7 Cool iPhone Apps for Guitarists

TrueFire Guitar Lessons iPhone App

As some of you may already know, we are in the process of developing a killer iPhone app for guitarists, including video guitar lessons, tab, and notation -- all accessible on the go. We're calling it TrueFire's Guitar Lab and as you can see we've posted a little preview screenshot. Our goal is to give guitarists access to the best video guitar lessons anywhere, anytime.

The app is still very much in development, but if you have any ideas or suggestions, we'd love to hear from you. Just click the "feedback" tab on the right side of this page and post your idea. You can also vote on other people's ideas if you like what they suggest. Our iPhone app will be yet another way we can spread the 'Fire to as many aspiring and active guitarists around the world as possible, and we're hoping you'll dig it!

Many more details to come, but in the meantime check out these 7 cool iPhone apps for guitar (they all work on the iTouch, too).

Cleartune This $3.99 app is incredibly useful. It’s a visually appealing chromatic instrument tuner and pitch pipe that uses the built-in iPhone mic or external mic on an iTouch 2G (as most relevant apps do). You can use the large “note wheel” display to find your notes, and there’s a fine-tuning display with 25-cent range. It’s precise to +/- 100 semitones and there are even selectable temperaments and notations. You can also select tone waveforms and choose automatic or manual note selection.

Tempo Frozen Ape’s $0.99 app is a metronome with set list and tuner. Another cool looking app, it features tap tempo functionality with 17 different time signatures and 6 rhythm patterns for simple meters and 3 for compound ones. You can use a pulsating LED to flash on the first beat and it can be viewed in Landscape or Portrait. The tempos range from 20 bpm to 250 bpm, and there’s a pitch pipe with 12 chromatic pitches. For sounds, you’ve got 4 sets to choose from including Digital, Analog, Shaker and Rock Kit.

GuitarToolkit At $9.99, it’s a little pricey (well, for apps) but it does bring it; Aside of the excellent chromatic tuner, you’ve got a library of 500,000 chords (are there that many?), a metronome with flash functionality, a chord finder where you just touch the notes on the virtual fretboard, and scales in standard or alternate tunings. It supports 6- and 12-string guitars as well as 4-, 5- and 6-string bass, mandolin, banjo and even ukulele (with full chord library) — all with standard and alternative tunings.

FourTrack Sonoma Wireworks $9.99 app is a multitrack recorder for iPhone 2.0/ iPod touch 2^nd Gen 3.0 that uses the headset/microphone to record 16 bit/44.1 kHz quality audio. You can mix your creations to two new tracks so the count can go above 16 channels. It’s got calibrated meters, faders, pan controls and a built-in compressor-limiter. You can record along with real drum loops, and recordings can be copied via WiFi to any computer with a browser.

Steel Guitar   This free app (for now) from Yonac Software is just a blast to play. You can choose from Lap Steel, Eight-String Console or either traditional Nashville or Texas setups. Moving the iPhone bends notes, and you can use a “pro” mode to manually play a slide bar. It actually sounds pretty cool and you’ll get lost for hours just creating sounds. Same goes for several other Yonac apps like Mandolin and Theremin-ator.

GrooveMaker This free app from IKMultimedia has over 120 loops (113MB of samples) and lets you create electronic dance and hip hop tracks using a built-in sequencer. Even if that’s not your style, it’s useful to practice to the grooves, and you can tap tempos from 78 to 125 bpm. Final mixes can be Wi-Fi’ed as WAV files to your Mac or PC.

Voice Memo Okay, so this is not really an app, but it’s built into the iPhone and it’s just plain old useful. You can use the built-in mic to capture your musical ideas on the fly, and then label them for recall later. The mic in the iPhone is actually not too bad. Voice Memo is great for recording those off-the-cuff ideas that might otherwise be lost forever.

--Rich Tozzoli

Rich Tozzoli is an accomplished engineer, mixer, producer and composer. He has worked with artists such as Ace Frehley, Al DiMeola and David Bowie, among many more, and is the author of Surround Sound Mixing for ProTools. Rich is also a lifelong guitarist and composer. His work can be heard regularly on FoxNFL, HBO, and Discovery Channel.