| Sound Trends LLC (all apps) |
| Looptastic Electro Edition Lite (Age 3+) | |||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||
| Looptastic Electro Edition (Age 3+) | |||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||
They say music is good as it stimulates different brain connections. So I went looking for music programs. There are a range of apps in the Looptastic range – I got the free Lite version of their Electro product. They have other products as well.
Big-T (3yo) sat down with the app and started carefully moving the icons around. Different icons represent different tracks, and moving them up increases their volume, down decreases the volume. So you can act a bit like a studio producer and mix your own music, dynamically adjusting it for a bit of variety.
I was surprised by the intensity and the care with which he was moving around the icons. He seemed to be really getting into it. He carefully adjusted all the icons, until I thought he had all the levels just right. Mozart in the making I thought!
He then sat up proudly and say “Look Daddy, all the blue ones are together now!”. The icons were color coded (percussion one color, electro sounds another, and so on). He had been carefully grouping them all by color laying them out nicely on the screen. Oh well, no Mozart after all.
Disclaimer: I have not tried the full version, only the lite version. The full version has more loops available, giving more variety in music. Last time I looked however it was not a cheap app. For me, a bit pricy to pay for my young children to hopefully learn a bit about music.
The Application
There are a number of tracks in a short loop of around 10 seconds. You drag a series of icons representing each track up on the screen where the height controls the relative amplitude. There are three horizontal zones, representing pan from left, middle, and right. There is also a slider at the bottom to do a global pan from left to right of all tracks. The end result is you can start building up an interesting mix of tracks, then fade in and out different tracks to create some variety and make your own electro music with no skill at all. There is also a high pass / low pass filter page where you can get even more funky sound effects going.
The Good
- The user interface is superb. Easy to use, clean, extremely well done.
- You can create good music with little or no skill.
- There are some very nice animations. Big-T frequently likes moving things around and returning them to the start point just to see the animations.
- The Lite version was good enough for my personal purpose of trying to teach that music can be made by multiple people playing together.
The Bad
- The lite version only has one loop, so after a few days or weeks it could start to get on the nerves. The full version has more loops.
- It helps, but was not designed for my personal intent and so is not a perfect fit.
- The full version when I last looked was quite expensive compared to other apps on the store.
Educational Value
This app is not designed for preschool children. However, I was using it to try and get across the concept to Big-T that music is frequently made up of multiple people playing instruments together. He has sort of got the message. He certainly has fun fiddling the controls. He does understand that there are different tracks making up the overall music, but the amplitude side I think is still a little beyond him. He thinks grouping the color coded icons by color is more important than trying to produce good sounding music.
My Score
3.5 stars. Its fun, for me it got across a bit more understanding of music. Its not intended for preschool children, which is why my score is based on. I think its a top quality app. If I was not reviewing for young children I would give it a higher score.
Get it in iTunes
More information, screen shots, and user reviews can be found in the iTunes store.
Other Suggestions
Share this Review
