The Appcast #4: February 1, 2009 – Top 5 Music Apps

This week’s core topic: Music Professor – A look at our Top 5 Music Apps.

You can find the full show notes below the cut. Episodes can be downloaded by clicking the Episodes tab above.

Intro Music: Borderline D.U. Mix  from Mixter Two – I Don’t Know What I’m Doing by Brad Sucks.

Show Outline:

1. Introductions
2. Bob’s Fun Week of No Power
3. Fieldrunners 1.2 coming
4. New $19.99 Premium Games section coming to iTunes App Store
5. New 2.2.1 Firmware
6. Duck Hunt app gets removed
7. New Apps for the Week
8. Core Topic: Top 5 Music Apps

New Apps discussed for the week ending on February 1st, 2009:

1. First Things Last - $2.99 – A ScrollMotion moving picture, First Things Last is the first chapter in a story that is told by swiping the images across the screen. You can progress or rewind in the story by swiping in either direction. While it does use a lot of stock footage and tries to be mysterious, the story is only as compelling as a regular PC adventure game (though that’s not to say it’s bad). An interesting concept, but still a bit pricey given the amount of really quality short films available on iTunes.
   
2. iBeta – Free -Automatically grab the necessary iPhone information from your iPhone so that you can send it to a developer who will in turn send you his beta. Very useful if you are a developer or a reviewer. Previously, to get that data, you had to dig into iTunes with your iPhone connected.
3. Payback – $6.99 - One of the big game releases that has been on the “most anticipated” lists. An old-school GTA clone that runs surprisingly well on the iPhone. It has all the same feel as the first two PC GTA games and even keeps the same overhead style while including 3D graphics. Pretty fun and the turning from the accelerometer was not too bad (driving missions were only mildly frustrating). Even more impressive is how much of the current GTA features are included such as a radio (with several songs). Expensive, but worth it if you are a GTA fan.
4. Zombie Attack Free – Free Lite Version or $1.99 Premium Version – Though mentioned last week in our Tower Defense review, Zombie Attack is now in a free Lite version that you should pick up. A different take on the tower defense genre, Zombie Attack puts together the hilarious fun of zombies and the insanely addicting world of Tower Defense games. This version is more limited than the $2 Premium version, but it’s worth checking out to get a feel for another very solid Tower Defense game.

Picks of the Week:

Internal Force (Kevin) – Free – An incredible top-down shooter developed in Japan with all the usual features of a bullet-hell boss-battle game.  Great controls (especially accelerometer controls) and really smooth gameplay make this a game that is definitely able to rival the other top-down shooters you’d find in an arcade or on DS. It stunned me even more than the already high-quality Space Deadbeef. You must have this on your iPhone.

MeowBox (Bob) – Free – A cat soundboard that is incredibly effective in confusing your cats. Enjoy tormenting them for hours on end. Though it is a bit stupid and easily could have been saved as Silly App of the Week, it is a very powerful app and gets the job done.

Silly App of the Week:

Balls (Kevin) – Free – A simple app where a bunch of balls bounce around emitting different colors and sounds. A very simple toy, but wonderfully fun to play with. Definitely much cooler and probably more effective than many of the “baby attention holder” apps I’ve seen. Held my attention for a few minutes (though what does that say?).

Pixel Pixie, “Ripple” (Bob) – $0.99 – An app that puts a super-deformed pixie character on the screen and has her react based on touch and shaking. Pointless, stupid and absurd, but that’s the whole point. You’ll either find it entertaining or uninteresting.

Core Topic: Our Top 5 Music Apps

During this episode, we discussed the top 5 Music Apps we must have on our phones at all times. Pretty much anything that is categorized in the Music genre or that we felt was musically-active was eligible.

Bob’s Top 5:

Shazam – Free – A music tagging app that uses audio fingerprinting. Just hold your app up to any playing music and it’ll tell you exactly what song it was, who sang it, and where to go buy it. Extremely useful and very accurate.

Band – $3.99 – A full band of instruments is at your fingertips. One of the original launch applications, Band still holds up well as a fun suite of instruments that are played via the touch screen. You can overdub different parts played on your own and create your own band piece alone. While other individual instrument apps might be better, the overall package quality of Band still makes it a worthwhile app.

Cowbell Plus – $1.99 – Not just a cowbell, but 15 different percussion-based instruments. You can play by shaking or tapping the screen and it sounds pretty good.

Tingalin – $4.99 – Rather than play the notes immediately, this guitar-like instrument app allows you to strum the notes you want to play and queues them up before you actually start making music. Sounds great and works well as a musical distraction. Also very good for Kung Fu background music.

PaklSound1 – $0.99 – Tap on dots to visually create notes that will be played when a recurring line passes over them. Very quick and easy for the user that doesn’t really know how to make music. Has three layers of sound that can be dubbed together for a really cool sound. A great use of touch capability to generate listenable sounds.

Kevin’s Top 5:

Pandora – Free – An awesome radio application that asks you for an artist you like, and then provides an entire radio station devoted to music that is similar. Really great way to get into new music, hear music you already enjoy, and ensure you’re always listening to something intended for you. In some ways, Pandora can replace your music collection entirely since it runs well even on Edge. Highly recommended.

Nabbit – Free - Pretty nice way to quickly see what actual song is playing on a local radio station. Very fast and nice Preset system helps out a lot to sync with your own presets. Doesn’t play the music, but a fast way of grabbing the song info without having to recording anything.

Finger Piano – $2.99 - A wonderful Piano app that has several free songs built in and the guidance to show you how to play those songs. Not much like a game, but more an instructive way of making the plain instrument app into something you can attempt to play. Very fun.

Piano Man – Free Lite version or $0.99 Premium Version – Like Finger Piano, but more a game, Piano Man is focused on having you hit the right keys when colored notes come down from the top. Very much like the idea of Piano Hero but for classic pieces like Pachebel’s Canon in D and Beethoven’s Fur Elise.

Synth Pond Lite – Free Lite version or $1.99 for the Premium 2.0 version – An instantly interesting and soothing music creation app that feels like a futuristic koi pond. Place the objects around the center of the screen, tap the center to generate ripples that then bounce off the objects and create various synth sounds. Certainly very fascinating and a different spin on the usual music instrument app.