Toc and Roll - minimúsica-Sones

Title: Toc and Roll

Developer:  minimúsica-Sones

Compatibility: iPad / iPhone / iPod touch // iOS 5.1.1

Size: 165 MB

Description:   I'm a big fan of Apple's Garageband app as a kid-friendly musical app -- tapping on the drum set or other "instruments" can produce a surprisingly interactive effect for something that is, well, tapping on a glass screen.  But it can be an incredibly complex experience, and if a kid were trying to put together an actual song, the sheer number of choices would probably him or her.

That's where Toc and Roll comes in.  Simply put, this is the app kids graduate to after getting bored with Toca Band but before they're ready to really create music in Garageband.  The app was developed by the much-beloved Barcelona-based minimusica, and it allows you the user to put together tracks designed to fit together harmonically.

There are 10 types of tracks -- piano, glockenspiel, guitar, voice (you can record those tracks), violin, drums, saxophone, trumpet, bass, and percussion -- and each of those tracks has well more than a dozen different modular units that are probably a couple measures long.  The user can tweak each instrument by changing the volume and providing effects (vocoder, delay, and reverb) and changing the overall tone of the song by changing the tempo.

You can save and title the songs.  It also offers you the option of saving your songs, but it requires a YouTube account.  (There is probably a technical reason, and possibly business reasons, but why oh why can't these types of programs just create an mp3 file?)  That's a minor complaint, and I guess my only other complaint is not minor -- that is, to say, there's no option for a minor-chord song.  The song is essentially a major-chord song, and I wish there was another option for a sad (i.e., minor-chord) song.  (I also wish they would offer an 80 bpm tempo in addition to the 100, 120, and 140 beats per minute tempos.)

But those are pretty insignificant complaints.  For kids with a musical bent, this is a playground well worth your money and their time.

Age Range: 5 through 9

Price: $1.99

Link: iTunes

Dr. Seuss Band - Oceanhouse Media

Title: Dr. Seuss Band

Developer:  Oceanhouse Media

Compatibility: iPad / iPhone / iPod touch // iOS 3.2

Size: 42.9 MB

Description:   If this were 5 years ago, we could call this "Baby's First Rock Band" or "Baby's First Tap Tap [Whatever]" and lots of people would recognize the reference to the games that gave players points for tapping correct "notes" in time with the song.

This app is one of the many Seussian apps from Oceanhouse but doesn't really use the famous Seuss words or drawings (the songs are totally made up to Seuss' book titles).  The user gets to customize wonderfully goofy instruments (think trumpets with all sorts of crazy bagpipe-like attachments) and, once set, taps notes that  correlate to a C major scale in time with the lighted pulses coming down from the top of the screen.

You can change the difficulty level -- the harder the difficulty, the more notes you need to tap.  You can select a number of different songs, but some instruments and some songs are locked -- you need to achieve a high-enough score to unlock them (or you can just be lazy and pay via an in-app purchase).

While the app offers free play, we've never bothered to try it -- aside from the goofy sound and bright colors, there's no advantage to this over, say, Garageband (which we also have installed).  Also, until I was prepping this review I hadn't realized that you could also play this on an iPhone or iPod touch.  I have no idea why you'd ever want to do that on such a (comparatively) tiny screen.

As musical games go, this is reasonably diverting.  Once mastered, it probably won't hold much allure, but I think it could take your kids a long time to do that...

Age Range: 2 through 7

Price: $0.99 (plus in-app purchases -- $7.99 unlocks everything)

Link: iTunes

Drawnimal - Lucas Zanotto

Title: Drawnimal

Developer:  Lucas Zanotto

Compatibility: iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch // iOS 6.0

Size: 31.1 MB

Description:  A simple program which uses the iDevice as the jumping off-point for creative drawing.  Select one of the alphabet's 26 letters (if you're doing this in English -- there are five languages available), place the iPad, etc. down on a piece of paper, and have your kid trace around the iPad as indicated on the app.  (So, in the case of the picture here, a couple triangles on the top, a tail near the bottom.)  Most kids will be able to figure out the animal -- I think "C" is fairly obvious here -- but watching the animation (and listening to the narrator say "C is for... cat") once the user presses the "play" triangle will amuse the kids playing along.

The replay value isn't the best -- there's only a single animation and therefore a single drawing that can be done for each of the 26 letters -- but the multiple languages may extend that value somewhat.  The execution of the concept is very polished, and the concept itself -- that creativity need not be limited to the digital world -- is worthy.

