Hoverophone vs PocketStrum

Play a theremin in the air with your hands—no screen taps, controller, or antenna required. Hoverophone uses the front camera to follow your hands. Raise or lower a hand to glide the pitch, change the distance between your thumb and any finger to control volume, and move from side to side to pan the sound. Raise a hand and you are already playing that unmistakable, otherworldly theremin voice. A POLYPHONIC SYNTH Choose a sine, triangle, saw, or square wave, then add drive and ring modulation. Movement across the camera controls the stereo field. Hoverophone tracks up to four hands at once, so you can play chords instead of a single melody. Bring two sounding hands together to pin a note in place. Pinned notes continue to ring while you play, giving you as many as twelve simultaneous voices: four live and eight sustained. MICROTONAL NOTES IN THE AIR Leave the note grid off for the classic continuous theremin glide. Turn it on to snap the pitch to 12-TET notes or 24-TET quarter tones on an isomorphic hexagonal grid. Move your hand into a cell and the note lands in tune without touching the screen. The 24-TET mode opens the door to microtonal and xenharmonic music while preserving the instrument's in-air control. FEATURES - Front-camera hand tracking with no screen contact - Continuous theremin pitch or an isomorphic note grid - 12-TET and 24-TET tuning with quarter tones - Up to four tracked hands and twelve simultaneous voices - Four waveforms, drive, ring modulation, and stereo panning - Sound through the speaker or headphones, even in silent mode - No account required; plays without a network connection HOW TO PLAY THE THEREMIN A theremin is an electronic musical instrument played without physical contact. In Hoverophone, simply raise a hand in front of the camera. Move up and down to change pitch, open and close the space between your fingers to shape volume, and move left or right to place the sound in the stereo field. If you are learning how to play the theremin, start in continuous mode and practice smooth pitch glides. Switch to 12-TET when you want help landing on familiar notes, or choose 24-TET to play quarter tones and explore microtonal music. Hoverophone is a touch-free theremin app and polyphonic synthesizer app for iPhone and iPad, built for musicians who want expressive camera control without extra hardware. Camera frames are processed entirely on your device and never leave it. Hoverophone does not use the microphone. Create a soft ambient pad, build a dense drone, or summon the eerie sweep of a science-fiction soundtrack. For the most reliable tracking, play in a well-lit room where the camera can see your hands clearly.

The beloved electronic autoharp of the early '80s — the strum-anything wonder heard on records by Gorillaz, David Bowie and Brian Eno — reborn as a pocket instrument anyone can play in seconds. Press a chord button with your left thumb. Sweep your right thumb across the SonicStrings-style strumplate. That's it — you're making music. Every string is always in tune, because the plate re-tunes itself to whatever chord you're holding. MADE FOR INSTANT MUSIC • 12-string touch strumplate with true multitouch and velocity — strum slow and soft or fast and bright, with a haptic tick on every string • 108 chords from a 3 × 12 panel: hold Maj+7 for maj7, Min+7 for m7, Maj+Min for dim, all three for aug, plus Sus4 and Add9 keys • Four voices — Omni, Harp, Celeste, Organ — from a real-time polyphonic synth engine with shimmering delay, hall reverb and vibrato • A sustained chord-organ layer with its own volume fader, for that warm held-pad-plus-sparkle sound the originals were famous for • Seven built-in demo songs that play the instrument for you — and a LEARN MODE that turns every one into an interactive lesson: the song pauses at each chord change, the keys to press light up, and it rolls on the moment you play them • Tape mode: gentle wow & flutter, like a loved cassette • Left-handed strumplate option • Record your performance and share it anywhere with one tap • MIDI out: a "Pocket Strum" virtual source plays GarageBand, Logic, AUM or hardware synths straight from the strumplate • Six voices: Omni, Harp, Celeste, Organ, Bell and Pad A BAND IN YOUR POCKET • Five rhythms with drums and an auto-bass that follows your chords: Rock, Slow rock, Waltz, Bossa nova and Hip hop • Tempo fader from 60 to 180 BPM with a running-beat LED • Keeps playing in the background and mixes with Apple Music or Spotify, so you can jam along with anything TWO LOOKS, ONE INSTRUMENT • Classic: a cream-and-red hardware skin with bevelled plastic keys, red LEDs and ruler-ticked faders, straight out of 1981 • Modern: a flat, dark, stage-friendly UI • Switch anytime — your choice is remembered HONEST BY DESIGN • Pay once, own it forever • No ads, no subscriptions, no accounts, no tracking — the app collects no data at all • Works in portrait and landscape on any iPhone running iOS 17 or later Whether you're sketching songs, adding dreamy texture to a track, or handing your phone to someone who's "not musical" and watching them light up — Pocket Strum makes playing feel like magic.