Along with serving as a platform for maps, games, books and more – the iPhone is also becoming widely used as a musical instrument.

Today, Smule – which develops the popular iPhone app, Ocarina along with Leaf Trombone - has announced a partnering with the San Francisco Symphony.  

On July 18th, at Davies Symphony Hall, the San Francsico Symphony will be performing Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy, the legendary video game series, which has been around since the 80s, when the original Nintendo was introduced to the world.

The San Francisco Symphony has been a leader in these sorts of collaborations merging modern music with classic influences.   Back in 1999, the Symphony collaborated with Metallica to perform a series of live performances in Berkeley, Ca., conducted by Michael Kamen.  The two musical entities also released an album together titled S&M (Symphony & Metallica), which went 6x Platinum.

In this case, the SF Symphony won’t exactly be sharing the stage with Smule’s iPhone musicians.  Instead, it will hold an Ocarina Master Class and an Ocarina Orchestra post-concert performance, hosted by Turner Kirk –also known as The Mule from Smule.  This will offer participants a chance to learn tips and techniques and jam with other musicians.

It makes perfect sense for Smule to be involved in this sort of an event, where a symphony is performing music from games.  Many of the users of Smule’s iPhone applications have learned to perform themes from games like Mario and Zelda as well.  Check out this quick YouTube search result.

Along with the partnership, Smule and the SF Symphony have announced a sweepstakes to win tickets to the concert, a free night at the Westin in SF, an iPod touch, speakers and other neat stuff, check out the details here.

We should look forward to similar announcements from Smule.  A representative told us, "We look forward to continuing to work with the San Francisco Symphony on an ongoing basis, and we anticipate many different collaborations among Smule users and between Smule instruments and traditional orchestras." 

Here’s The Mule from Smule making the announcement.