DronePlayer

Name: DronePlayer
Price: 4.99 USD
Rating: 1.8 (5 reviews)
Author: tingjing.com

Music

$4.99 · Designed for iPad

5 Ratings
Ages

4+
Years
Category

Music
Developer

tingjing.com
Language

EN
English
Size

59.7
MB

DronePlayer is a fun, interactive practice assistant for improvising musicians. Playing over extended tonalities is a great way to develop your ears as well as your musical ideas. Long, sustained tones are generally known as drones. Drones have proven themselves quite useful for practicing. Many people use them to assist with intonation. Some enjoy playing scales over them. I personally have found them useful for practicing improvisation and improving my ears. Muting one of the drone voices is a great way to play with just a fundamental pitch. You can then improvise over this and focus on hearing how what you are playing relates. Adding a second drone voice just adds to the fun.

Ratings & Reviews

1.8

out of 5

5 Ratings

Pulsing, not constant.
08/09/2012

carrickp
Pretty useless for me. The drone wavers and pulses, no matter what you do -- even if you put it on infinite play and turn off the percussion. If you're trying to tune a musical instrument, practice scale intonation or the like, it's not what you need. I'm not a pop music person, so perhaps this app has applications in that field. But I'm sure I do not know what they are.
Pulsing, not constant.
08/09/2012

carrickp

Pretty useless for me. The drone wavers and pulses, no matter what you do -- even if you put it on infinite play and turn off the percussion. If you're trying to tune a musical instrument, practice scale intonation or the like, it's not what you need. I'm not a pop music person, so perhaps this app has applications in that field. But I'm sure I do not know what they are.
Improv Improvement
01/03/2012

Thephen
Practicing with drones is a great way to exercise a wide variety of musical skills. I've spent hours jamming with this app and you will too.The app is easy to use and that makes it easy to reach for. Anything that gets me on my piano practicing improv (for hours on end) is welcome in my routine, and droneplayer does reliably and enjoyably.The drum patterns are useful and evocative. I even spent some time with my kids teaching them the love of improv with droneplayer. We took turns 'scatting' over droneplayer and we had a great time.Bottom line: droneplayer is day to use and it puts me in the right mood to jam-- I don't have to sequence anything, or rifle through lists of mixer-routing-insutment to stay on the right mood. Start droneplayer and start having fun.
Improv Improvement
01/03/2012

Thephen

Practicing with drones is a great way to exercise a wide variety of musical skills. I've spent hours jamming with this app and you will too.The app is easy to use and that makes it easy to reach for. Anything that gets me on my piano practicing improv (for hours on end) is welcome in my routine, and droneplayer does reliably and enjoyably.The drum patterns are useful and evocative. I even spent some time with my kids teaching them the love of improv with droneplayer. We took turns 'scatting' over droneplayer and we had a great time.Bottom line: droneplayer is day to use and it puts me in the right mood to jam-- I don't have to sequence anything, or rifle through lists of mixer-routing-insutment to stay on the right mood. Start droneplayer and start having fun.
Great Practicing Tool!
10/07/2011

jazzdrifter
Few apps come along that I would deem valuable and essential for the improvising musician. Droneplayer is one of those apps! This is a fun way to jam and it will play as long as you want. Controls work flawlessly. Thanks for a great app!
Great Practicing Tool!
10/07/2011

jazzdrifter

Few apps come along that I would deem valuable and essential for the improvising musician. Droneplayer is one of those apps! This is a fun way to jam and it will play as long as you want. Controls work flawlessly. Thanks for a great app!
Avoid
09/05/2015

Shanpa
All the "drones" are more like repeated whole notes. They are short samples that pause and restart every few seconds, even on the infinity setting. The samples are also extremely low quality. The only way I could say that you get what you pay for is if the price was "Get".

Developer Response
The early version was an experiment but version 2.0+ introduced a proper, high quality audio engine and I hope you were able to upgrade to enjoy it. It's far better.
Avoid
09/05/2015

Shanpa

All the "drones" are more like repeated whole notes. They are short samples that pause and restart every few seconds, even on the infinity setting. The samples are also extremely low quality. The only way I could say that you get what you pay for is if the price was "Get".
Developer Response 02/14/2018
The early version was an experiment but version 2.0+ introduced a proper, high quality audio engine and I hope you were able to upgrade to enjoy it. It's far better.