SoundGrid
Brad H | Apr 26, 2010 Music
User rating: 
(15 votes, average: 2.93 out of 5)
(15 votes, average: 2.93 out of 5)
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A few months ago a friend of mine sent me the you tube promo video for the Novation Launchpad for Abelton Live. The device is a controller for making beats and loops. I fell in love instantly and even though I’m not in the music scene I totally wanted one.
Now thanks to mifki and their app SoundGrid I don’t have to spend more than five dollars to have my own beat maker only iPhone. It’s no Novation but this thing is AMAZING. This app is by far the best music app I have played with. It’s easy enough to pick up right away and hammer out some beats, and the mixing options are there to get complex with your beats.
Tags: $4.99, Entertainment, fun, Music
Kings Of Leon Revenge
Brad H | Mar 17, 2010 Games
User rating: (6 votes, average: 2.67 out of 5)
(6 votes, average: 2.67 out of 5) Loading ...
If I have to Use Somebody to Crawl out of The Bucket to Be Somebody who is On Call to be McFearless of the Notion that I could get a Black Thumbnail by following the True Love Way that leads to Sex On Fire…THEN I WILL!!!
I hope your asking yourself “What the heck is he talking about?” because if that run on sentence made complete sense to you shoot me an email. I’m talking about Kings Of Leon Revenge of course. The latest Tap Tap Revenge game from Tapulous.
If you are unaware of the Tap Tap Revenge franchise, it is one of, if not thee, leader in the music rhythm game market. With great songs always being added to their arsenal and beautiful graphic layouts all you have to do is play to understand why.
myTtuner
Michael E. | Jan 30, 2010 Music
User rating: (5 votes, average: 2.40 out of 5)
(5 votes, average: 2.40 out of 5) Loading ...
In the days before Pandora, Sirius, and Napster, radio ruled the world. If you didn’t own the album, CD, or cassette, the only way to hear your favorite tunes was the radio. Your yearning for the latest from Michael Jackson, Nirvana, Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers or U2 could only be satisfied by a radio DJ.
Sometimes you might flip on the radio and catch your favorite song halfway through. That wasn’t so bad. Sometimes you only caught the last few seconds of it. That was bad.
Every now and then, if you were lucky- really lucky- you’d enter a kind of musical zone. In the zone, you could flip on the radio, catch your favorite song as it was starting and listen to it all the way through. If you were really in the zone, you could change stations after the song had ended and catch it again, right at the very beginning.
Good times. I don’t miss them one bit.
Gianluca Falasca’s MyTtuner- The Ultimate Radio operates under the principle that somewhere on the world’s wide web, an internet station is playing a song or an artist you like. With MyTtuner, you tell it who or what you want to hear (you can enter up to 6 choices) and when the app finds that song or artist, it will let you know (as long as you’re still in the app, of course). Then, just tap your screen and enjoy on-demand music old school style, minus those pesky subscription fees. If you really like a station, you can select it as a favorite and listen to it whenever you want. Do you have favorite artists or groups? Great! Save them and the next time the app is opened, you can quickly search for their music.
MyTtuner will also generate a listing of every artist being played at the moment and update every 60 seconds.
Sweet, right? Unfortunately, MyTtuner initially had some serious issues with stability; it crashed every time I used it, even after an update designed to eliminate them. Each crash would erase my saved searches, my saved webcast stations, and music history. As you can imagine, that was a pretty big disappointment, especially for an app with a $2.99 sale price.
These past couple days though, it seems to be running better. When it works, it’s great. When it works, I start to think about terminating my Rhapsody subscription. But when it doesn’t, it’s quite frustrating.
My only suggestion for improvement- beyond stability- would be MyTtuner’s appearance. It’s a little dull and could benefit from a colorful makeover.
