I do love it when you come across an app which makes you think, “Wow, I can see how this could work in a school!”, and although this app could easily activate a head-ache for the poor teacher, it is one of the most creative music composition apps I have come across…not only for the iPad, but online as well.
‘Isle of Tune’ is not free (£1.99), but does make the most un-musical person able to create simple compositions quickly and easily. Using the idea of a virtual town, the user creates a road for vehicles to drive around (or backwards and forwards), then place different features you would see in a town which are where the music is created. For example, the bridges are actually a piano keyboard, with the user changing the note as they wish. The houses, plant-pots, street-lamps & signs all have different musical attributes, which again allows the user to change the musical note or sound. I played with the app for 20 minutes before generating a musical master-piece (although the folks around me told me to turn it off!!!) I am still exploring the app, and have found it is possible to save your file as well as explore other work shared to the community, but I have yet to discover how you can export your creation into a manageable format. This may be there, or it may be a future development for the site. More information is at www.isleoftune.com/support/
chilledteaching 