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TUAW talks to T-Pain at CES ShowStoppers 2011
We stopped by the ShowStoppers event at CES 2011 this evening, a special event in the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas for a few CES exhibitors and select press, and there we found none other than the prince of Auto-Tune himself, rapper T-Pain. He was there shilling a brand new microphone gadget that will automatically Auto-Tune your voice, just like the iPhone app released a while back that bears his name. T-Pain (can we just call him Mr. Pain?) tells us a little bit about the making of his app, and why he's brought the technology into the microphone. Plus, we got to meet T-Pain (and he wasn't even on a boat). But you should definitely try that I Am T-Pain app out -- it's pretty great. The microphone will be available this fall for US$39.99, so look for it in stores then. Shawwty!
Smule introduces Magic Fiddle for iPad: Video
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 sayin'.
Billboard nominates music app awards
Billboard has announced that it will be giving awards out for iOS music apps (of all things). At the Music App Summit on October 5th, Billboard will choose winning iOS apps in six different categories, from Best Artist App and Best Music Creation App to Best Branded Music App. You can find the full list of nominees after the break, and there are some recognizable names on there, including a Phish touring app, TUAW favorite I am T-Pain, and the now Disney-owned Tap Tap Revenge. Winners will be announced at the summit, and they will be selected by a panel of judges that includes (not kidding about this) MC Hammer and a bunch of CEOs and marketing folks. It seems silly (and let's face it... it is), but Billboard is a big deal in the music industry, and this means that the dinosaur-like recording giants are at least starting to notice the effect that apps have on artist profiles. Plus, it's good to see LaDiDa get a little more attention -- I liked that one.
Smule's Glee app puts a song in your heart and on your phone
Enthusiastic fans of Fox's hit teen angst 'n jazz hands show Glee refer to themselves as 'gleeks,' a portmanteau of glee and geek. It's a sure bet that the gleeks will be beside themselves when they hit the App Store today and see the new US$2.99 Glee app, which brings the show's musical numbers to life with your voice in the starring role. Developed by Smule, the new app joins the company's suite of music makers (Ocarina, Leaf Trombone, I Am T-Pain, Magic Piano, etc.) as a social-vocal mashup that puts some serious geek power behind the simple act of singing. Add in the show's iTunes-dominating songs and what will undoubtedly be a nice promotional push from the network, and it's bound to be heading for the top of the paid charts. Glee for iPhone is straightforward enough to use, although as is sometimes the case with memory-intensive apps in their first version, you may experience a bit of instability if you haven't restarted your phone in the past few weeks. With headphones on and device in hand, you can select a song and go into karaoke/recording mode to lay it down. The app plays the backing track, displays the lyrics and shows you the pitch line for the melody and harmony parts. Read on for more, including an interview with Smule's founder Dr. Ge Wang. %Gallery-90913%
Found Footage: Cat and iPad play well together
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? Thanks, Michele, for the tip!
Tons of iPad app releases on the App Store now
Embargoes on every app in the iPad's app store broke this morning, and there's almost too many new iPad apps to write about. But worry not, dear readers -- we've sifted through the flood of press releases in the inbox this morning, and we're here to bring you the brightest and best iPad app news we've heard so far. Board game maker Days of Wonder is releasing Small World, a virtual board game for the iPad, for just US$5. Telltale Games craftily dodged telling us about any development for the iPhone or the iPad at Macworld this year, but they've gone ahead and released the latest episode of Sam and Max on the platform anyway, as a $10 app. SugarSync has released a version of their remote data sharing app for free on the iPad. Diner Dash has gone "HD" with Diner Dash: Grilling Green, a new $5 version of the game "designed from the ground up exclusively for the iPad." See Here Studios has a 3D storybook called The Wrong Side of the Bed available for $2.99. You'll need red/cyan glasses, but you can actually order them (with free shipping in the US) inside the app itself. Chillingo has launched a lineup of fourteen different apps (which is probably the most we've seen from any single company so far) including Cogs HD, Minigore HD, and Sword of Fargoal Legends. Impressive launch lineup. Zen Bound 2 has finally arrived as an iPad app -- it features those revamped graphics for $7.99 on the new device. Freeverse has four different apps running, including Flick Fishing HD and their new game CastleCraft, a freemium MMO. Smule has released Magic Piano, a virtual piano/game/musical experience that's launching for $2.99. Lots (and we mean lots) more iPad app releases after the break. What a launch lineup this thing has!