With a couple more updates and a bigger pool of internet stations to find the music and artists I like, I might just stop feeding my money to Rhapsody and use those monthly fees to buy more apps…
Version 1.1.1
Reviewed on iPod Touch 3.1.2
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- List of every artist playing (alphabetically) at the moment
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- Artists I decided to search for
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- Search results
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- Music player
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- History
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- Favorites
Music Catch
Tony Mei | Jan 28, 2010 App Sale Alert, Games
User rating: (6 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
(6 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5) Loading ...
Edit: It would seem Music Catch is on sale for free. Better get it quick, if you’re interested.
The Good: Music Catch is a fantastic, zen-like game made by Reflexive Entertainment. The game was an absolute favorite of mine on the computer (http://www.reflexive.com/index.php?PAGE=WebGamePlay&WGID=94), and I was super excited stumble upon it on the app store. Game play is wonderfully calming: just move your fingers to collect shapes while beautiful ambient music plays in the background. Things like bonus multipliers and point-collecting vacuum cleaners add a bit of spice to the game play. Frankly, enough apps are made about slashing enemies or shooting others, and it’s nice to wind down a hard day of violent gaming with a bit of Music Catch.
The Bad: Those seeking a more active game will get bored easily by the zen-like feel. I was hoping for some sort of online leaderboard or stat tracking – OpenFeint and the like. The replay value is inherently low (the game has four songs that each take a few minutes), but I did find myself drifting back to the game, even after I thought I was sick of it. After the first few rounds, Music Catch will only end up catching your attention for a few minutes before drifting away.
The Ugly: To be honest, I couldn’t find any glaring negative qualities about Music Catch. Again, this game would benefit from more development. Things like online integration, leader boards and more songs would make this already good app pretty darn great.
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- Self explanitory, I would hope
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- Very New Age song titles, if you ask me
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- Point grabbing vacuum cleaner
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- Just pretend you hear ambient music while reading this review
Q&F: Album Shuffle
Michael (Admin) | Sep 24, 2009 Music, Quick & Free
User rating: (No Ratings Yet)
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You know that thing your iPhone does when you’re running the iPod and you turn it sideways and it changes from a list of songs to a nice row of album art that you can flick your way through? That’s called Coverflow! Just in case you didn’t know.
Coverflow is cool, especially if you’ve taken the time to download album art in iTunes, but it’s just so… organized. The anal retentive among us surely appreciate this, but what about slobs like me? Enter Album Shuffle, a free alternative for viewing your iPod albums in a mixed up convoluted mess instead of Apple’s cool-but-rigid method.
FingerBeat
T.J. Brumfield | Jul 19, 2009 Music
User rating: (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...
I have the music talent of William Hung. And frankly I might be insulting William Hung with that comparison. But the Elionze Group have put together a music app simple enough for even me to make music, yet powerful enough to put together some great loops, exactly how you want them.
I’m talking about FingerBeat. At first I was expecting a fairly simple finger drum app. With some apps I download and play with from the App Store, I have to lower my expectations when it comes to features. I have to remind myself that this is a cheap app often made by a single developer, or a small team in a short period of time. FingerBeat is one of the rare apps I’ve downloaded over the past few weeks that really exceeded my expectations when it came to features.
Tags: $3.99, Entertainment, Music, T. J. Brumfield
Q&F: Tap Tap Revenge 2
Michael (Admin) | Mar 10, 2009 Games, Quick & Free
User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5) Loading ...
For whatever reason I wasn’t all that impressed with the original Tap Tap Revenge when I tried it last summer while the App Store was still in its infancy, but this new iteration adds a killer component that makes it far more interesting: an entire catalog of downloadable “real” music to play to!
If you’ve never played Tap Tap Revenge before, it’s a little like Guitar Hero in that you try to match the beat of the music by tapping and occasionally shaking, and you get to do it to the tune of over 150 songs from mostly-indie artists with a few from bigger names like Weezer, Nine Inch Nails, and Death Cab for Cutie. Naturally, if you like what you hear you can tap your way over to iTunes and buy the music for your iPod collection.
