Music Ally

We’ve written a fair bit about promotional music apps on iPhone for artists like Pink, Snow Patrol, Lady GaGa and Soulja Boy. But what about iPhone apps that let you create music of your own? There are hundreds available, and as yesterday’s viral video from UK band The Mentalists showed, they can be put to innovative use.

We’ve put together ten of our favourites, based on our last few months of messing about on iPhone. They’re not all serious (Bebot – Robot Synth is marvellously silly), but they do hint at the potential for Apple’s handset as a music-making device. Each one comes with a YouTube video demo so you can see what we’re on about. Well, nearly each one.

1. technoBox (£5.99). It’s a 303 bass machine plus 808 and 909 drum machines in one app, with a tactile touch interface. As a technical achievement it’s hugely impressive, although if we’re honest, the appeal for us is simply blasting out squiggly acid bloops. Get it

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Remember Ocarina, the novelty iPhone music app where you blow into your iPhone’s mic to make flutey sounds?

Its developer, Smule, has revealed that more than 700,000 people have downloaded it so far at $0.99 apiece – meaning it’s made the company more than $485,000 under Apple’s 70-30 revenue-share deal.

What’s more, more than 1,200 user-created song scores have been uploaded to the Ocarina website, and their songs have been listened to more than 40 million times. No wonder Smule has expanded to ten full-time employees to make follow-up apps.

They’re a band called The Mentalists – we’re not being rude about them. Anyway, this is genius.

Not just because of the technical ingenuity of playing a cover of MGMT’s ‘Kids’ using iPhone apps Ocarina, Retro Synth, miniSynth and DigiDrummer Lite. But because they’re a band, so this is pretty savvy viral marketing in its own right.

Marvellous stuff. We’re busy working on our remake of the entire Lily Allen album using just Bebot – Robot Synth and the intro music from Rolando…