Tis the season to both give and receive.  iOS developer Smule seems to understand that better than anyone else, and accordingly, are ready to announce a special holiday giveaway.  Starting at 1pm on Tuesday December 7th, their critically acclaimed program Ocarina will be absolutely free.  The only catch is that it is only for a limited time.

Looking back in time through the magic 148Apps.com crystal ball, we can see that not only has the app been well received by numerous junkets, but our very own Jeff Scott gave the then fledgling software a perfect five star rating.  Trust us on this, we were not the only place that told you it was the best around, either.  Word of mouth spread so quickly that it went on to garner over 2.8 million downloads since the original release in November of 2008.

Now boasting an impressive online community of digital ocarina composers, this is where the true appeal of the app lies.  This is so much the case that the online library of composed pieces has reached an astounding sixty million playbacks.  Here is what our own review had to say about it, way back in the day:

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

$0.99

Ocarina

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad

Our Rating: :: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2008-11-06 :: Category: Music

We’ve seen no shortage of great music related iPhone apps released into the iTunes App Store. Some of the best apps are even more powerful than their hardware based counterparts. So I guess it was only a matter of time before we started seeing bands release exclusively iPhone created songs. This is one of the better ones I’ve seen, and it’s by a real band from the UK, The Mentalists.

This is a cover of a song called The Kids from the band MGMT, and pretty well done. They are, according to the video, using apps such as Ocarina (Our Review), Digi Drummer Lite (iTunes Link, and Retro Synth (iTunes Link).