ToneStone is an app designed to make producing music easy, even for users without any musical experience, and it’s created by people who worked on Guitar Hero and Left 4 Dead. Even though the app is officially being announced today, it’s still in closed beta, and there’s a waitlist for those who want to try it out. As a music production hobbyist, ToneStone’s interface and game-like features very much seem like my kind of jam, based on videos I’ve seen of the app and my conversation with founder Greg LoPiccolo.
If you’ve never heard of LoPiccolo, you’ve probably heard of games he helped make. He worked at Harmonix, the studio that made music-based games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Another ToneStone founder is Tom Leonard, who has some of Valve’s greatest hits, like Left 4 Dead and Half-Life 2, listed on his LinkedIn. LoPiccolo said that the mission for ToneStone is to “empower a global community to create and share music,” which he sees making songs as a “critical human need that everybody wants.”