Sponsors
Sponsors

Sponsor
Sponsor
Sponsor

Entries in discovery (1)

Falling Stars - Create Fresh Soundtracks

Creating sounds on the iPad is obviously one of our favourite pastimes. It's even more fun when that 'music' creation comes by way of some sort of experimentation or discovery.

When we started experimenting with the free app Falling Stars from Trident (yes, the super-minty chewing gum people!) we found that we could create some interesting and organic soundtracks that had the potential to be quite meditative (and occasionally manically unnerving).

Get creative

In Falling Stars you draw on the iPad's screen with a sort of elastic vine material of differing types that represent different elements of a song, such as various percussion and melody parts.

After drawing these on the screen, the falling stars start to drop onto them, slowly at first, but you can repeatedly tap on each of the five stars at the top of the screen to increase the rate with which the stars fall.

This can create some manic compositions as the rate and attack of the notes being played intensifies with the increased velocity of falling stars.

The random nature of the interactions between the vines as things heat up is what makes this simple app so fascinating to play and experiment with.

Kids and Sharing

Kids love the Falling Stars app too and it can help them to find and play with sound creation in a way they may not have encountered before.

You can share your creations with other users of the app via Facebook, Twitter or email. They need the app installed on their iPhone or iPad, but when they click the link it will open up in Falling Stars and start playing your track.

Here's an example of what the resulting share looks like, but it will only work if you have the app installed on your device, or install it from that page.

Wishlist items

You have to bear in mind that this is a free app, but it would be really useful if there were a way of recording the tracks you make, support for ACP (Audio Copy & Paste), sharing with SoundCloud and background audio compatibility.

As it is though, Falling Stars is still a fun and often fascinating app to play with and for the price, more than worth it.

You can see the app in action in the video below from Trident:

App Store Link: Falling Stars