Review: Magic Piano

Overview

Magic Piano is a brand new iPad only app build by Smule the minds behind Ocarina, Leaf Trombone, and I Am T-Pain. Magic Piano gives you a unique piano right at your finger tips taking full advantage of the size of the iPad.

Features

The app features three keyboard layouts from a spiral one, to circular one, and traditional, yet hidden. You can choose to play freestyle on any of the keyboards, and switch whenever you want. The best aspect is the songbook which currently contains eight songs for you to play by simply tapping where the beams of light fall on the black screen. The songs include Fur Elise, Turkish March, Moonlight Sonata, Flight of the Bumblebee, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and even Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Also included is duet mode to connect with anyone around the world with both of you playing in freestyle. Finally you can view other duets. The app looks to add new songs to the songbook regularly with three added to the original five in the last couple days.

The Good

Magic Piano is simply an amazing app that will have you truly astonished by what your iPad is capable of. From the first tap on the screen you’ll feel the power of a piano at your fingertips. Then there are three different keyboard styles to present all the keys of a piano on screen at once. Once you actually start playing you hear the greatness of this app. It sounds so real as though you're actually listening to a real piano. Every tap sounds like your sitting right in front of the massive device. The songbook is simply amazing, and you can easily spend hours playing the different songs. It’s amazing to be able to play some Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach without any music inclination. Also more are being added all the time, and if it’s anything thing like Ocarina users will soon upload songs for you to try. Magic Piano provides the amazing experience of playing a piano to the casual user who isn’t musical in any way shape or form. From using the app I want to find simple songs, and play them on the magic piano to see if I could figure it out on this relatively simplistic form of the piano.

The Bad

The app never shows you the scale on any of the piano views, so if you know anything about playing the piano you may be frustrated. I was trying to simply play Chopsticks which was quite tough as you can’t find the F or G, etc. Also when playing the songbook you can't choose the two actual pianos to see what keys to press. The dual mode isn’t very good as it’s just freestyle, and when you and the person you’re connected with both have no clue how to play the piano it’s simply hitting random keys together rather than alone. It would be great if you could do a duet of one of the songbook songs with you playing certain notes, and the other person playing the rest.

The Verdict

Magic Piano is one of the best apps on the iPad at this early stage, and Smule provides the same amazing innovativeness on Apple devices. It’s an amazing experience to play classical songs yourself directly on your iPad. On top of that the app sounds exceptional as though you’re playing on the real thing. The best aspect is that Magic Piano provides all of this for only $3 for a limited time. With news songs being added often this app will only get even better in time. Magic Piano is a must buy for $2.99

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