Tap Tap Revenge 2 comes with lots of bells & whistles including online play, two-player, and challenge modes, but for me it’s all about tapping to some new music from a lot of up & coming artists. Radio is dead to me and it’s been years since I had the patience to watch MTV, so I’ll find new stuff to listen to any way I can.
The graphics are awesome and it’s a pretty fun game, especially if you like the music you’re tapping to, so you should probably get Tap Tap Revenge 2 before Tapulous figures out they could charge a buck for it and become instant billionaires.
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- The Sound of Setting is a snappy tune
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- Each level has its own collection of tracks you can play to
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- Download an entire level's-worth of tracks while you're sleeping (yes, it's ok to lock your iPhone during the download)
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- When you see arrows coming at you, it's time to shake
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- Your Tapulous profile is the gateway to the game's community-based features
Q&F: Boombox
Chrisa | Jan 22, 2009 Music, Quick & Free, Utilities
User rating: (7 votes, average: 4.29 out of 5)
(7 votes, average: 4.29 out of 5) Loading ...
If you’re an old fart like I am, you remember those days in the 70′s, when guys with big hair carried around enormous boom boxes on their shoulders blasting Kool & The Gang loud enough to deafen a small child six blocks away. Well, Gorloch Interactive has done a pretty slammin’ job of taking the feeling of the boom box and squishing it into a nice little application that streams pretty much any song you could ever ask for from blip.fm.
Now, I have what I like to call eclectic taste in music. So imagine how thrilled I was to find both the latest from Red Jumpsuit Apparatus as well as that Glen Campbell classic “Witchita Lineman” both available! Not only is the music library vast, but the user can select songs found and create their own playlist. If you like the song well enough to want it around all the time, a handly little “$” button will take you to the iTunes store to purchase the song.
There are a few little irriatations that didn’t really take away from my fondness of Boombox. First, you have to be connected to WiFi for it to work, even if you’re a 3G iPhone user. Ok, I get that one, and I can let that slide. There’s also no way to move to the next song, or back to the last, but the developer says that’s in version 1.1, soon to be available.
Besides that, I’d say Boombox is exactly what I look for in a free application (did I mention, it’s FREE?) – it’s useful as well as entertaining.
I just love the little equalizer.
Tags: internet radio, Music, Quick & Free, Utilities
Shazam
Michael (Admin) | Aug 2, 2008 Music
User rating: (37 votes, average: 3.08 out of 5)
(37 votes, average: 3.08 out of 5) Loading ...
There’s a reason Shazam has 4.5 stars after 1,880 reviews… it kicks ass! We’ve all been in the situation that Shazam is designed to remedy: you’re in a bar or a store or maybe you’re just driving along in your car and you hear a song. You love this song but you have no idea what it’s called or who sings it, and neither do any of the knuckleheads you’re with.
Back in the Stone Age (a couple months ago) you would have spent the next few days humming the song for your friends while they look at you like you’re an idiot, but now all you have to do is whip out your iPhone in mid-song, launch Shazam, tap on “Tag Now”, and wait for it to tell you the artist, song title, album, genre, and it also displays the album cover. It might even find you the music video on YouTube! And of course you can buy the song from iTunes.
Shazam is one of the few apps that belongs on every single iPhone on the planet. It may not recognize 100% of the music you throw at it, but my unscientific estimate is that it’ll tell you what you want to know about 80-90% of the time if what you’re listening to has ever been released on a semi-major record label. It’s even pretty good at sniffing out more obscure titles, but the more obscure the more hit-or-miss your experience will be.
If you listen to music and don’t have this app yet, go get it right now. Seriously, go. Now!
P.S. A little tip: There’s no way to mass-delete tags, so if you want to delete them quickly without opening every single one, just swipe your thumb left-to-right under the time in My Tags. This will bring up a red delete button, but be careful because it doesn’t ask you “are you sure” before deleting.
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- Shh, it's thinking
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- Shazam also lets you attach your own photo to the tag in case you're one of those sappy sentimental types
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- Build your own tag library so you won't forget what you want next time you're shopping for music
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- Swipe your thumb under the date to delete stuff quickly
