Apps for Guitarists

It can’t really have escaped your attention that I am a big fan of any app designed for musicians. To be more precise, I am an ever bigger fan of apps for guitarists. Recently, I’ve had the chance to try out two of the best guitarist apps out there, both created by the wonderful Agile Partners.

GuitarToolkit

Perhaps one of the best known apps for guitarists, and after five minutes alone with the app, it’s not hard to see why. This really does have everything you could wish for in terms of a reference app, all wrapped up in an interface that is far from ugly.

This is perhaps the only Guitar reference tool you’ll ever need. It stocks everything that I would ever need to hand when playing guitar (well, except for one thing, but see below for that). First off, making use of the microphone the app provides a full chromatic tuner which has worked great for me sat at home, I didn’t have the chance to try in a noisier environment where it may, perhaps, fair less well. But not only can you tune to the standard E-A-D-G-B-e tuning, but you can select from a list of predefined guitar tunings or simply input your own.

For help when your practicing solo’s is the Scales function. It shows all major scales in standard tuning and even has the ability to show scales in any alternate tuning you can think off. You can also scroll up and down the length of the fretboard and by simply touching any note, you can hear exactly how it should sound. I’ve found this tool especially helpful as a solo guitarist, especially when it comes to writing new solo’s when I’m unsure of the scale associated to the key of the song.

No guitar reference app would even get the time of day from me without a chord library. Thankfully, GuitarToolkit has, perhaps, the most impressive library I’ve ever seen. With over 500,000 chords in it’s library, you’ll never need to buy or carry a chord book again. As you can probably guess, the app also supports chords for alternate tunings, and if you want to hear how it should sound, just give the fretboard a strum.

A very nice addition to the chord library is the chord finder. Like most guitarists, I tend to play around a lot, sometimes coming up with a nice sounding chord, but with no idea where to even begin when it comes to naming it, with GuitarToolkit, simply input the notes you’re playing and the app will tell you what new chord you’ve stumbled on.

Finally, the app also includes a metronome for when your playing alone and want to keep time. I’m not sure if it’s just a failing of mine, but without a metronome my ability to keep time is near to non-existent. Thankfully, the metronome here is perfect for this and you can even customize the 12 time signatures by choosing from a total of 13 sound effects.

Since I started using this app, I know that I won’t need buy another Guitar reference tool for my iPhone. Not a guitarist? don’t worry GuitarToolkit also provides support for four, five and six string bass, Ukulele and Mandolin. And if you don’t play any of these instruments, buy this app, buy a guitar, and you soon will.

TabToolkit

As I stated above, there was only one thing missing from GuitarToolkit, and that was a guitartab reader. Thankfully, Agile Partners have you covered there to with TabToolkit. Not just aimed at guitarists, Tabtoolkit can help make learning songs on guitar, bass, banjo, piano,drums and other instruments easier.

I would imagine that most musicians are familiar with the GuitarPro and PowerTab formats, well this app can play both of these. Whilst the app also supports tabs in PDF and Text formats, these are no where near as dynamic and the app does not possess any kind of auto-scroll for this format (something which the more recently released Ultimate Guitar app does). But that is not really a big problem in my mind as this app feels to be geared for the “richer” tab formats of GuitarPro and PowerTab.

Once again, I would imagine most guitarists are familiar with ultimate-guitar.com which has a wide variety of tabs available for free, and more specifically, a large variety of the aforementioned GuitarPro and PowerTab formatted tabs available to download. Of course, you need to get these onto the iPhone and into the app. Don’t fear, Agile Partners have got you covered. If you have any tabs stored on your computer, you can transfer them effortlessly through your Wi-Fi connection. Don’t have wi-fi? Not to worry, you can use the in-app browser to browse the web and download tab directly into the app. Though I must confess, this experience of browsing is not the best, and is a thorn in an otherwise excellent app.

Once you have your Tabs in the app, you’re going to want to hear them right? Well Tabtoolkit’s built-in audio synthesis engine helps there. It also supports multi-track playback and options to mute whichever instruments you want. I’ve particularly enjoyed finding GuitarPro tabs with all instruments included and then muting the guitar line I’m interested in playing, this provides a far more satisfying experience than sitting playing alone with no accompaniment.

The app also provides an instrument guide and can show you the guitar fretboard or keyboard. Ideal for the beginner or simply when you’re learning a brand new song. The app also supports both landscape and portrait mode, with the option to lock the orientation if you so wish.

Out of the two apps, TabToolkit doesn’t feel quite as solid as GuitarToolkit, but I’m not entirely sure we can hold Agile Partners responsible for that. You see, GuitarToolkit is a complete reference guide, but TabToolkit is a tool to enable you to play content created outside of the control of Agile Partners, and due to sites like ultimate-guitar containing nothing but user-created material your experience with TabToolkit can vary widely depending on the quality of the tabs you download. All I can say is don’t be put off by a few bad downloads, you could find you end up missing out on one of, if not the best, tablature app available in the AppStore.

Oh, and as Agile Partners say “Lefties Welcome!” – both apps have full support for both Right handed and left handed guitarists.