Age Range: 3 through 7

Price: $1.99

Link: iTunes

Petting Zoo (Animal Animations) - Fox & Sheep / Christoph Niemann

Title: Petting Zoo (Animal Animations)

Developer:  Fox & Sheep / Christoph Niemann

Compatibility: iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch // iOS 6.0

Size: 37.4 MB

Description:  An utterly delightful digital playground.  German-born illustrator Niemann's simple but not simplistic illustrations encourage the users to touch the screen and interact with 21 different animals -- an elephant in a bathtub, a crocodile with musical teeth, an absurdly flexible giraffe.  Actually, many of the animals are absurdly flexible.  Accompanying the minimally animated drawings are 3 melodies that sound a little bit retro -- '50s jazz, perhaps -- but fit the relaxed tone of the app perfectly.

Give this app to a toddler, and they'll squeal in delight.  Give it to a kindergartner and they'll gladly explore.  Their parents might not squeal, but they'll explore and smile.

Age Range: 2 through 8

Price: Free (for now, though it's also had non-free prices)

Link: iTunes

Musical Paint - Building Blocks Media

Title: Musical Paint

Developer:  Building Blocks Media

Compatibility: iPad / iPhone / iPod touch // iOS 6.0

Size: 77.8 MB

Description:  Less a musical app with some painting components than a painting app with some musical components, this app allows your kids to "finger paint" and produce both a visual piece of art -- the "canvas" -- while generating sound that changes with where the finger goes on the canvas.  Different colors produce different sounds.  And you get to sign your name at the end.

The downside of the app is that it doesn't have a lot of painting or musical features.  Painting-wise, you can only pick one color at a time, then change its intensity.  Musically, you can't change the instruments -- you're stuck with the same 5 color/sound combinations and many of the vibrant instrument sounds the animated characters at the museum splash page play aren't found in the painting area.  But there are probably a number of families for whom the specific multi-sensory experience (visual plus music) this provides is the key feature, and providing too many features otherwise is over-complicating matters.  (Teachers may also find the included lesson plans useful.)

The interface is reasonably easy to use, with saving the picture to the app's "gallery" easy enough.  (So is e-mailing pictures, so you may need to supervise your kiddos unless you turn that feature off.)  While the app is available on all 3 types of iOS devices, I only used it on the iPad; it seems the iPhone screen might be a bit small, or at least difficult to do much more than the blockiest of drawings.

Families seeking a pure fingerpainting experience or a more musical experience probably won't find much here worth retaining.  But if the idea of audio-visual art intrigues you, you might want to try this (or even its older sibling, not specifically designed for kids, but cheaper).

Age Range: 3 through 8

Price: $4.99

Link: iTunes

Note: I was given a copy of the app for possible review.

Draw on the Table - Spark Studios / Frances England

Title: Santa's Merry Band

Developer:  Spark Studios / Frances England

Compatibility: iPad / iPhone / iPod touch // iOS 5.1

Size: 30.9 MB

Description:  Note: This app may no longer be available for new downloads.  My apologies for any inconvenience.

There are many other drawing apps available, but the number that feature a song from San Francisco's Frances England numbers exactly one.  It's a pretty simple one -- the user chooses a food (blueberries, broccoli, coffee, strawberries, etc.) from the top of the screen, and then drags it across the "table" at the center.  In the case of liquids (coffee, orange juice) and some solids, the user "drops" them and then tilts the screen to direct where they roll.  (So it's a physics puzzler, too!)  You may not realize that there are more foods available than what's shown at top -- that menu scrolls left and right.  As with most art apps, you can share with the world via various methods.

This won't change the world, but as a fun (and free) experiment (with, I repeat, a song from Frances England), it may be worth the 31 MB on your iDevice to amuse your littlest ones.

Age Range: 3 through 7

Price: Free

Link: iTunes

Toca Band - Toca Boca

Title: Toca Band

Developer:  Toca Boca

Compatibility: iPad / iPhone / iPod touch // iOS 5.0

Size: 48.9 MB

Description:  The most musical of the many playful apps from the Swedish app powerhouse, Toca Band is probably the most intuitive and repeatable "make your own music" app.  There are roughly 15 different characters, each one with a unique musical sound -- the rapper, the "la la la" lady, the beat-maker, the thingy that looks like a harp.  If you've used any Toca Boca app, you know the recognizable but slightly daffy drawings that populate them.  The user can move each character (up to 7 in all) onto 3 levels of platforms -- the higher the level, the more complex the music each character makes.  There's a fourth "star" platform that lets the character "solo" (pursuant to your child's touch commands).  The notes are all synchronized to the same melody.  It's a great melody, actually, but you'll probably get tired of it 5 to 10 minutes after you start playing it.  And you (or, rather, your kid), will probably play with it at least 5 to 10 minutes at a time.

So, yeah, if there were a second or third song, that would be great.  Also, just because of screen size, it works better on the iPad.  Toca Band does one thing really well and, from a parent's perspective, almost too well.

Age Range: 2 through 7

Price: $2.99

Link: iTunes