SoundBow vs YOKA INSTRUMENTS
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
SoundBow
Create music by drawing curves and gestural movements on a clean interface. Record your own sounds, build melodies, and export compositions as audio files. This app offers a unique, interactive approach to music production.
- Drawing-based music creation
- Gesture-based sound manipulation
- Record and use own sounds
- Export compositions as audio
- Rescale instrument elements
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SoundBow is a drawing based music instrument with a clean and simple visual interface. You can create music by drawing curves over the screen with lines and gestural movements. Apart from drawing, you can rescale your instrument by moving graphical elements around. Record your own sounds through the microphone and start creating melodies, soundscapes with your own voice. If you wish, you can also export your composition as an audio file. "Touch-based mobile devices allowed interactive, gesture-based music production to hit the masses. So far, this type of musical creation hasn't exactly taken the world by storm. But SoundBow, a drawing-based musical instrument app, should shake things up a little bit with its clean, minimal visual interface and mesmerizing potential for complex, loop-based music production." - The Creators Project "Binaura bring their beautiful SoundBow app to iOS at last. It is a gorgeous instrument with huge possibilities for expression and creativity. I think that in many ways these are the kinds of apps that iOS was made for." - Palm Sounds SoundBow is made with free and open source tools. The interface is built with OpenFrameworks. The sound engine is made with SodaLib, a free Data Sonification Library built on top of libPd (Pure Data).
YOKA INSTRUMENTS
Explore a collection of unique music creation tools. Generate ambient sounds, create chimes with physics, draw waveforms, and synthesize drums. Some instruments can even generate music from your camera feed or automatically play via character plugins.
- Ambient touch instrument with multi-finger support
- Physics-based chime instrument with space visuals
- Auto-play character plugin for ambient instrument
- Camera feed music generator
- Draw-your-own-waveform sound synthesizer
- Dual-oscillator drum synthesizer
- Cross-app loop recorder
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【Included Apps】 ● RIPPLES — Ambient Touch Instrument (Free) An ambient instrument played by touch. Supports up to 6 fingers. Vertical position controls pitch, horizontal position controls filter. ● ASTROCHIME — Chimes Played by Asteroids (Free) A physics-based chime instrument. Asteroids collide with stones to create music in space. The background shows the current-location night sky. ● DROPPLE — Auto-Play Character Plugin for RIPPLES (Free) A plugin exclusive to RIPPLES. A water-drop character walks across the screen and plays automatically. Launch it from the button on the left side of RIPPLES. ● SCANBIENT — Camera Ambient Generator Generates music automatically from the camera feed. Works best when pointed at scenes with movement. ● DRAWSCILLATOR — Draw Your Own Waveform An instrument that turns shapes drawn inside a circle into sound. ● BENDRUM — Dual-Oscillator Drum Synthesizer A drum synthesizer with dual oscillators. ● SIMPLOOPER — Cross-App Loop Recorder A plugin for recording and looping across apps. All apps are currently available for free.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: YOKA INSTRUMENTS at Free against SoundBow's $1.99. YOKA INSTRUMENTS also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 66%) and update cadence (every 2 days vs every 2 months). SoundBow's advantage is iOS requirement (11.0 vs 15.0). On rating, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
YOKA INSTRUMENTS is free to download; SoundBow costs $1.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.7 for SoundBow against 4.8 for YOKA INSTRUMENTS. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 13 and 6 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 66% of SoundBow's written reviews are positive against 100% of YOKA INSTRUMENTS's.
SoundBow ships an update every 2 months, YOKA INSTRUMENTS every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on September 27, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | SoundBow | YOKA INSTRUMENTS |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.7 (13 ratings) | 4.8 (6 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 65.5% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 13 — better | 6 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 11.0 — better | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 13 MB | 19 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Agoston Nagy | Takashi Tsunoda |
Customer experience
SoundBow
YOKA INSTRUMENTS
In-app purchases
SoundBow
No in-app purchases
YOKA INSTRUMENTS
No in-app purchases





