Guitar Apps Roundup

[drathbun]

It has been over a year since I posted my review of the iPhone/iTouch app Guitar Toolkit. I thought it would be good timing put it up again and add a few more guitar related apps that I have on my new iPhone4 (woohoo... happy dance).

 

Here is my original review:

Guitar Toolkit

 

It is still the best guitar app I have. It is immensely useful. Now that I have replaced my iPod Touch with an iPhone4, I don't need the added microphone accessory and it is that much easier to use.

 

Here are some other guitar and music related apps I have on my iPhone that I find interesting and useful.

 

Peterson Strobe Tuner

 

Peterson makes the finest, most accurate tuners out there. I've been prowling eBay for years trying to snag one of the old '80's analog, orange face strobe tuners from Peterson. They weight a ton but have a great display and are accurate to 1/10 cent. The new Peterson strobe tuners with the LCD displays just don't have the visual quality of the old ones IMO. The new strobe tuners from Peterson are pricey as hell. However, you can get the the iStrobo Tuner app from Peterson for $9.99. It has all the accuracy of the hardware version for a fraction of the cost (iPhone not included).

 

 

The display can be customized with a number of different color combinations. It has a noise filter and input boost. It can adjust for capo up one octave and drop down one octave. Concert A 440Hz is adjustable. It can be calibrated to external sources with 1/10 cent accuracy.

 

Ultimate Guitar Tab

 

I have used the Ultimate Guitar Tabs website for years. I've even contributed some tabs to the database. This application gives you the UG Tab database at your fingertips on your iPhone/iPod Touch. It is $2.99 and the "guitar tools" inside the app is an extra $3.99. Since I already have the Guitar Toolkit, I have not activated this feature.

 

The app allows you to make favorites, has a simple and advanced search features and allows you to find a tab for the song currently playing, has the top 100 tabs and lets you get a random tab. The tab viewer has an autoscroll feature and works in portrait or landscape mode.

 

 

SoundHound

 

This app is simply amazing! Run SoundHound and your iPhone will listen to whatever music you are listening to whether it is on the radio, on your iPhone or hummed or sung to it and then display the following information about the song:

 

- title

- name of the artist

- songwriter(s)

- lyrics

- purchase on iTunes link

 

and many more features. Take a look at SoundHound's major features in this video!

 

SoundHound is free but if you dont' want the annoying ads, you pay $4.99.

 

And, of course, there is the Gibson App which is free and gives you a few standard chords, a tuner, metronome and links to the Gibson.com website and some lessons you can purchase from Gibson as well.

[McDuff]

I might need to get an I-phone here eventually. Those seem ridiculously handy, particularly sound hound, I hate it when I discover new music on the radio and the host neglects to say the name of the song or the artist.