An amazing "instrument" in your pocket – Songbird Ocarina Review

FIRST, A WORD OF WARNING: If you play this for long periods, be sure to cover your headphone jack with some tape or something to keep moisture out. If I play too much my phone decides that I have headphones plugged in due to the moisture and won't work until it dries out! Luckily it's already out of warning as there is a moisture indicator in the headphone jack, and you don't want to deal with claims that you got your phone wet if something stops working! I almost didn't buy this app because I saw all of the in-app purchaes and was afraid that it would 'nickle and dime' me to get the various features, after paying for the entire app. Luckily I was reading through the changelog to see how well it was supported and saw that a few releases ago they made all of the instruments and songs included in the purchase price, so I took a chance on it and I'm glad I did. The songs and instruments are included and I couldn't find any sign of an in-app purchse! This app plays MUCH better than any other ocharina app I tried and has great instrument sounds as well. The ability to play 3 octaves really extends the range of songs you can play too! I'm now extremely tempted to buy the TooT mouthpiece that they sell to make it even easier to play and hold. For now I've taken a plastic bendy straw and snipped it to a confortable length and taped the short portion along the bottom of the phone (using easy to remove painter's tape) such that the air comes out over the microphone -- this works really well and makes it much easier to play. The play-along and learning mode is very good with very well made backing tracks, and there are a lot of them! I only wish it had one minor improvement and that is that I'd like for it to wait for you to hit the correct not before continuing on -- rather than trying to force a tempo 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, or full speed and then feeling like it's too fast or too slow, it would be nice if there were also a mode where the backing track would drone along stuck at the note until you hit the right note and it tried to figure out your average tempo... this is how the HCX iPad app works with my MIDI piano and it's much easier to learn songs that way in my experience.
Review by AHH Rider on Songbird Ocarina.