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Guitarists turn iPhones into tuners

Guitarists turn iPhones into tuners

Smartphones loaded with Guitar Hero have emerged as critical tools for rock star wannabes. Nowcomes the second wave. Call it Guitar Hero: The Real Deal.

For a growing number of actual guitarists, their smartphones—O.K., their iPhones—are suddenly as important as tuners, metronomes or recording equipment, because an iPhone can now do everything these other devices can do, for less money and with less hassle.

The universe of mobile guitar software can be split roughly into three categories: those that replace traditional guitar accessories like tuners and metronomes; practice apps that simulate a fret board; and apps that contain chords, scales and tablature. There’s even dedicated hardware for attaching your phone to your guitar, but more on that later.

With simulators like Guitar: Play and Share ($4), iShred ($5) and Guitarist ($4), players can finger chords, pick strings and hear a fair approximation of how it might sound on the real thing.

Those can be good for practicing when you’re away from your instrument— that is, if you can get used to them.

Given that the display mimics a (cramped) fret board, you might be tempted to try to hold the device like a guitar, but that would be a waste. The apps are designed more for two-fingered poking than for barre chord progressions.

And because they often include a broad range of sound effects, they’re great for building ideas that you can try out when you have the real instrument in hand.

Much more useful, for a less experienced player like me, at least, were apps like GuitarToolKit ($10), TabToolKit ($10), Chordmaster ($2), Scale Wizard ($2) and, to a lesser extent, Jammit ($7).

With Chordmaster, users scroll through one of the roughly 7,800 chords in the app’s library and it displays the proper finger placement. Swipe your finger across the screen, and the chord plays. The same is true for Scale Wizard, which has more than 10,000 scale, mode and arpeggio shapes.

GuitarToolKit, created by TabToolKit’s developer, is among the most popular guitar apps, and rightfully so. It does several things quite well: The app includes a chord look-up that is at least as good as Chordmaster’s, but deeper, with more than 500,000 chords. The feature works for eight different instruments, including the ukulele and banjo, and users can change the instrument’s tuning and find the correct chords for each.

The tuner is reliable and easy to use.

Perch your iPhone nearby and pluck a string. The display tells you how close you are to the center of a note; a green light flashes when you’re on the mark.

The fret board shows how to play thousands of scales, while the metronome is accurate and flexible enough to offer a variety of sounds and an optional flash.

If you don’t need all of those functions, you can just buy tuners and metronomes à la carte.

Peterson, which produces a popular line of tuners, this year released its first iPhone app, iStroboSoft ($10), which gauges an instrument’s accuracy with more precision than most other tuners on the market. Peterson also sells a $13 iPhone cable so you can plug in your instrument, for even greater accuracy.

Among the better metronomes is the Visual Metronome ($2). The app’s big, clear display is especially useful for group performances.

When it comes to recording riffs or other compositional snippets, guitarists can rely on something simple, like the device’s embedded Voice Memo app.

But for more serious compositions, there’s GigBaby ($1), a four-track recorder with a drum machine.

Most of the apps mentioned are not yet available for Android phones or BlackBerrys, although developers frequently say they are working on adding them. BlackBerry has very few, while Android has a handful of decent guitarrelated apps—mostly tuners and chord libraries—but nothing yet as good as GuitarToolKit.

No matter what device, though, most of the apps pose an inherent problem for musicians: you must either prop your iPhone someplace nearby and squint toward it repeatedly, or just put down your instrument and start pressing buttons.

Which is why the Dunlop D65 is such a welcome innovation. The device, a swiveling iPhone bracket that suctions to the face of your guitar, is a bit pricey ($50 at JimDunlop.com), but the product comes from a company with a long line of guitar-friendly products, and Dunlop says the D65 won’t damage common guitar finishes.

[Thanks: http://www.mydigitalfc.com]