We heard that the iPhone developers over at SonicMule were a very smart group of people, but the Sonic Lighter iPhone app was not something we expected from a bunch of super creative geniuses. Really now, a virtual lighter? However, the Sonic Lighter quickly won our hearts with its simple, yet clever use of the iPhone’s unique features to produce an engaging interactive experience with a social component baked right in. We were not alone in our affection for the Sonic Lighter which became a worldwide App Store hit in a very short period of time.
And now it looks like the SonicMule team was just warming up with the lighter app (yes, there’s a pun in there). Their latest creation turns the iPhone into an ocarina, an ancient musical instrument which has enjoyed newfound fame thanks to Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda video game franchise. Like the Sonic Lighter, the Ocarina for iPhone takes a very simple idea and infuses it with iPhone magic to produce a compelling social entertainment experience that is certain to put a smile on your face.
Worlds collide when the ocarina meets the iPhone, but in a good way, thanks to the ingenuity of the SonicMule team. It reminds us of “shore leave”, an amusing practice where Trekkies visit Renaissance festivals dressed in their Star Trek regalia and pretend they are visiting a primitive civilization. No, seriously, we can make this stuff up. The Ocarina is just like shore leave; the future smashes into the past to produce an experience that is both unexpected and enchanting.
There are many musical apps available in the App Store, yet only the Ocarina app gives you the feeling that you’re playing a real wind instrument and not just a computer simulation. To play the Ocarina, you hold your iPhone’s microphone up to your mouth and gently blow. The touch screen lights up with four virtual holes that you press with fingers to produce different tones.
The sounds produced by the Ocarina are influenced by a variety of input: the positions of your finger tips, the strength of your breath, and the forward and side tilt of the iPhone. It is simple for beginners to just pick up and start making music, and there are tutorials and training videos located at the Smule web site. You won’t find any preprogrammed riffs in this Ocarina making it versatile enough for more advanced musicians to play anything they want.
In one week, Smule’s Ocarina iPhone app has claimed the top spot in the App Store for paid apps. The Ocarina will set you back a mere $0.99 and that’ll be about the best buck you spend all month. The sudden popularity of the Ocarina can be attributed not only to it’s low price, but also to its keen social features that make this app entertaining and viral.
The Sonic Lighter’s social element enabled users to see who was lighting up around the globe. The Ocarina shows its social side by letting you hear the music other people are playing on their Ocarina apps all around the world. This gives the Ocarina experience a sense of sharing and connection to other human beings. What’s most interesting is that the social features even appear at all in apps like the Ocarina and the Sonic Lighter. It’s totally unexpected, yet after you play with app you realize that it makes so much sense.
…like most Smule products, Ocarina is a social application. Tap on the globe icon and you will see and hear other Ocarina players throughout the world. The globe view will highlight the source of the music. Rate your favorite performances so that others may benefit from your judgement. Name your Ocarina if you want listeners around the world to identify your performances. With this robust application beautiful music is created, appreciated, and shared. - from Smule.com
For the Ocarina app, the Smule team makes another smart move by bridging the gap between mobile and web. To this extent, Smule launched ocarina.smule.com, a music sharing web site that allows users to create and share musical scores. Why is this so smart? Aside from keeping Ocarina players engaged and connected to the product and its supporting community, the web site provides additional value that the native app doesn’t provide by playing to the web’s strengths.
We can’t tell you how many companies we’ve spoken to lately that strongly debate the native iPhone app versus the web app. Why create a native app when mobile Safari renders the web so well on iPhone? The answer lies in simply picking the right tool for the right job. Smule uses the native Ocarina app to leverage the iPhone’s touch interface, microphone, and accelerometer in ways that a web app just cannot do. Then they use the web to augment the mobile product and extend its reach. That is just great product strategy. And not so surprising coming from an impressive team made up of people with academic backgrounds in computer science, music, game design, and various combinations of all three.
Not that Smule has already given us lighters and pipes, what’s next? Bongs with songs? Whatever it is, we’re pretty sure it will be another ingenious iPhone app that will enthrall and delight us once again. For now, we’re content busting out global jams with our Ocarinas and our peeps around the world. Maybe we’ll even take them to the next Renaissance fair, although the Star Fleet uniforms will have to stay in the closet.
- Ocarina for iPhone
- $0.99 [app store]
- Smule Sonic Lighter
- $0.99 [app store]
- Smule’s Ocarina Web Site [web]
- About SonicMule [web]
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