Toca Band
© 2012 Toca Boca
Turn your iPad or iPhone into a playful, powerful musical sandbox with this well designed app. Toca Band ($2.99 from www.tocaboca.com) is the eighth Toca Boca app we've reviewed, and it is one of the most difficult to stop playing. You start with an empty stage, with seven spots waiting to be filled. You get your choice of sixteen musicians to mix and match. You discover that some are more rhythmic while others are melodic. In addition, the location on the stage can influence how they sound (the top spots make them more active). A spotlight area lets you further explore the different voices, which can be layered over your current band's loop. On first glance, you might think there may not be much to do with this app, but there's actually a lot to explore, and a lot of opportunities to informally experiment with mathematical and logical relationships. Our testers wished for some additional features, such as a mute or pause button so that you could silence your band without having to rebuild it from scratch; or perhaps a way to adjust the tempo. Another logical feature would be the ability to record your own sounds, so you can be part of the band (see Smule's MadPad if you're looking for this type of app). But the downside of extra features is complexity, however, and simplicity is one reason Toca Band has such a bright future. The music in Toca Band comes from the Swedish studio Hakan Libdo Audio Industries. Teachers: It is a blast to plug your iPad into a set of speakers, and have a classroom dance, where different children can take control of different instruments. See also Melody Jams.
$2.99, iPad, iPhone
Teaches: music, math, patterns
CTR Rating: 98%