Magic Fiddle: Your Portable Fiddle
When I saw this application in the AppStore, I knew I had to have it. As an organist and flutist, I like to try out these “real” music games that come out on the iPhone and iPad that not just requires you to push a button at the right time (like Guitar Hero). Instead, I like games that allow me some creative spirit.
Basic Game Idea & Learning how to play
The main idea with Magic Fiddle is that you are playing, well a magic fiddle, an instrument that sounds like a violin but that you play slightly differently. There is a storybook mode that is designed to help you learn playing the fiddle and I must say that they have done a very good job at that. Not only do you learn how the application functions but also the basics of music playing, applicable to almost every instrument.
What I would definitely class as a negative here however is that if you are like me, who instead of going through the storybook chapters decide to go right in there and play a song, you will manage both easy and harder normal ones, but when it comes to some more special app techniques, you will be left wondering what to do.
Here is the caveat to this though. Because you must run through the storybook in order, you can’t just learn how to do one or two special things, but must sit through the basics even though you already know them and understand them. While I realize that this might be good for the majority of people trying this app out, it is a real pain for me as a musician.
How hard is it?
Truth to be told, it is quite had to play even an easy song really well. The fiddle is built up just like violin in that you can slide your finger up and down a string to get different notes. To hit the note correctly, you really need to be spot on.
When I have tested it out now, I have been doing it from an “incorrect position”, meaning that I do not hold my iPad the way I should or play the fiddle with the hand position I should. Had I done that, I think the entire app would have had another dimension of difficulty.
Song library
I was struck at the number of different songs that are available. I’ll tell you right away if you haven’t figured already that if you don’t like classical music at all, this app is not for you. For me as a classical musician, this is just a lot of fun, partly and I will come back to that in a moment.
There are all sorts of classical classics already in the app by default and there is a store where you can purchase extra packs of songs if you want to, whether it be more advanced ones or holiday themed.
What gets me about these songs sometimes is both speed and timing. There is one master switch for how fast songs are going and for most of them, the 1.0 speed is nowhere near fast enough for the song. By tweaking it up to about 1.5 you can get songs playable at least, in their normal setting.
For many of the songs, the timing of some notes are also slightly off, making the fiddle tones off beat from the main tune. There is a possibility that it is just a different notation that was used for entering these but seeing as the error so to speak is present in many of the songs, I doubt it.
Conclusion
I will be the first to tell you that despite some of the errors and oddities in the setting and tune of some songs, this is truly a fun music app and makes for a lot of fun. Yes, I do admit that I spent an extra hour awake yesterday playing this because I couldn’t put it down, I just had to try one more song, and then another, and another and another…
There is a but to all this praise and I do feel that the storybook mode and the fact that you cannot skip to whichever lesson you want is a waste of time and just a bad choice in the making. Both this and the fact that you cannot individually easily change the speed of a tune, coupled with some being off sadly brings down the rating for this app quite a bit.
If you instead ask me if it is worth the money, I say a loud and clear: YES!
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