An App That Makes Music From A Dynamic Diagram Of Sound

Instrument? Visualization? With SphereTones they’re one in the same. The tiny, true-to-life drum kits in Apple’s GarageBand iPad app are one approach to touch-screen instruments--miniaturized digital replicas of the things we’ve been banging around on for decades. But for the same reason there’s been blowback against the gaudy textures and faux-real life adornments in much of Apple’s software, that approach isn’t necessarily the best one. Real drum kits are optimized for arms and feet, not fingers, and while GarageBand’s familiarity may be comforting, it’s also limiting. The most compelling touch-screen instruments--if not the most useful, in a strict music-making sense--are typically the ones that don’t resemble instruments at all. Which is exactly the appeal of SphereTones, an Android app that looks more like an interactive el...