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We live in the age of cell phones. Just about everyone and their mum has a smartphone these days. Smartphones have become a fully integrated part of our day to day lives. There are even apps to make your life as a guitarist better. Here is our list of Top Must Have Music Apps!
Metronome – (free)
One of the must-have music apps is a metronome. Metronome is a full-featured metronome that can be used for most applications. This metronome allows you to change more than just the tempo.
You can change the beats of the bar, which beats are played, rested or emphasised. This is a great feature that not many free metronomes have.
You can also change the time signature to quite a few weird and crazy times. Like most metronomes, there is a tap tempo feature as well.
Every musician should play to a metronome, and this metronome is the perfect solution.
Guitar Pro – (R39.99)
Need to learn some tabs on the fly? Then the Guitar Pro mobile app is the bee’s knees. There are hundred of thousands of Guitar Pro files available for free on the internet.
While some small screen phones may suffer to read the small text, most large screen phones and tablets will be able to handle it without a problem.
The app also allows you to write music, but that can be cumbersome, so don’t expect to use it too much for songwriting. While this isn’t a MUST have app, it is a great one to consider.
Boss Tuner Pedal – (free)
The Roland Corporation owns Boss. They have been at the forefront of music technology since they opened the company. It is because of this that they realised that music apps are a huge part of most musicians lives.
Roland has released a digital version of their hugely popular TU-3 tuner pedal. The TU-3 is one of the preferred tuner pedals used by many gigging musicians.
This tuner is capable of tuning guitars, bass guitars, violins and just about any other string instrument you can think of. The nice thing about a digital tuner app is that even if you have a great guitar tuner, this one adds convenience to your life. If you are somewhere without your tuner, and a buddy hands you a terribly out of tune guitar, you can now tune the guitar quickly and easily.
GuitarTuna – (free)
This handy app has it all in one place. It’s got a pretty decent tuner and metronome built in, but the most significant selling point for this app is the games.
The games section has a variety of games designed to train your ear and improve general musicianship. The games are challenging, and fun and are suitable for children and adults alike.
MusicTheory.net
Musictheory.net is one of the best free websites ever to be built. (I might be using some hyperbole here).
The website is designed specifically for musicians to improve their ear and music theory knowledge. There are aural exercises that will help you identify pitch as well as intervals. There are also exercises to teach you how to read and recognize chords. The website itself is free and works on most smartphones.
If however, you are looking to take advantage of the technical skills of the builders of the site, you should look into their premium apps. The best one on offer is Tenuto. Tenuto comes in at $3.99 and is well worth the price. (http://www.musictheory.net/products/tenuto)
“Tenuto is an enhanced version of the exercises and calculators for your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Each of the fifteen exercises and five calculators uses a friendly touch interface that is fully optimised for all screen sizes across all devices.”
SoundHound
We’ve all been there. You go out with some buddies, and a song starts playing. You know the song, but you just can’t place it. Everyone asks around to find out what song it is, but no one can place it.
Before, the mystery of this song would either go unsolved or would come to you while you were trying to sleep at 3 am in the morning.
No, that agony can be avoided. With the use of the SoundHound app. SoundHound will listen to a song, and tell you what it is! Sounds like magic, right? The ability to idtentify a song you have just heard makes this a must have music app!
While the app does pick up on some pretty obscure songs, there will be some new/underground songs that even this app can’t find for you. But overall, this is a great app to keep close by.
