Blue Mangoo has announced the release of iFretless Bass 2.0.2, an update to its popular iPad bass app. On the surface, iFretless Bass resembles the smart instruments in Apple’s GarageBand so the idea is not really new. What’s different is the way it feels and sounds, responding to gestures like hammer-ons and slaps in amazingly intuitive and subtle ways.
The best way to see the difference is on video. Sales of iFretless Bass are up 200% since the release of the developer’s new video demonstrating the new features in version 2 of the app. You can see it for yourself at iFretless.com.
Elsewhere on the internet, DigiEnsemble, the mobile device orchestra in Berlin, has released their own video that features iFretless. Their moving rendition of the Christmas Carol “Silent Night” has been posted and tweeted on hundreds of websites around the world. The DigiEnsemble is one of the first groups of professional musicians to use mobile devices as their primary instruments in every performance.
Although many of the first guitars and basses to appear on the iPhone platform were only intended to be used as toys, DigiEnsemble takes advantage of a second generation of apps appearing on the app store, built by developers who envision iOS music apps going much farther, taking their place alongside traditional instruments not as a toy or joke but as musical instruments that make amazing, beautiful sounds which couldn’t be produced in any other way.
Version 2.0.2 adds features that are generating a new level of excitement within the community of guitar and bass players making music on iOS devices. Key improvements include seven new virtual instruments which the most realistic sample-based instruments available on the iOS platform.
