Technology gives new meaning to phoning in a performance

The Mentalists, an all-female English rock band, usually have a traditional guitar, drums and synth line-up. But one day while messing around with their iPhones, they found a range of applications which would allow them to make music not much different from their current output. As an experiment, they got all their iPhones together to see how far they could go with a cover of MGMT's Kids.

The music applications they used were Ocarina, Retro Synth, miniSynth and DigiDrummer Lite. These provided the backing; the vocals were live. The result shocked The Mentalists – their iPhone cover wasn’t that far removed from the original and had a weird charm all its own. They shoved the video on YouTube. In no time they amassed 100,000 hits and were at No 3 in the Viral Video Charts. MGMT themselves heard the iPhone cover version and were said to be mightily impressed.

For an up and coming band who have already played Glastonbury and supported Babyshambles, The Mentalists say they got more publicity from their unique cover than anything else they had ever done before.

Essentially, the iPhone is both a band and a studio that fits into your pocket. A whole generation has now been raised on MP3 music, and with so much stuff in the charts now processed to within an inch of its life, the slightly freaky iPhone musical sound is hardly going to be a deterrent.

One man is taking the iPhone application to a new level this summer. Gary Go, a pop-electro artist, has secured himself support slot dates with Take That at Wembley Stadium. Rather than bring his usual support band along, Go is packing his iPhone and using that and some live vocals for his performance.

“At this point it’s quite hard to think of something I don’t use the phone for,” says Go. “For songwriters it’s an amazing tool, as I always have it with me. I used to phone myself and leave messages to remember ideas. Now I can record real tracks in the park. It’s great.”

Classical musicians have got in on the act as well. In the US, the Standford Mobile Phone Orchestra (better known as MoPhos) use a fleet of iPhones to create musical performances. Orchestra members attach speakers to their wrist for amplification.

MoPhos leader Ge Wang explains how the Ocarina music application turns the phone into an organic musical instrument: “If you hold your phone as if it’s a sandwich and then blow into the microphone at the end of the phone, you can play the notes on the screen. What you get is a sound that is very similar to a 12,000-year old flute-like wind instrument.

The iPhone is moving away from being viewed as a small computer and is now more of small personal device, which has incredible social possibilities.”

Traditionalists may blanch at the very notion of “music played on a phone,” but the iPhone Applications Store is home to some of the most cutting-edge musical inventions around. And the speed at which these applications are being made available is far faster than developments within the traditional musical world.

Certainly, someone such as Gary Go isn't going to advance the iPhone musical cause (what he's doing is little more than a PR stunt). But, as with The Mentalists and Kids, it draws attention to the musical possibilities of the phone. And those will soon become limitless.