Macworld 2010: TUAW interviews Dr. Ge Wang of Smule
We've talked to a lot of people at Macworld already, but Dr. Ge Wang is one of my favorites -- he's the co-founder of Smule, creators of popular apps for the iPhone that combine music and social experiences in a very interesting way. Wang's day job is an associate professorship at Stanford, and you can tell when listening to him talk about these apps that he's very passionate about using interesting platforms like the iPhone (and soon, as we discuss, the iPad) to help people from all walks of life make and share their own songs and musical experiences. I can't say I've been a fan of all of Smule's apps (as we say in the video, I still don't really understand the full appeal of Sonic Lighter), but I can't argue that Dr. Wang has some really intriguing ideas about how to use this platform. And Smule's ongoing popularity can't be debated, either. Watch the interview after the link below to see if you might just be a fan of one of the more impressive iPhone app developers.
Smule turns you into T-Pain
God bless Smule. I panned their Ocarina app way back, but since then they've pushed right along without me, releasing idea after idea on Apple's App Store. And I think that, though the Leaf Trombone didn't really capture my attention, this one might finally be the big winner in my book: they've released I am T-Pain, an app that will automatically Auto-tune you into the style of some of the rapper's top songs, with more purchaseable within the app. There's even a "freestyle" mode, complete with a few unreleased background tracks to jam with -- as you can see above, all you do is talk into the iPhone's mic, and you can autotune the news or whatever else you want. Shawwwwty! Silly? Maybe, but they're going to sell a million of these, and given that Smule's apps tend to be easy to pick up and fun to play with, even people who aren't familiar with T-Pain's work will probably get the app just to sing a few bars to see what it sounds like (you can also send those messages off to Facebook or email as well). And Smule is moving right up into the iPhone 3.0 era: the app comes with four songs, and there are four more available to purchase in-app, along with even more (and more popular: Kanye's "Good Life" and the Lonely Island's "On a Boat" track are due out soon) songs coming, complete with lyrics and auto-tune settings and timings in the future. Maybe you're laughing. Maybe you think this is dumb, and you've already had enough of auto-tune on pop radio, and don't really want it in your iPhone, too. But trust me on this one: Smule is a company that's made silly music experiences on the iPhone extremely popular, and having T-Pain's tunes and auto-tuning abilities (officially from the company behind the pro version, too) available in this app is going to make it big, no question. The app's available right now for $2.99, so pick it up if you're feeling the beat and want to sing, even if you can't. Yeahhh-eeeyeaahh-yeah.
Leaf Trombone out now in the App Store
I've been down on the fine folks at Smule in the past -- I've said that their app Ocarina seems kind of silly (even if people have created some pretty awesome stuff with it and other less annoying music apps). And about the only thing they could have done to make it up to me was to develop some sort of super massively multiplayer music app, some app in which you could play a tune and have it sent all around the world. So I guess I have to call off my pretend grudge against them once and for all, because that's exactly what they did: Leaf Trombone: World Stage is in the App Store right now.This is, of course, the app with the strange name that we saw at Apple's iPhone 3.0 demo. It features a Chinese leaf-type instrument that sounds, as you can hear above, like a trombone. But the World Stage part is the most interesting -- Smule has set up a way to share the songs you play in the app with people around the world, and the people who hear your work can send back short messages and emotes to say how they felt. It's an interesting idea -- kind of combines what they were trying to do with Zephyr into a more Ocarina-like app.At just 99 cents, there will undoubtedly be lots of musicians out there picking it up. And while the video above is... cute... we're sure there'll be some even better stuff to listen to soon.
