iPad Music Apps

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Sound Cells is a music generation app for the iPad (iPhone and iPad Touch as well).   The interface comes laid out on a matrix grid that allows you to create moving cells that interact with each other and the surrounding environment to create sound.  Once an active cell is made it begins to move throughout the matrix grid and then you can add other cells in real time to generate melodic sequences.  The sound is essentially created by the cells crashing into the exterior matrix walls.

This kind of music creation reminds me of a bumper car arena with a bunch of raving kids going crazy from eating too much cotton candy.  You keep adding more bumper cars and they bang around on each other and the surrounding guard rails to make noise.

With that being said, this app needs more sounds as you only get two.  I’m not always the biggest fan of experimental ways to generate sound because the resulting sound is normally too abstract to be useful in most situations, but I actually like this take on sound creation quite a bit.  If they added some more sounds/instruments then I would really like this app a lot!  The visual representation is a unique experience and putting together melodic sequences is a breeze.

The updated version gives you six scales to choose from as well as key choice and tempo.  It also has MIDI output capabilities which give the update more functionality than previous versions.

If you are looking for a simple but unique experience to sound generation that will basically cost you nothing at all ($0.99) then I recommend you take a look at this app.  Even though it only has two on-board sounds there is something about the program that makes you wish there was more to it.  Hopefully, new updates in the future will bring about newer and better sounds.