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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

iPhone and iPod Touch Evolve as Musical Instruments

There are a bunch of guitar-oriented apps on the AppStore but the one demo’d in the video above, from developers at Frontier Design Group seems to have a lot of promise.

Called, simply, Guitar, unlike many of the instructional apps or glorified tuners out there, this app focuses on playablity. Chords and scales are easily assigned to its fretboard buttons, making it possible to strum chords, play melodies, or both. With over 1500 built-in chords, and a built-in chord editor to create custom chords, Guitar relies on a variety of realistically sampled sounds to provide surprising depth and nuance to what a user can play.

The most recently updated version of this $4 app, compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch, lets users record performances or create backing tracks that can be played along with. Recordings can also be backed up over the web to the Frontier Song Server, where they can be shared between multiple devices.

Guitar may not be as huge a hit as Ocarina, but it serves notice that Apple’s mobile gadgets are limited only by their users’ own imaginations.

About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer, musician, web designer attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

Email the author | Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

4 comments

    [...] Continued here:  iPhone and iPod Touch Evolve as Musical Instruments | Cult of Mac [...]

    Snap. Faded out before the big guitar solo!

    [...] more here:  iPhone and iPod Touch Evolve as Musical Instruments | Cult of MacSHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “iPhone and iPod Touch Evolve as Musical Instruments | Cult of Mac”, [...]

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