Smule Magic Piano iPad App Review

iPad owners that wish they could make music with a piano, but don’t want to take lessons are in luck. Smule, makers of other popular music creation apps for the iPhone are offering a unique iPad app called Magic Piano.

When the application is first launched, you’re presented with a Black screen that can be tapped with your fingers to make music. As you tap the screen, individual keys will display across the top. Clicking the circular piano image in the upper Right corner will toggle between 3 unique onscreen piano keyboards.

There’s a spiral keyboard…

A circular keyboard…

And a more (or less) traditionally shaped horizontal keyboard. These keyboards can be re-sized by pinching and dragging gestures.

Just plunking around on the uniquely shaped keyboards is kind of fun (multi-touch allows you to press more than one key at a time like an actual piano), but if you don’t know how to play music in the first place, the plinking and plunking will sound pretty much like random plinking and plunking.

That’s where the Magic Piano application shines. Included is a song book of 20 classic tunes that you can play without any prior musical instruction. You’re probably thinking “yeah right, how the heck will I be able to do that?”

Have you ever played or seen Guitar Hero? Smule’s Magic Piano has a similar interface. As a song plays, little dots appear on the display. You tap your finger below the general location of the dots to play the songs.

There are even settings that you can activate that will allow you to tap anywhere on the display, so you can’t mess up.

It’s pretty fun to be able to play classic songs without any musical training. I do wish that there was a feature that you could use to hear the song so that you would know what it is supposed to sound like before trying to play it yourself. It would also be nice if there was a recording feature and a way to download new songs into the song book. With only 20 songs available, it can get boring quickly.

Like some of Smule’s other apps, you can listen to other people playing the Magic Piano all over the world. You can even do a duet.

Smule’s Magic Piano is a fun app for musical wannabes and at only 99 cents, you really can’t lose.