Smule's Magic Piano now free on the iPhone

Maestros and newbies alike will love creating beautiful musical concoctions on Smule's latest

Magic Piano, Smule’s anyone-can-play-piano app, launched Wednesday on the iPhone for the first time.

Similar to other Smule apps, Magic Piano gives anyone and everyone the ability to play their favorite songs on a synthesized and stylized piano. The Songbook comes with three free songs (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star composed by Mozart, traditional tune Amazing Grace and Fur Elise by Beethoven), each of which literally guides your fingers to the right notes with falling lights of color. It’s like Guitar Hero or Rock Band except even easier because it makes full use of the iPhone’s intuitive touchscreen.

(While playing in Songbook mode, I did notice some minor audio glitches, which Smule is currently investigating. It is the first release of the app, after all.)

More creative types might quickly tire of playing pieces in the Songbook, which is why Smule also offers Solo mode, for freestyle performances. This is actually the area of the app where you can see how much Smule loves stretching the limitations of musical performance. The app offers several ways of displaying the piano, including a spiral-shaped piano, a circular piano and a wacky horizontal piano whose keys can be stretched thin or flattened wide, depending on how many keys you want to see on screen.

In essence, the app should please all music lovers, from maestros to newbies.

And it’s free for iPhone and iPod Touch! Kind of.

The app’s Songbook comes with a few complimentary songs, as I explained above, but if you want more, you have to purchase Smoola, Smule’s virtual currency. Every user gets started with 30 Smoola, enough to buy classic tracks from Mozart and Beethoven, but not even half of the required 75 for popular tracks like Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” or Train’s “Drops of Jupiter.”

Prices for the currency range from $1.99 for 160 Smoola to $19.99 for 1920 Smoola.

Also, while the app is free for the smaller iOS devices, iPad users must still pay $0.99 (marked down 66 percent) for the HD version of the app.

Be sure to watch the video below for a delightfully epic demonstration of Magic Piano, with a performance of Vangelis’ most recognizable tune, “Chariots of Fire.”