Smule raises $3.9 million in funding
There's money in them thar App Store! Smule, the company behind the popular Ocarina and Zephyr apps for the iPhone, has informed us that they raised a whopping $3.9 million from a round of venture funding led by a firm named Granite Ventures. That's a lot of capital -- while a lot of people are aiming to get their hands in the cookie jar in a big way in the burgeoning economy of the App Store, $3.9 million is the biggest single payout we've seen yet (the iFund actually paid out $100 million, but that was split among various companies and people, and we haven't heard specifics on exactly what they got). The company brags that they've attracted over one million users already, and that they will use the funding to "help people experience music as it's never been experienced before and in turn find new ways of bringing people together." We can't help but wish them well -- hopefully we'll see more high quality apps in the App Store, and hopefully that'll pay off for both investors and consumers.
Make a video with Cat Piano, win a DS
It's probably time for me to lay off of Smule -- I've said that their Ocarina app might be the silliest musical app in the App Store, but we have a new winner: Cat Piano is just plain loony: a piano made up of cats meowing, like those old Christmas recordings, but playable. There are a few different cat sounds to play (from "Furball" to "Housecat"), and even a regular piano if you just want to tickle the ivories a little bit. Most of the reviews on the App Store say people are using it to mess with their cats, but there's definitely a musical instrument here -- if Ocarina can be used as an instrument, the Cat Piano can, too.And in fact, the developers are challenging you to prove it -- they're giving away a Nintendo DS (interesting choice of prizes -- an iPod touch might be more apt) to the person who makes the best video using Cat Piano. I don't know if you could beat that Jingle Cats video, but you can certainly try. The contest starts on Thursday, and goes until March 20th, so you've got a little over a month to get the cat sounds down.Ocarina, you'll remember, also turned out some watchable videos, so we're interested to see what comes out of this contest.
Smule's Zephyr sends snowy messages around the world
As much as I hate to do it, I'm always willing to admit when I'm wrong, and I was wrong about Ocarina. Not about the app itself, per se -- I still think it's one of the silliest, most pointless apps I've seen on the App Store. But it has been nothing but popular since its release, so apparently lots of people out there are into it. That's fine -- I'm willing to accept that there are best-selling apps out there that I think are dumb.And maybe this will be another one: Smule, the company behind Ocarina, has decided to follow up with a new app called Zephyr (not to be confused with the MacBook cooling system) that seems just as silly to me. You can draw out messages with an airy sound-and-snowflake interface, and then send those messages blowing around the world (represented, in the official video above, by Las Vegas) to random people who, if they like your messages, will pass them on around the Internet. "What's the point?" you might say, and in that opinion, I'd agree with you. There are lots of ways to send messages around the world, and more than a few of them are quite free and will let you be clearer than drawing snow with wind sounds in the background.But then again, I didn't see a point to Ocarina, and that made plenty of money. Zephyr is available on the App Store right now for 99 cents. And if you do jump in and buy it, make sure to tell us exactly why in the comments below.
Turn your iPhone into an iOcarina with new app
We've seen the iPhone used for a great deal of useless enterprises -- the drinking of virtual beers, the swinging of virtual lightsabers, the placing of actual telephone calls to other people, etc. However, a new application from Smule serves a rather legendary purpose -- the salvation of Hyrule. Yes, by downloading the Smule Ocarina (now available on the iTunes App Store for $0.99), users can either travel seven years into the future to thwart the plans of an evil dictator, or three days into the past to prevent a lunar catastrophe.Two demo videos of the iOcarina are posted after the break. The first shows a man blowing his way through the Legend of Zelda theme song. The second, when played in reverse, reveals hidden Satanist propaganda.
