iTanpura App Reviews

This is a great device to have if your a muscian. Highly recommend it.

This is a fantastic application. Sound quality is exceptional, its user friendly, comes with great features and is easy to navigate. I use this for my yoga classes and vocals. Yoga students love the sound and you dont have to understand indian music to use this app. The presets make it so easy. Love it!

Addendum to 4.5: As an iTanpura user since version 1.0, I am amazed at the frequency of updates and useful improvements. ITanpura is a steal at its current price, but I appreciate that it remains any easy choice for Indian musicians both student and professional, and also for crossover musicians who want a superb and flexible tanpura sample, and for meditators, massage practitioners, or even as a sleep aid -- although for me, it would just keep me singing all night. --- This application literally changes my life as a student/practitioner of Indian music. It is the application Ive been waiting for since it occurred to me that something like this might be possible on the iPhone. Better than the electronic tanpuras Ive heard for 1/10th of the price. And available any time; in the car, for instance. Hard to believe, but its really a performance-quality instrument. If you perform music that would require a tanpura, and have an iPhone or iPod Touch, this application is 1000% worth the dinner out it will cost you. It produces the sound of two 4-string tanpuras (or one), sampled from good, well-tuned Hemraj tanpuras, with well-set jawari, tunable from male B to instrumental Eb (an octave and a third), with one-cent microtuning adjustments. It sounds superb through speakers or headphones, and not too bad just out of the iPhone speaker. The developer also seems very responsive to user input. Definitely a winner!

Im a long-time student of Indian classical music; I have a Raagini electronic tanpura, like many folks, but a) there are times when its too bulky to pack along with my instrument, and b) there are limited options on it for alternate tunings to the non-Sa string (just Pa, Ma and Ni.) THIS, on the other hand, gives you all the tempo, tuning and fine-tuning features of a Raagini, x 2 (TWO tanpuras, pan-able in stereo), with the option of any other note for the non-Sa. With the latest version, the two tanpuras, whose sample quality also is superior to the Raagini, the tempos of the two can be varied relative to each other, giving it a more realistic playing style, as two actual players would be unlikely to be in sync (and indeed, would try not to be, as the point with tanpura is to NOT draw attention to it with too distinct a rhythm.) Additionally (wait, theres more! it slices! it dices!), you get a tunable swarmandal (surmandal), with independent volume, and with the latest version, a surpeti Sa drone, also with its own volume. Prasad is equally knowedgeable in Indian music (as a performer) and in app development; this shows through in the design: its one of the best uses of the iPhone Oss API Ive yet seen. The UI is well thought out. I highly recommend this app to any student or performer of Indian music.

With its flexibility of "on the fly" tuning capabilities, I see this app as a permanent member for future recordings. Fantastic!

Get this app. Practice your ragas and skip over the next few incarnations. This things sounds so nice youll be at home evolving and not running around doing things to foul your karma. Excellent sound and inviting to use.

This is my favorite app. Extremely useful. A bit over priced but that is fine. Keep improving it. By the way when are u coming up with i tabla. Waiting....... Come on. At least the basic thekas to start with...

I have played sitar professionally for 22 years & shehnai for 9 years. I just used the app for the 1st time & the app performed wonderfully! Any chance of a tavil app? Peace & Love

Excellent app. Sound quality is superb. Similar software costs 100s or dollars but this has better sound quality. And thanks a million for all the updates! The swarmandal -- perfect, the tuner -- perfect! It helped me finally realize whats the right pitch for a swar! Thanks!

Ever since I purchased this app, My Raagini Digital has been collecting dust. This is a pleasant surprise.

The sound is fantastic, but I am giving this 3 stars instead or 5 because I cannot multitask. I would like this app to run in the background while I check email, etc. Now with ios 4, please enable multitasking.

This is an excellent app. Probably better than any electronic tanpura available in India. But I have a suggestion to make. > Enable multitasking facility now that the new iPhone OS has come and make it available in the upgrade.

This is by far the best electronic sound of the Tanpura I have personally experienced. I had been wanting to buy a real tanpura (tambura in South India) for sometime now, and after buying this app, I decided to postpone my purchase :) I would readily recommend this application to any classical indian music lover. It is a bit pricier than some of the other generic music apps. This is not a generic music app. This is a serious effort to bring out the best for everyone! Kudos to Prasad and his team.

This is a great sounding, easy to use ap. Almost makes the Raagini obsolete. Samples are great and the many tuning options are invaluable. Both manual and presets allow proper tuning for different ragas. The swar mandal is pretty good, though not quite as convincing as the tamboura. Well worth the cost.

I use this app every day to play long tones on the trumpet. This drone is the best Ive ever found for both intonation and tone quality, because the drone has so many overtones above the fundamental (all perfectly in-tune) so you can match pure intervals above the drone.

A billion billion Thanks for this wonderful app! It has changed the way I perform. However, now a days, after I got the update, the app suddenly exits when I try to adjust the volume or panning & its quite frustrating when this happens on stage. Is there a way this could be rectified?

Dont get wrong, Im not saying this is not a recommended app, but based in reviews, u expected it to substitute my real tambura, or my Radel. It doesnt. Im a professional Carnatic vocalist and I was really looking forward for an app like this so that I could use it in concerts. Although im (still) impressed with the software part of the app, the tonal quality is just not good enough to make it as my primary tambura source. When youve done an app as good as this one (and paying as much also), I really expected it to have uncompromising tonal quality. Just because it is not as good as it could have been, I cannot rate this beyond 3 stars, which makes it a novelty item. And its too pricey for a non-serious app.

This has been one of my most used apps since I bought an iPhone, and in fact one of the main reasons I got an iPhone in the first place. Some of the things I love about it: - Awesome sound! Really, anyone who doesnt like the sound doesnt know what good tanpura sound is or most likely needs better speakers :-) The tanpura sound is just heavenly and the the swar-mandal sound gives it that extra dimension. When I have two tanpuras, surpeti and swar mandal playing through my Bose speakers the effect is just beautiful! - The presets feature is amazing. I love that I can just pick my raag and start singing, and if my raag isnt there then I can just tune everything the way I want and save my own presets. - The new multi-tasking is really well implemented and lets me keep the tanpuras playing in the background while I access my music notes in another app - Love to be able to instantly use the tuner to tune it to a harmonium during a concert. This is a wonderfully innovative and useful feature I have not seen anywhere else

I like the tone and voice of it. I just love playing and listening to it. Continuous updates are also very useful. More raga presets would be appreciated.

Couldnt resist the urge to write a review abiut this beautiful piece of software! Very handy for students who does not have a shruthibox. Connect your ipod to an external speaker and it will sound as good as a RADEL. I rate it 5 stars!