Make Music Videos (Starring You!) with the VidRhythm iPhone App

Have you heard of the VidRhythm iPhone app? I hadn't until last week when a friend showed me a funny and slightly crazy video that some of her other friends had created using the app. It was like a kaleidoscopic techno-music selfie. That's about the only way I know to say it. It wasn't necessarily a good video, and the music part was definitely not anything I'd put on iTunes, but I still felt the need to immediately download the app and create one myself. It took a few tries to get one worth sharing, but I assure you that now I have several.




The VidRhythm app was created by Harmonix, who also created the popular video game Rock Band. To use the VidRhythm app, you first choose a song and the style of video you want to create.

Then, you choose a style for your video.

Next, you record yourself making sounds and visuals for the video based on prompts from the app. I found this part to be a little quirky and confusing. Sometimes the clips would get cut off (each clip is only one second!), and for the singing clips, you have to follow a "Note Guide." I didn't realize at first, but when it says to follow the note guide, you have to tap the singing man icon, who they call "Chirpy the Guide Note" (next to the "Record" button in the picture on the left, below). Chirpy will play a tone to help you sing the right notes.

Though it's a little buried in the "How to Play" area of the app, the app creators do offer a video tutorial on their website.

Overall, I found this to be an entertaining app, but the excitement is short-lived, and the app definitely presents frustrations that may drive away new users. My main complaint is that many of the videos I created didn't seem to sound at all like the preview of the song. The song choices were a bit of a mixed bag. I tested several, and found that only 3 or 4 of the songs I tried actually ended up sounding like something other than rough awful noise in the final product (and seemingly nothing like the previews of the songs). I doubt I'll use the app again, but my friends and I had a lot of fun trying it out.