Band – Review

Our rating:

By: Moo-Cow-Music

Version #: 1

Date Released: 2008-11-04

Developer:

Price: 3.99

User Rating:

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MooCowMusic: Band is a collection of virtual instruments that allows anyone, regardless of musical ability, to go beyond just listening to other people’s music on the iPhone or iPod Touch, and actually create music themselves from scratch.

A number of instruments are provided (drums, bass guitar, piano, blues guitar, and crowd) that make full use of the multi-touch abilities of the iPhone to allow you to play complex chords in real time. As well as hearing the note, you will be able to see the screen react instantly to your touch: piano keys really depress and bass guitar strings really strum.

All the instruments can be recorded, overdubbed, and mixed together into a song, which can be stored for later playback. Instruments have individual volume and pan settings, and can be muted or ‘soloed’ during playback.

It’s like having a mini-recording studio right in your iPhone/iTouch!!

A configurable metronome can be enabled during recording to help you to keep in time, and, if you make a mistake: simply erase the last few notes, overdub, or instrument, from the mix and record it again.

There’s even a help manual that you can access to get to more details on the operation of BAND!

There’s also a very instructional video at the moocowmusic.com Website. The video at the bottom of the page shows you how the functions work which is very helpful.

Quick Take: Band is the answer to the composer who wants to write a basic musical concept "on the run" or the amateur who just wants to create some fun music. This is wonderful example of the usage of the iPhone/iTouch device.

Would I Buy Again: Yes

Learning Curve: I would say that an evening with BAND and watching the video provided at moocowmusic.com will have anyone making music in very short order.

Who is it for: Anyone who loves to create music, professional or amateur.

What I like: The sounds and graphics are very pleasing to the eyes and ears.
What I Don’t: I think it’s important that this program add a timing correction (Quantizing) feature so that the amateur player can play slightly inaccurately and the program will correct to the beat so that the performance will be more acceptable in playback. There is also a bit of a latency (delay) when inputing the individual notes against the metronome beats. Time correction will alleviate the frustration that could come from not being able to play right with the music or Metronome.

Final Statement: Band is a very nice musical recording application. Given the limitations of size they have given the user rather good touch areas. It’s a conceptually sound design and a good value for what it can do.