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Soundbrush Makes Music from Drawings

Posted by Kevin Stout on April 19th, 2012
iPad App - Designed for iPad

In a strange mash-up between painting and music, developer LeafNotes has released Soundbrush. Soundbrush works by drawing lines or shapes. Those lines and shapes turn into corresponding sounds. Each paint color stands for a different instrument (for example, blue is a piano).

The artist-musicians using this app get to hear the notes as they’re drawn. Users can even go back and delete previously drawn notes by double tapping; so more refined and thought-out pieces are definitely possible with Soundbrush.

Soundbrush uses both major and minor and major and minor pentatonic scales as well as the blues scale. A musical grid can be displayed to help pay more attention to exactly which notes are being drawn on the canvas.

Users with no experience with either drawing or music can take a stab at the app and still have plenty of fun. While there are no templates for new users to play with, there is the video below posted by LeafNotes showing the creation of a song/painting and how it sounds.


iPad Gains Tools For The Songwriter

Posted by Chris Nitz on August 20th, 2010
iPad App - Designed for iPad

Songwriters on the go now have a reason to leave the pen, paper, and laptop at home. Songwriter’s Pad is looking to change the way you doodle down those non-work-safe lyrics. This powerful app just might become your next must own productivity app.

Songwriter’s Pad is looking to pack a lot of punch in one little program. Besides having a way for you to jot down all those lyrics your humming in your head, you can arrange and store those ideas in one app. Use a dictionary and thesaurus without lugging around heavy books. Better yet, use the 70k+ word Rhyming dictionary to find those obscure words that go with your Bieber rap.

You can easily take your next sonnet of love and arrange the full song. Everything from the verse, chorus, and bridge are easily editable. Swap whole verses if it suits your fancy. The key here is you can do it on the go without fear of that key sticky note flying out the bus window.

Arranging your next masterpiece on the bus might sound fun at this point. There is still more to Songwriter’s Pad. The app includes a digital audio recorder. Easily hum a few lines and have it stored right with your work in progress.

The best feature songwriters just might come to love is the Idea Generator. Songwriter’s pad uses an emotional word based idea generator to help you get past that nasty case of writer’s block. Just tap on categories like ‘Hate’, ‘Hope’, ‘Love’, an others. From here, Songwriter’s Pad will generate words and phrases to help you get on your way to breaking into American Idol.

This full set of songwriting tools comes at a small entry price. Songwriter’s Pad is available in the App Store right now for $9.99. Check out the video and screenshots. If you’re a song writer, this could be the app that sells you an iPad.

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