Soundcells, a Homebrew Nintendo DS “Ukelele”

Homebrewers continue to dream up new ways of making music with mobile game systems. Sometimes the results are useful as actual tools, and sometimes they’re more of a fascinating novelty. In the latter category is the truly unusual Soundcells, a virtual “ukelele” inspired by the grid-based music interface of Toshio Iwai’s Tenori-On. The interface looks like a fretboard but acts as a grid. The results sound about as much like a ukelele as a car alarm sounds like a trombone concerto, but it’s nothing if not unique, and it looks like fun to play:

(See the video after the jump for what starts to sound like an 8-bit bagpipe, if you can imagine that.)

Patryk (developer) hosted site
Via Soundcells for DS [onetonnemusic], analysis by CDM’s resident graphic designer Nat, and originally on the brilliant Nintendo-loving site 4 color rebellion