The reason for its success was the simple interface and its ‘open’ music format. Too many music games tried to replicate a sequencer, which inevitably led to lots of people making very shi*t house music out of an extremely limited bank of samples.

Soundrop iPhone is an even more simplistic version of the Electroplankton model, that you can download for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
The interface really is as straight forward as; draw a line, let a ball bounce on it, when the ball hits the line a marimba sample will sound, draw another line, create rhythms and patterns. Before you know it you’ll think you’re a regular Philip Glass.

The free version of the app is fun enough, but if you can stretch to £1.19 you’ll get the pro version which allows you a broader range of sounds.

Very fun and addictive app that I urge you to try. You can find out everything you need to know by clicking here.

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Harmonix who are the makers of The Beatles: Rock Band and of course the original Rock Band are soon be releasing the new Rock Band 3. So far there has been a lot of talk that users are slowly getting a little bit bored of the games, because they cant see how Harmonix can beat The Beatles Rock Band game.

Dhani Harrison, son of Beatles‘ George Harrison has let a little secret slip out as most musicians do during interviews, whether it’s on purpose or not.

According to an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Harrison (who also helped develop The Beatles: Rock Band) shared the fact that Rock Band 3 may be more than just a game to scratch the surface of the brain. Rock Band 3 may actually teach non-musicians how to play real instruments!

We’ve all played Guitar Hero before. They’re just a bunch of buttons you have to click in synchronization with what you see on the screen. Rock Band 3 will somehow go beyond that since Harrison states:

“I’m workin on [...] making the controllers more real so people can actually learn how to play music while playing the game. [...] Give me a couple years, it’s going to happen.”

This may also explain why Scott Guthrie told IGN that the Rock Band empire was in for some drastic changes:

“We aren’t standing still – we will keep moving into new areas and look at new technologies that our platform holder partners are also developing, such as Project Natal from Microsoft.”

Don’t expect a new tracklist to be your final news for Rock Band 3. If they actually pull this off, it might take a lot longer and be a lot harder.

Related Articles

• The Beatles Rock Band Becomes Leading Music Video Game in First Month, Beating Guitar Hero 5 – October 20, 2009
• Bored Of Guitar hero, But DJ Hero? – October 8, 2009
• The Beatles will be on Rock Band coming September 9th – March 8, 2009
• Rock Band from Harmonix Sells More Than 28 Million Music Tracks – December 10, 2008
• RockFree Launches Online Web Browser Competitor to Guitar Hero and Rock Band – December 2, 2008

Tapulous chief Bart Decrem admitted that purchases of premium versions of the game were quite modest. However, Decrem has been scaling the concept through the delivery of free apps, a familiar startup model that mostly pushes the monetization puzzle to a later date.

Lady Gaga is rumoured to be the first artist from Universal that will get their own game and im sure it will be released at about $4.99.

It would be great if Tapulous actually released lesser known artists in their free game and even becoming a tool for users to find new unsigned and independent artists, while at the same time releasing premium versions of better know mainstream artists.

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• Soundrop iPhone App – September 1, 2010
• Rock Band For The iPhone – October 20, 2009
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• Amazon Mp3 Has Finally Launched Its UK Music Download Store – December 3, 2008

Acclaim has decided that they didnt want to battle Guitar Hero and Rock Band and instead have launched an online music game called Rockfree. Players can battle it out with up to seven other people over the internet, and it”ll feature licensed tracks including Iron Man, Fat Lip, and Woman. A closed beta kicked off this weekend, with a full launch scheduled for the first quarter of next year.

WMG, Sony and EMI are on board for licensing – which indicates that Acclaim is ponying up a decent amount of cash for song rights, since WMG is apparently playing hardball on this score with games publishers right now.

Currently, the game is free to play so it is going to be very interesting to see if Acclaim will make money from advertising, or even push though affiliate sales to iTunes and Amazon. All I know is that this is a very interesting idea and it is good to see that Acclaim is moving away from just being a console publisher and now turning into a real games publisher.

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