A Touch of Learning

Melodica (Age 5+)
	Overall: Quality: Education: Longevity: Fun:

Another find when looking for music programs to teach my boys musical concepts. This seemed like a good idea to me in that it could teach the idea of higher and lower notes. I quite liked it in that it made it pretty easy to get some pleasant sounding music going. It reminds me a bit of wind chimes.

But these reviews are oriented around suitability for preschool children, not adults. This app did not get much interest from Big-T (my 3yo). I suspect this app requires too much knowledge of the idea of music (such as the concept of higher and lower notes).

If you try it with your children and they like it and seem to learn something from it, please drop me a line and I will update this review appropriately. Conceptually I think this should be a good program to get across the concept of high and low notes. Its just with my local testers, it did not work out that way.

I plan to keep this one on my iPhone and try again later. If it goes down better, I will update this review accordingly.

The Application

The screen is a big matrix of squares. When you touch a square it toggles on/off. Higher squares on the display represent higher notes; lower squares lower notes. The notes span multiple octaves, and represent notes that sound good together. That is, its not a full octave every note but rather notes from a chord. This means not matter what notes you pick in combination, it sounds pretty good. I equate it to wind chimes.

When you start the app it starts playing from left to right across the matrix. It then loops repeating over and over again. For each column you can touch multiple cells – it plays the all the notes together, allowing chords to be developed by selecting adjacent squares, or say a trebble melody line with a bass beat by having vertical gaps between selected squares.

For example, if you draw a line from the bottom left corner up to the top right corner you will get a series of low to high tones, then a sudden drop back to the low tone when it loops and starts again.

The Good

• Its got a simple, clean, user interface that is easy to drive.
• Its fairly easy to come up with pleasing sounds.
• You can change the music while its playing.

The Bad

• Its a bit fiddly to enter music due to the small dots on the screen. Just a bit small to touch reliably.
• It was quite common to quickly have lots of notes playing all the time, ending up in a slightly muddled sound. It was hard to control precisely, especially for little ones.
• Big-T (my 3yo) showed no interest. I think he did not understand the idea of it looping (playing left to right) or that higher dots played higher notes. Just too advanced for him at this stage.

Educational Value

I was hoping it would teach the ideas of low and high notes, and that music often has a repeating nature to it. I think it should be useful for this purpose, even though to date it has not been useful in this way with my 3yo.

My Score

3 stars. I am a bit torn about this score. It has not been useful to date for my 3yo, but I think it should be. So I have given it 3 stars, but for 5 year olds. I am slightly uneasy with this score however as I have not backed this up yet with firm evidence. (Feedback welcome!) This apps feels like it should be useful to teach simple musical concepts like low and high notes. My boy however will go for a puzzle game every time.

Get it in iTunes

More information, screen shots, and user reviews can be found in the iTunes store.

• Melodica

Other Suggestions

• Musical Appreciation: Looptastic Electro Edition, Drum Kit

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