Slewpi Review

Music synthesizing apps, while frequently useful, are rarely particularly attractive to look at. In many cases, a convoluted interface also means that they feel unwieldy and intimidating to those still finding their way in music creation. Enter Slewpi, an app that ensures it's simple for all users to figure out, both young and old, while never scrimping on the majority of features required of such an app. It also makes for a soothing and relaxing experience too.

Loading up the app, there's an immediate sense that users have purchased a painting app rather than a music app. The interface is entirely geared around drawing. A menu subtly hides within the screen, never feeling obtrusive in any way. The simple menu belies the fact that there's some great depth here. Users can simply start drawing straight away and noticing what tones come out from Slewpi but a dig around reveals more to it. Each color offers a different key, red represents low keys, green covers middle keys while violet provides a high key. With more than a dozen color variations, the tonal shift is also varied.

The size of the brush also affects not only the visual appearance but the waveform or timbre of each sound. As well as that, it's possible to set up loops of music and color as well as adjust the tempo and BPM of the music.

For the music professional, Slewpi could perhaps do with a few more features such as a metronome or the ability to import and export specific sounds. It'd be nice if it was possible to share creations too. For the novice however, Slewpi is pretty impressive. For children in particular, it's bound to be a hit with it being simple to get to grips with and providing instant results. Being able to make sound beautiful to look at as well as hear is a great idea and will no doubt look even better on an iPad or through a projector.