A variety of excellent iPhone apps actually let you unlock your creativity, whether you’re already a musician, artist, or photographer -- or simply aspire to be any of those. Here are some entertaining and enabling apps that let you create your own fun on the go.
($19.99)
Sure, the iPad can perform a lot of versatile and impressive tasks, but replacing a $300 drum machine? Believe it. KORG’s iElectribe app mimics the beloved 1999 Electribe-R, offering a stylish digital replication of the iconic machine with a solid touch interface. iElectribe is designed to look, sound, and act like the real thing, letting you create and tweak thumping beats by twiddling the virtual knobs, and the gorgeous visual aesthetic really makes you feel like you’re using the real thing.
($9.99)
TabToolkit’s innovative sheet music reading interface shines as a fantastic tool for musicians of all ages and skill levels, on both iPhone and iPad. No longer will you need to print out tabs or hunt down expensive sheet music anthologies: simply sit your iDevice on a music stand, load up your Guitar Pro or Power Tab file in TabToolkit, and watch as the app automatically scrolls through the music, letting you concentrate on your performance. TabToolkit may completely change the way guitarists and piano players learn new music!
($9.99)
Looptastic Producer is an approachable music creation suite for iPhone, with a similar iPad counterpart -- Looptastic HD -- also available. Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, Looptastic Producer lets you arrange loops from a variety of genres into original creations, with the ability to swap between song parts in separate zones, apply special effects, adjust the tempo, and even record your own loops with the built-in mic or a Bluetooth headset. Plus, when you’re all finished, you can sync your track to a Mac
(or PC) and share it with the world!
($0.99 for iPhone, $1.99 for iPad)
If you’ve ever tried to animate anything, you know it’s a tedious process that requires more than a little elbow grease to even get started, much less reap the rewards of your prodigious studying. Enter Animation Creator HD, the everyperson’s animator for iPhone and iPad. With this simple program, everyone can animate -- it’s fun, it’s easy, and you’ll impress your friends in minutes, not weeks. Plus, when you’re done, you can upload your creations directly to YouTube or share them on Twitter. Don’t hide your masterpieces!
($4.99 for iPhone, $7.99 for iPad)
Available for both iPhone and iPad, Brushes is a painting app that’s sophisticated enough to have created cover art for the New Yorker. The 11 brush effects have adjustable size, spacing, and opacity, and you can paint on up to six layers, then reorder them, merge them, and adjust their transparency; plus, the color picker, eyedropper tool, and swatch-saving features make it easy to get your colors just right. Free drawing apps are okay for quick sketches, but Brushes can take your finger-painting to the next level.
($4.99)
iMovie may lack the intricate and extensive video-editing features of top computer programs, but if you’re looking to piece together simple slideshows and modify video clips on the go, it’s the best option available in the App Store. Apple’s editing app features a clean look and largely effortless navigation, letting you accurately find a spot in a clip by moving through entire timelines with a stationary scrubber. Video-editing pros might find iMovie too simple, but for amateur clip-makers on the go, it’s an easy pick.
($1.99)
Hipstamatic not only takes photos that look old-school, but the entire app looks pretty old-school as well, right down to the “Classic Black” camera case used for most of the interface. The app will immediately take users of a certain age straight back to the late ’60s—complete with kitschy touches such as the sound of a flashbulb charging when you activate the flash -- but the bigger appeal of this popular photo app is the ability to use various classic filters to create ancient-looking shots using your present-day subjects.
($1.99)
Did you know your snapshots don’t have to be limited to the constraints of the iPhone camera lens? Pano is a handy little app that lets you piece together massive panoramic shots by snapping up to 16 continuous photos, which the app then uses to construct one single, nearly seamless photo. The app couldn’t make things easier, even giving you a semi-transparent frame from your previous photo so you line up the next shot, and your panoramic shots can even be resumed if you’re interrupted in the process.
