Smule, as we've said before, is an interesting company. Its goal is to bring new musical experiences to people through technology like the iPhone. The company's latest release, Magic Guitar, definitely follows that philosophy. Like the very popular Magic Piano for the iPad, the app enables you to "play" guitar music, even if you don't have any experience with the real thing. The most interesting thing about Magic Guitar is you hold it. The idea is that you're fingering chords on a guitar neck, so you're supposed to hold the iPhone in the palm of your hand, with your fingers wrapped around the far side. As "notes" fall down towards a line on the screen, you're supposed to put your fingers down where they drop, and as you do, various notes in the song will be played. It's tough to explain, but once you see it in action, it makes sense. Read More

Posted 01/25/2011 at 12:05pm | by The Mac|Life Staff When you’re done playing around with the iPhone’s many great games, consider goofing around with some of these quirky and often silly conversation-starting apps. Whether you’re using the iPhone to modify your voice or photos, or to simply trigger visual or audio gags, these options will keep you and your friends entertained. Big fans of long-running BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who will get a kick out of this free promotional app, which lets you record voice clips and play them back with the familiar robotic tone of the villainous Dalek alien race. Not only will your messages sound considerably more ridiculous with this voice synthesizer, but it’s likely the only place you’ll ever hear the Daleks say silly phrases like, “I’d love a thousand tacos!” It’s a win-win, and even if you’re not a Who junkie, it’s a fun app to keep Read More

...deutsche Xing AG veröffentlicht eine neue Version ihrer iPhone- und BlackBerry-Anwendung, mit der ein digitaler ‘Händedruck’ zum leichten Aus... Read More

It's not perfect, but this video of the St. Lawrence String Quartet performing Pachelbel's Canon in D major is yet another example of how the iPad is revolutionizing music. Created by the innovative Ge Wang of Smule, the folks who have given us Ocarina, I Am T-Pain, Glee Karaoke, and Magic Piano, the US$2.99 Magic Fiddle turns your iPad into a lovely string instrument. No skill is required, and you can play songs that are included in the SongBook by following streams of colored light. If you really want to learn how to play, the StoryBook takes you through eight chapters of different techniques and instructions -- of course, you'll have to practice to master the Magic Fiddle. Enjoy watching the video, and if you and your friends happen to get good enough to do Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor on iPads, TUAW wants your video first -- just Read More

...Piano: Overhyped music toy. Welds a mediocre piano to a dull rhythm action 'game'. 2/5 $0.99 http://bit.ly/a4fC1C... Read More

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...Congratulations on the iPad purchase. Don't know much about piano apps. This one looks fun though.. http://bit.ly/b2udKA... Read More

Que el iPad llama la atención de cualquier persona ya lo sabíamos, pero… ¿ tambien la de los animales ? Pues a juzgar por estos videos parece que si. En el primero vemos al perro de uno de los redactores del Ney York Times jugar al airhockey para iPad. Pero no os asusteis, no utiliza sus patas, sino su nariz para tal hazaña. En el segundo vemos a un gato tocar el piano gracias a la aplicación Magic Piano con una destreza pasmosa. No os perdais la mirada a cámara mientras juguetea con el dispositivo. Read More

Tech-Weblog Engadget informierte am heutigen Morgen über Dreharbeiten zu einem angeblich neuen Werbespot der nächsten iPhone-Generation. Dafür verantwortlich soll sich Regisseur Sam Mendes zeigen, der ‘kleinere’ Hollywood-Projekte wie American Beauty in seinen Lebenslauf schreiben kann. Im Mittelpunkt der Geschichte soll ein Videochat zwischen Mutter und Tochter stehen. Auslöser der Nachricht war unter anderem ein Tweet von der Twitter-Benutzerin “ViFlaten“. Engadget anonymisierte zwar den Twitter-Benutzernamen, überließ dem Internet jedoch die Recherche anhand des Profilbildes. Das der Account wenige Stunden nach dem Mediensturm gelöscht wurde, unterstreicht unfreiwillig dessen Authentizität. G4s “Attack of the Snow!” ‘vermainstreamt’ den iPad-Jailbreak. Foto: Selva (cc) Das Heimatstadion des Baseball-Teams der New York Yankees verbietet die Mitnahme eines iPads unter der “No Laptops Security“-Richtlinie. Musikalische (Schnitt-)Performance mit den App Store-Anwendungen: Electrify (11.99 €; App Store-Link), Magic Piano (0.79 €; App Store-Link), Thumb Jam (5.49 €; App Store-Link), miniSynth PRO (7.99 €; App Store-Link), Ellatron HD (4.99 €; App Store-Link) Read More

The big knock against smartphones, iPods and iPads is that no one really needs one. There is no question you can get by without any of the nearly 300,000 mobile apps on the market. But if you ever felt the need to express yourself with music, and you test out some of the better apps, your definition of “need” may quickly wither. Tricked out with apps like Glee ($1), Band ($4), Bebot ($2) and others, the iPhone is history’s most versatile music creation device. The iPad offers a different and, in many ways, expanded dimension to the iPhone’s musical abilities, with apps like Magic Piano ($1), Air Harp ($2), Xewton Music Studio ($15) and Korg’s iElectribe ($10). And although users of other types of mobile phones, like the Android and the BlackBerry, are so far without these particular apps, they can still find a few decent ones to help tap into Read More

