Local iPhone, iPad apps meld music lessons, video games

Don't kid yourselves, guitar heroes: Racking up mega-scores with that fake guitar won't get you any closer to playing the real thing.If you really want to learn the guitar or another instrument, though, a number of apps for the iPad and iPhone can help -- and you'll feel like you're still playing a video game.


In fact, some music experts have dubbed this the "gamification" of music education, a means for making sometimes-grueling music learning more palatable and enjoyable.A handful of apps with St. Paul connections are a part of this high-tech music-education surge.

Tone Target, developed by J. Anthony Allen at the McNally Smith College of Music in downtown St. Paul, is a dead ringer for Guitar Hero.Dots representing tones endlessly flow on an iPad screen, similar to how the video game behaves. Replicate each of the tones on cue using an instrument or your voice and you become a music titan. (Just don't smash your poor guitar on the floor when you're done.)

AtPlayMusic Recorder, partly the brainchild of St. Paul Chamber Orchestra musician "Skip" James, is a music course with the trappings of a video game. Aimed largely at children, it shows users the basics of playing the simple wind instrument known as the recorder.

Would you rather learn to play the electric guitar, all you Mark Knopfler wannabes? Ah, the next title in the AtPlayMusic series will tackle the instrument with input from another (local) guitar guy, the downtown music academy's co-founder, Jack McNally.Stillwater app developer Troy Peterson, meanwhile, is working on a "Ninja" series of music apps such as Guitar Ninja, Piano Ninja, Mandolin Ninja and so on. The first in this series, Guitar Ninja, is scheduled to be released in the coming weeks.

Peterson, a St. Paul native, believes such apps and the touchscreen devices they run on will be "ubiquitous" parts of music education in the coming years."You still need a music teacher," Peterson said, but he believes that apps and tablets can help music teachers do their jobs better, too.

Many such teaching jobs and music programs at U.S. school districts have been the victim of cutbacks, however. This makes music education ripe for digital disruption with apps and other tools that can be used anywhere, not just in the classroom.

The stakes could not be higher, said Bill Haertzen, vice president of business development at Eden Prairie-based AtPlayMusic."A culture that doesn't have music is a culture that has lost its soul," Haertzen said. "Music is something that binds people together."

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