What Apps make your music life easier?

[John D]

I love 'Guitar Toolkit'. The metronome, tuner, chord finder, scale finder etc etc are brilliant. Do you have any other essential app news?

[Steve Kutzer]

I blogged about this here:
http://ciodojo.com/2011/07/25/guitar-st ... gy-part-1/

And here:
http://ciodojo.com/2011/07/26/guitar-st ... -software/

[jeff_hatcher]

I've been using Guitar Pro 6 to make accompaniment tracks from Noad's "Solo Guitar Playing", but I think there are a lot of other things I'll be able to do with this program. For one, there is a website, http://www.classclef.com/ that hosts a bunch of classical guitar scores in the .GPX file format (as well as PDF and MIDI). Creating your own sheet music is also ridiculously simple, and allows newbies like myself to "play back" what I've entered to make sure that I'm scoring it correctly (fantastic learning tool in this regard). Also, trying to learn unfamiliar music by sheet is difficult for beginners. With this program I can enter in complicated sections and hear how they're played. I'll use this to practice counting out the beats without tripping myself up. This is helping out considerably with my ability to read the timing of notes.

For $40 bucks, not a bad deal.

For useful freeware, try mandolin tool (http://www.tomkysoft.com/), which will give you "chord and scale charts for guitar, banjo, ukulele and mandolin, a tuner, a metronome with tab tempo and a music player which plays music files at slower speeds without altering the pitch."

*** it now occurs to me you mean specifically iphone/ipad/android applications. Hope you don't mind my recommendation of PC applications. I don't have an ipad/iphone/android device).***

[Gaius46]

I use all of these on a regular basis -

forScore - displays sheet music on the iPad

iRealB - the changes (no heads) for most of the things in the Real Book. Has the capability to play the chords and a drum track. Great for improvisation practice.

Symphony Pro - Allows writing of standard notation on the iPad. Not as fully featured as something like Finale or even museScore but well worth the $14 it cost me.

Set List Maker - Make and manage set lists. Allow for inclusion of notes, key, tempo etc and allows for emailing of an html version to your bandmates.

Virtuoso - an iphone/iPad keyboard. I use it when doing transcriptions on the train while commuting to work.

Metronomics - it's billed as a metronome but it's actually more of a simple drum machine

Scale Master - A drone. Indespensible aid for doing intonation exercises.

iStrobeSoft - Petersen's iPhone strobe tuner

Tuning Fork - Just what it says. Produces a 440Hz reference pitch

Ampitube - iphone/ipad based amplifier simulator. Allows you to practice with electric instruments via headphones using the iPhone/iPad as an intermediary. Also has a built in recorder so you can record and critique your playing.

[Grant]

I like metro timer - a metronome and timer in one.
and amazing slow downer- great for transcribing or just listening to your favorite guitarist in slow motion.

[rocinante]

Clockwork - a great little metronome with multiple voices and with triplet support.

...plus more votes for

Guitar Toolkit
forScore
Amazing Slowdowner

To me these are the standouts. Cheers.

[Lucky13]

On my Android phone I have Tempo metronome and Cleartune tuner. Both of these are also available on iphone.

[AlanB]

The pieces I have been (trying to) learn recently don't seem to have published scores and the two apps which I feel I couldn't do without for that are Capo and MuseScore. So, so much easier than the cassette deck, pen and manuscript paper that I had to use to do the same thing 20 years ago

[Vlad Kosulin]

Android:
- gStrings
- Mobile Metronome

[mancas]

These certainly make my life a lot easier (iPhone/iPad):
-GuitarToolkit 2 (only use the tuner)
-Tempo Adv. (excellent metronome)
-GoodReader (for reading scores and books in pdf format)
-Notes Plus (virtual notebook for handwriting with a stylus on the iPad)

[leila]

Airyware Tuner - most acurate tuner on Windows Phone... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNxuSmrbOk0

[Ledhand75]

I have Cleartune on my iPhone. It is the most accurate tuner that I have used.

[George Crocket]

Hello Leila.

Welcome to the Delcamp classical guitar forum.

If you have not already done so, please have a look at our welcome page for more information about the forum and its rules, then please introduce yourself here for a proper welcome.

[Cesar]

If you need tabs to learn, maybe trying Songsterr ++ ( ipad2) will help...hundreds of classic HQ tabs, you can hear how they are played, slow them down half tempo....

[John D]

of course Garageband is genius too. Such a powerful app, I use it to create backing tracks for students.