Three weeks after its launch, the iPad is still getting some incredible buzz. I mean, I don’t think we’ll ever see cats or 100yr grandmas playing with an HP Slate going viral on Youtube. Not to mention that all these homemade videos are certainly the best advertisement Apple could ever dream of. The latest to date is a footage of Chinese pianist Lang Lang who headlined a concert at San Francisco’s Davie’s Symphony Hall on April 19th and used nothing less than an iPad for one of the encores. Isn’t he so good at it (youtube)? Haha, as some of you pointed out, he’s doing it using Smule’s Piano Magic which comes with the song pre-loaded. Read More

World renowned Chinese pianist Lang Lang recently used an iPad to perform Flight of the Bumblebee at a concert in San Francisco. Lang Lang was presumably using an app called Magic Piano by Smule; a $0.99 app that allows users to play classical masterpieces with nothing more than an iPad. I saw Lang Lang play at the Hollywood Bowl in California a year or two ago, but instead of an iPad, he was using a good old fashioned grand piano! (Oh, how the times are changing.) Read More

Chinese pianist Lang Lang headlined a concert at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall on April 19th. For the first of three encores, he played The Flight of the Bumblebee on an iPad. To accomplish this, he used the Magic Piano iPad app. This is just one example of how amazing apps can allow people to do amazing things, and the party has just started. [To clarify, the Magic Piano app does do a lot of the work in playing a piece like that; it drops down indicators for the correct notes, so the pianist has to get 'pretty close' and have the rhythm correct. Still impressive. –Ed.] [via 9to5Mac] Read More

Smule sigue haciendo lo que mejor se les da: crear aplicaciones musicales. Y es que con el lanzamiento del iPad, su primera aplicación anunciada (y en estar disponible) fué Magic Piano, mejorando la experiencia que cualquier aplicación parecida pueda tener en el iPhone, ya que la pantalla del iPad da muchos más juego. Esta vez, Magic Piano nos permite tocar el piano de varias formas, algunas más curiosas que prácticas, todo sea dicho. Desde poder tocar en un teclado invisible, hasta hacerlo en uno en forma de espiral. Claro que también podemos poner un teclado normal y corriendo. Lo bueno, es que cualquiera de las diferentes formas de presetnación, pueden ser modificadas a nuestro gusto, pudiendo ampliar o reducir las teclas a nuestro gusto (con todo lo que ello conlleva). De cualquier forma, usemos la visualización que usemos es divertido usando el iPad. Pero sin duda, el modo más “increible”, es Read More

By Leanna Lofte, Sunday, Apr 18, 2010 | It isn’t uncommon for parents to allow their small children to play with their iPhone and iPad, but it turns out the iPad can also be an effective (albeit, expensive) cat toy. Watch Iggy the cat play his favorite iPad games, Noby Noby Boy [$1.99 - iTunes link] and Magic Piano [$0.99 - iTunes link] after the break! Read More

If you're not in the market to buy an iPad for yourself, at least get one for your cat. YouTube user Rautiocination captured his cat Iggy and his iPad, both apparently in a playful mood. It appears that iPads may soon become the toy of choice for well-heeled felines! Smule's Magic Piano is the app that Iggy is playing towards the end of the video, but I'm not sure what the initial app is. Anybody? Read More

Apple's iPad hasn't even been out a week, so I'll grant you that it is a little early to be doing a deep analysis on who the winners and losers are in the app store. But I was interested to learn that two of the top 25 selling applications for the new touchscreen device -- at least as of this afternoon -- were developed by Seattle startups. PopCap Games currently ranks 14th in the paid apps category for its $9.99 game "Plants vs. Zombies HD." And not too far behind is BigOven, which ranks 24th with its app "170,000 Recipes and Grocery List." "It's pretty early to be touting stats/factoids," said PopCap's Garth Chouteau. "But you could certainly say that between the iPad launch and continuing success of the iPhone adaptation, (Plants vs. Zombies) is our hottest App Store/iTunes product of 2010 -- so far. Not bad considering Bejeweled 2/iPhone continues Read More

The iPhone has a wealth of apps to pick from when it comes to music applications and games. The iPad is also well on its way to building a large category of musical apps to pick from. One of the more prominent ones at the time of this review was the Magic Piano app. This app is created by Smule, the makers of many popular music apps including the Ocarina app. This application is another attempt to let users create great music while enjoying the social elements added to it. The app is essentially a piano application offering a few different ways to play and enjoy the experience. Players can choose from the three different keyboard to play on and from the many different modes. You can play a free round, play through a song in the songbook or play a duet with a random player around the world. The app Read More

by Magic Piano by Smule was one of the iPad apps we couldn’t wait to try; now we’ve tried it and we’re in love. While many view the iPad as a device to consume content, if Magic Piano is any indication it’s also going to be a device to help create music. I got to speak to Dr. Ge Wang, the co-founder, CTO and CCO at Smule yesterday about the development process for Magic Piano, the differences in developing for the iPad versus the iPhone and what the iPad might mean for the future. Wang, an Assistant Professor at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, really wanted to build an application specifically for the iPad and one that would show off the devices best features. Working around the clock for just over two months, the team at Smule built Magic Piano to be both an experiment and Read More

In less than 24-hours the iPad will finally be released. Now, the hardware, however sexy it might be, is not why so many people are itching to buy the device: It’s all about the apps! In the ramp-up to the iPad release, more and more applications have been announced or previewed and now that the apps are live in iTunes, we already know what apps will be available on day one. Over the last few weeks, we’ve thought a lot about what apps we most want to try on the iPad upon its release and these ten represent some of our favorites. The selection of applications is varied — from games to web services to whole new product types. However successful the iPad ends up being will hinge in part on the apps available for the device. If these ten are any indication — iPad users have a lot to look Read More