App Review: Making Creative Music with SoundBow

Among different music apps available for iOS and Android OS, SoundBow is one of the most interactive and creative apps to have come along.

This app has a simple, minimalist surface of predetermined notes. All you have to do is draw your music along the vertical lines of notes. The notes themselves are also movable, allowing you infinite choices on your instrumentation.

For musicians and non-musicians alike

To the classically-trained musician and to the musician with the gifted ear, SoundBow is capable of producing looped sounds that can compliment any piece of music, as long as the rules of tonality, rhythm, and harmony are followed consistently.

To the non-musician, creating music with SoundBow is also possible with experimentation. As a visual guide in sound, this app delivers insights to those who have little experience in the area of music. Since it has an easy-to-use interface, anyone will be able to get the hang of it in a short time.

Educational for all

SoundBow provides the user a clear idea between the relationships of evenly-spaced vertical lines that represents notes, as well as the free-form shapes the user is drawing to connect the said vertical lines.

This gives the user a clear insight on how a conductor orchestrates instruments and harmonies. In classical training, everything has to be even and every rule in the tonality rulebook obeyed, which will result in evenly-drawn lines shaped with peaks and valleys.

For the non-musician, rules are meant to be broken. With practice and random placement of notes and drawings, experimental sounds could then be processed.

Creating a Multimedia Production

Here are a couple of ways users can create multimedia productions using this app:

1. Create multi-track harmonies.

With mastery of SoundBow, one can create layers upon layers of multi-track harmonies. Multi-tracking is the process of laying two or more individual tracks to give the illusion that more than one person is playing at the present. Looping is the process in which a selected portion of a recording gets played again and again. By combining these two processes, one can produce a one-man looping band.

1. Create a visual multimedia show.

With basic video and sound editing skills, a SoundBow user can then proceed to make a visually-stimulating show. Just connect your Android or iOS device to a projector, play your project, and blow your audience away.

With its sheer simplicity and easy-to-understand graphics, SoundBow is one of the most intuitive, interactive and creative apps today. This app's success is enough for it to win the FWA Mobile of the Day aware in July 27, 2012. Considering its unique approach on providing visual references for music, SoundBow is both intellectually stimulating and enlightening for the music lovers out there.