Washboard vs Gold Star Studio

Turn your mobile device into a musical washboard! You can play the classic metal washboard as is, or customize it by adding instruments like horns and woodblocks in any combination. You can even add decorations like a flower, a sticker or party lights. Play along with your iPod music, or plug into an amp and join a jug band! Some reviews say the app doesn't sound like a washboard, but it does use audio samples taken from a real washboard. The samples come from a metal board played with 1" zinc washers -- this gives a sound harder than thimbles but softer than spoons -- and include a tap, scrub and wood sound. The add-on instruments also use real audio samples. Instruments include: - Small cowbell - Large cowbell - Small horn - Large horn - Tambourine - Cymbal - Small woodblock - Large woodblock - Service bell - Vibraslap - Toy chicken Decorations (no sound) include: - Toy dinosaur - Flower - Bow tie - Hula girl - Woody Guthrie sticker - Party lights If you have any MIDI equipment, you can also use Washboard as a MIDI controller. Map each instrument in the app to a note number in your sound module, then tap the board or attached instruments to send note-on commands. The MIDI commands are sent on channel 10 for easy access to most percussion modules. Before buying this app, I recommend watching the demo video at washboardapp.com to see how it works. If you need help after your purchase, please contact me before writing a bad review. I have no way to respond or help you if you publish your complaints in a review, but I respond promptly to all emails.

Gold Star Studio is the room in your pocket, from SugarHill Recording Studios - Houston's oldest studio, recording since 1941, where Gold Star was the name on the door. Eight tools, every one built from scratch at the studio. Nothing is sampled: every sound the app makes, it makes itself. KEY FINDER - play a song at the phone and it tells you the key, spelled the way a chart spells it. TUNER - chromatic, or set to guitar, bass, ukulele or violin with their tunings. Lock a string, hold it to hear the note, set the reference pitch, or match the tuning of a recording. TEMPO TAP - tap along and read the tempo. METRONOME - a woodblock click with the meters you need, tap tempo, a screen flash and a vibrate that you can feel, and it keeps time with the screen locked. THEREMIN - play it with the light on the front camera: a hand over the lens bends the note. Filter, echo, tremolo, crush and vibrato on the pad. PIANO - a piano, a Rhodes, an electric piano and an organ, with sustain and chords. DRUM MACHINE - an 808 kit with grooves and fills. AUTO-TUNE - sing into it and it pulls you to the key, hard or natural, with a harmony and a room. Find the key of the track first. And the SUGARHILL ARCADE, three machines of the studio's own: REELZ, the pinball - five light shows, a golden ticket, Reel G on the head calling the shots, and a gold star ball; STAR SHOOTER, where the studio's gear comes at you in waves; and GOLD STAR GP, a hover racer with eight machines, four tracks, upgrades, rivals, hidden paths and a live synth soundtrack - steer with a tap, swipe up for nitro, and hit it on the beat. Wear an Apple Watch and it becomes the remote: start the metronome from your wrist and feel the beat there, tap a tempo, see the note the theremin is playing, read the pinball score, and nudge the table. Gold Star Studio listens through the microphone only while a tool that needs it is open, and uses the camera only as a light meter for the theremin. Nothing is recorded and nothing leaves the phone. SugarHill Recording Studios - 5626 Brock St, Houston, TX 77023 - 713-926-4431 - ricky@sugarhillstudios.com