app for those that are. It's got all of the usefulness of an entire library of tablature, but none of the mess or back-breaking physical requirements that come with lugging it around. Of course, that's what roadies are for, right?

It's not all about portability, though. Perfect Guitar Song Book can also be used to grab and format notes and lyrics from any number of websites directly through the app. The text and fonts can also be tweaked to allow for easier reading, then saved for later use. Favorites can be exported into various formats (.PDF, Chord Pro, etc...), which I can see being a big deal for potential song writers.

The app also offers the useful hands-free option of scrolling via shaking. So if someone's presumably in the middle of playing they don't have to stop in order to "turn the page" as it were. The app also supports TV-Out, so with the proper cables a user could easily put the song up on a big screen for the rest of their band-mates/friends to use as a guide.

If Perfect Guitar Song Book sounds like a great idea, then feel free to go and grab it off of the App Store. It's available right now for $3.99 for all major iOS devices.

Show of hands, who here sometimes likes to blow across the top of a bottle to make that vaguely musical sound? Okay, good. Another show of hands, who here either has or has considered amassing several of these bottles filled with various amounts of liquid and recreating a real song? Interesting. Well then, have a gander at Bottle Tunes.

Bottle Tunes is pretty much what I just described, only with digital representations of bottles and music rather than physical ones. Although there's a little more to it than that. Sure it's possible to fill up some bottles and go to town, and even save tunes for replaying or editing later, but there's also a bit of a game here. Namely, users can adjust fluid levels and attempt to recreate a specific "bottle-themed" song.

I imagine the market for something like this is a little limited, but then again the appeal of magic bottle music is fairly universal. Plus it's totally free, so why not download and play around with it?