Futulele - Digital Ukulele with FX and chords App Reviews

This is a great companion app to OMGuitar. Looks and sounds like a uke, and has lots of strum patterns.

Looks nice but I could not figure it out. Songs wont play, nothing seems to work except plunking the 4 string either singly or together. I rarely meet an app I cant figure out ...but this one defeated me.

Let me get the bad news out of the way first: when run on the iPhone, this app is fatally buggy. It uses a clever chord-sequencing scheme--just strum and periodically hit the down arrow to go to the next chord--but programming in the chords is impossible. Among other problems, chords dragged to the timeline pile up on top of each other so you cant even read their labels, or they dont "stick" when dragged there, and before long the app simply freezes and must be force-quit. If youre thinking of running this on your iPhone, forget it. Its unusable. (Tested on iPhone 5/64 GB.) The rest of this review applies to the iPad version, which is marginally usable. Ive tried several ukulele apps on my iPad and so far, Futulele is the best of the lot. Thats not saying much, though, because the others Ive seen are pretty lame. The pros: Futulele has an attractive main screen and produces good sound. Its able to record your performance and export both .wav (digitized audio) and .mid (MIDI) files, which can be imported into GarageBand and combined with other tracks to produce professional-sounding songs. The cons: once you get beyond the main screen into settings, chords and so on, things get ugly fast. The controls are overlaid on the main screen in a semi-translucent fashion, making for a visually distracting mess. The font used is hard to read, and--a particularly serious flaw in a musical instrument--"C" is almost indistinguishable from "G". The recording function works for two takes and then fails--after that, the "Record" button cannot even be actuated. The only cure is to force-quit and relaunch the app. The exported .wav files are fine, but the .mid files, at least in GarageBand, dont sound remotely like what you played, no matter what instrument you assign them to. And as others have pointed out, buttons on the main screen get "stuck" and in some cases replaced by white squares. Futulele is an ambitious effort, and I give the developers credit for what theyve accomplished. Unfortunately, they failed to finish the job. This app needs some serious debugging effort, as well as a redesign of the various settings screens. Until then, I can only categorize it as "the best of a bad lot"--still worth buying if you care about the ukulele, but frustrating in use. (Tested on iPad 3/64 GB and iPad Mini/32 GB.)

should be only for ipad

:)

Since I made the last updated to ios7 is no connecting to audiobus please fix it... I like this app

I paid $2 for this app and havent gotten to use it even once because and soon as I open it it crashes. Please fix it!

Used to be fun but now it wont even work, crashes every time I try to use it.

Latest update must not properly support iOS-7, as the sound no longer comes out the bottom main speaker, but only the iPhones ear speaker. Makes it quiet and not at all fun anymore! :-( Please correct and update, as I miss my Futulele!

Well not technically, but the sound comes out of the earpiece... No way to use the speaker. Seriously, who wants to hold their phone up to their ear and try to strum cords?

I dont know why they would do this, but sound only comes out the ear speaker. The new update makes it "louder" but still only through the ear speaker. Why dont they get this?

Way overdue for an update, that restores proper speaker functionality and crashes less often. Right now the app can only utilize the ear speaker. Has some fine features but is useless without a fix. iOS 7, 5/14

The app is very quiet. You can hardly hear it. Then when you go to play any music the volume is low on it as well. Deleted app and volume went back to normal. Awful app.

App crashes. I cant even open this thing. On top of that, support site will not let me send support request/ refund request-- asks for "valid email address.". I put in a valid email address. Frustrating and ridiculous for a PAID app. You need to work out all your glitches before taking peoples money. I will take this up with Apple Store.

This app desperately needs an update. The audio no longer works properly with the latest iOS. Until then, the app is unusable.

Five stars on iPad but three on the new iPhone version - the iPhone is limited to a sequence of chords you can step through. Would love the ability to play chords in any order similar to ipad maybe on a strip.

So happy to see someone keeping the Amidio apps alive and kicking. Futulele is easily the best ukulele on the platform and boasts plenty of features and options. For the price its a no brainer if you want a ukulele that is ! No complaints other than my palm sometimes hits the Preferences button in the top left corner when Im playing on my iPad, which stops my ... er ... playing. Id like to lock that, or move the icon. Totally worth the price.

Slept not a wink last night due to this app & ukulele chords posted online for a chunk of Radioheads discography. Slots for 12 chords gives a lot of space, you can fit most of Bungalow Bill into there & entertain the whole family (or collection of dolls, etc.).

I own a lot of synths, and Im very demanding when it comes to sound. The included ukes all sound great and are highly sensitive to velocity. That along with muting and bendable strings makes this an extremely beautiful and expressive instrument. It really surprised me, and its one of my favorite apps.

Posted on May 25, 2012 on version 1.0 - "The Futulele cases should be available soon!" - Okay, is there any update to this post? If the cases are not going to be available, please let us know as I was under the impression that the cases were already available when I downloaded the app. I guess I did not read the fine print. My fault. I do like the app, but it would be great if an update on the case would be provided from time to time. Thank you.