Local iPhone, iPad apps meld music lessons, video games ...

J. Anthony Allen developed the music-learning app Tone Target, with help from his students at St. Paul's McNally Smith College of Music and Audiofile Engineering in Minneapolis. An image of musician Jimi Hendrix is behind him. At top is the computer animated instructor, Mr. Noteworthy, for another app, AtPlayMusic Recorder. Below, Mr. Noteworthy guides a user through a series of challenges. ( Pioneer Press: Chris Polydoroff)

Don't kid yourselves, guitar heroes: Racking up mega-scores with that fake guitar won't get you any closer to playing the real thing.

If you really want to learn the guitar or another instrument, though, a number of apps for the iPad and iPhone can help -- and you'll feel like you're still playing a video game.

In fact, some music experts have dubbed this the "gamification" of music education, a means for making sometimes-grueling music learning more palatable and enjoyable.

A handful of apps with St. Paul connections are a part of this high-tech music-education surge.

Tone Target, developed by J. Anthony Allen at the McNally Smith College of Music in downtown St. Paul, is a dead ringer for Guitar Hero.

Dots representing tones endlessly flow on an iPad screen, similar to how the video game behaves. Replicate each of the tones on cue using an instrument or your voice and you become a music titan. (Just don't smash your poor guitar on the floor when you're done.)

AtPlayMusic Recorder, partly the brainchild of St. Paul Chamber Orchestra musician "Skip" James, is a music course with the trappings of a video game. Aimed largely at children, it shows users the basics of playing the simple wind instrument known as the recorder.

Would you rather learn to play the electric guitar, all you Mark Knopfler wannabes? Ah, the next title in the AtPlayMusic series will tackle the instrument with input from another (local) guitar guy, the downtown music academy's

co-founder, Jack McNally.

Stillwater app developer Troy Peterson, meanwhile, is working on a "Ninja" series of music apps such as Guitar Ninja, Piano Ninja, Mandolin Ninja and so on. The first in this series, Guitar Ninja, is scheduled to be released in the coming weeks.

Peterson, a St. Paul native, believes such apps and the touchscreen devices they run on will be "ubiquitous" parts of music education in the coming years.

"You still need a music teacher," Peterson said, but he believes that apps and tablets can help music teachers do their jobs better, too.

Many such teaching jobs and music programs at U.S. school districts have been the victim of cutbacks, however. This makes music education ripe for digital disruption with apps and other tools that can be used anywhere, not just in the classroom.

The stakes could not be higher, said Bill Haertzen, vice president of business development at Eden Prairie-based AtPlayMusic.

"A culture that doesn't have music is a culture that has lost its soul," Haertzen said. "Music is something that binds people together."

RECORDER FOR KIDS

The AtPlayMusic app for teaching children the recorder has its roots in the 1970s, when James had joined the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra as a humble fill-in musician who played that simplest of instruments.

Fast-forward to the present, when the now-retired James began to brainstorm with his pal Gary Meyer about how to bring the recorder into the digital age.

"We got to talking about how animation could be used to teach it," James said.

The pair went on to found AtPlayMusic with big plans to make the recorder-teaching app the first in a series of apps teaching all kinds of instruments. The electric-guitar variation of AtPlayMusic is due in the coming weeks or months.

AtPlayMusic Recorder features computer-animated instructor Mr. Noteworthy, who guides users through a series of challenges -- such as spinning a pinwheel or filling up a set of cups -- that are achieved by blowing the recorder in certain ways.

In this way, kids are learning how to play -- in the guise of a customized Xbox or Wii-like avatar -- almost without realizing it.

"One of the problems with music education is having to practice, practice, practice," James said. That "isn't much fun. The kids would rather go outside and play. We wanted to make the app so fun and inviting that they could practice without pain. I think we've done that."

The team tested the app on third-graders who "just had a ball with it," he said. They also used a music-inept AtPlayMusic engineer as a guinea pig, and he had little trouble learning the recorder basics.

The $3.99 iPad-only app has other goodies such as points that can be redeemed for Target loot, and a certificate sent electronically to those who finish the course. More recorder-app levels are on the way.

REAL GUITAR HEROES

J. Anthony Allen, a McNally Smith instructor who also is a bit of a software and digital-hardware developer, used to dabble with electronic gloves that made music in different ways depending on how the hand folded or flexed. He made the music device a part of rock-group performances.

Tone Target is his current project, designed with help from a team of tech-geeky McNally Smith students, along with software-development team Audiofile Engineering in Minneapolis. He said the Guitar Hero-like app, which runs on the iPhone as well as the iPad, is a deliberate attempt to draw in the Guitar Hero-crazed crowd.

Though not in any way a music-learning tool, Guitar Hero "is a good gateway" to such learning, he believes. "You feel that kind of energy of playing with a band. Some have decided to learn the electric guitar because of that."

Tone Target helps with this and with other instrument and vocal training by helping students nail notes -- often a challenge -- in a Guitar Hero-like environment.

Allen sees the app, sold for $1 on Apple's App Store, as the first in a series. If it sells reasonably well, Allen hopes McNally Smith will approve funding for companion apps that teach rhythm and harmony.

Ninja-app developer Peterson, who grew up on St. Paul's East Side, has surveyed the field of music-education apps for the iPad and iPhone, assembling a spreadsheet that lists hundreds of such titles.

The majority of these, he argues, fall roughly into one of two categories: dumbed-down apps for beginners, and tools for advanced learners who are polishing their craft. In between, he found a yawning chasm -- and an opportunity.

The upcoming Guitar Ninja, like Tone Target and AtPlayMusic Recorder, has the feel of a video game. A teaser video said, "Ninjas have killed your family. Only you can avenge them ... by mastering guitar. Get secret training. Become a master. Get revenge."

The app's marquee feature is a "circle of fun" (based on an earlier app of the same name) split into sections in all the colors of the rainbow. Peterson has mapped the do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do scale to those colors, making music learning a visual experience, complete with virtual ninjas throwing stars aimed at the right places.

This and future Ninja apps will even let two players -- one on a guitar and one on the recorder, say -- go head to head.

The apps "are designed to make music theory more accessible and make practicing more fun," Peterson said.

Julio Ojeda-Zapata writes about consumer technology. Read him: twincities.com/techtestdrive and yourtechweblog.com. Reach him: jojeda@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5467. Follow him: ojezap.com/social.

ONLINE

To see high-resolution images of the music apps in this story, go to yourtechweblog.com.

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