Guitar Hero’s a lot of fun, admittedly, but it’s also got a tragic side to it. It’s kind of like a Star Trek convention. If you’re dressed like a Klingon or a Vulcan Priestess and you’re stood in the middle of a crowd of Hortas, doomed ensigns and Gorns, then being there is cool, you look cool, and you are cool.
But on the bus to the convention, you look like a div. In fact, you are a div, and you’ve earned the pity you can see in the eyes of the normal people surrounding you.
When you’re not bashing away at the Guitar Hero controller, there’s something a bit crap about watching someone pushing buttons to someone else’s music so passionately. So what can budding technophile musicians do? That’s right - they can buy iPhones.
The App Store is rapidly filling up with virtual instruments that still take as much effort to master as any physical instrument, with the added advantage that they don’t need tuning and generally cost about 59p to buy.
Okay, so you’ve got your iPhone, and you’ve rounded up another few nerds who are just slightly too cool for Guitar Hero. Now’s the time to choose your weapon.
We have to begin with the iPhone’s original wind instrument, Smule’s Ocarina. This Zelda-inspired app has become a global phenomenon, and no iPhone band can be taken seriously without at least one virtual flute player in the line up.
Let’s take a look at the dirty hippy commune who invented Ocarina and listen to its mellow sounds floating on the ethereal cyberspace breeze.
Nice. But you’ll notice that, alone, an
Ocarina is a bit shrill. What it needs - as we saw there from Smule founder Ge Wang - is a guitar. But that peculiar, non-pocket sized wooden thing he was using is far too last century for your new iBand.
Taking to the App Store again, we find
PocketGuitar, which offers up just enough of a virtual guitar neck for this excellent rendition of Pink Floyd’s
Wish You Were Here. Hit it.
There aren’t many songs that cope so well without a bit of percussion, though. Of all the instruments, this is the one that take the most imagination and restraint.
Obviously it’s going to be hard to represent a full drum kit graphically, and rattling the skins with all the passion and vigour of a
Rock Band geek isn’t going to do your glass-fronted instrument much good.
But as we can see in the video below, the rhythm can still get ya.
While we’re on the subject of percussion instruments, the iPhone has more than its share of three and a half inch pianists (ahem), and tinkling the virtual ivories is an important addition to the Apple ensemble.
Playing the piano can be an expensive hobby that’s often enjoyed by the middle to upper classes, so it’s well worth trawling the wine bars and theatres looking for a bit of posh to play your piano. Why? Hopefully they can afford to buy a few iPod touches and expand the length of their keyboard.
You might not be going for quite such a futuristic classical sound, in which case it could be well worth adding a bit of electronica to your eclectic mix of iMusicians. Here’s a great example of how to make your iPhone sound like an acid tripping
Pac-Man machine trapped inside a dog floating in orbit around Jupiter, so if you know how to swing the Korg, get a synth in your backing sound.
There are more virtual instruments on the App Store than in King Toot’s music shop next door to Moe’s, so plunder it well if your iBand needs a new sound.
Now it’s time to study the competition. iPhone bands are becoming the next producer manufactured boy/girl group phenomenon, so all you Stock, Aitken and Waterman platters should get ready for your 15 seconds of
YouTube fame.
Swing your trousers on over to the Pocket Gamer forums and post us a link to your virtual demo. You might just be the next big iThing waiting to happen.
