Apps - Page 9

ChordBot is a wonderful, easy to use app which is equally powerful for songwriting as it is for accompaniment. The app allows you to develop and play chord progressions in a number of styles. ChordBot features 60 different chord types (including slash chords), 50+ comping styles, a song generator, as well as the ability to export your files as midi,...

I’ve discovered a great looper for the iPhone and iPad. Loopy (and Loopy HD) allows you to create and alter sophisticated loops without the need for a pedal or other hardware. Loopy’s interface presents a series of circles, which become circular waveforms once you’ve started recording. The app offers great features, like pan, volume, timing adjustments, track merging, tempo adjustments...

I’ve been traveling quite a bit this year, and I’ve come to rely heavily on a few different apps on my iPad and/or iPhone. I thought I’d share a few of my favorites that I haven’t touched on here already. (If you want to check out my previous recommendations, you can check them out here). You’ll notice these apps are...

SupreMegaUltraGroovy has updated their Capo app for iOS with version 1.2. Designed for learning, the music app allows for independently adjusting the speed and pitch of any song in your music library. Capo 1.2 adds several features, including mono re-mixing for isolating the left or right channels, which comes in handy for students working with play-alongs. A 10-band equalizer allows...

Hal Leonard has brought their digital sheet music store to the iPad. Sheet Music Direct for iPad is a three-in-one app, allowing access to the publisher’s more than 100,000 songs available for purchase, as well as a sheet music viewer and score library. Past Sheet Music Direct customers can access all their previous purchases through the app, and new customers...

If you’ve been wishing for a music notation app for your iPad to make quick sketches or exercises, or any other simple notation and charts, Symphony Pro by Xenon Labs might just be what you’ve been waiting for in an app. While Symphony Pro can’t match up feature-for-feature with desktop apps like Sibelius or Finale, it is a terrific notation...

If you’re looking for an “slow-downer” app for aiding in transcribing tunes, you might want to give Robick a shot. While this app is not entirely intuitive, once you get the hang of the interface, it’s actually a pretty powerful music slowing/altering app for transcription. When you launch the app, you’ll land in the one and only screen for the...

So far, I’ve focused in on mostly iOS apps in this space, but this time around, I’m going to focus in on hardware that works with many of these apps. I recently tried out the new iRiffPort by PocketLabWorks, which is a digital instrument interface in conjunction with the PocketGK app. For starters, PocketLabWorks got things right by making it...

Finale 2012, the latest edition of MakeMusic’s music notation software, is now available. The updated program now includes ScoreManager – a tool designed to improve workflow by centralizing key functions like changing staff names, orders, transposition, clef and playback sounds. Finale 2012 now supports Unicode text, allowing for use of all characters in your fonts, while also making it easier...

I have tried most every tuner on the app store and there are many that I like for many reasons. Some look fantastic, but have accuracy issues. Some are accurate but are just plain ugly. After trying about a dozen tuner apps, I have finally settled on Cleartune. This app is attractive, highly accurate and versatile. Cleartune works quite well...

I was planning on writing this article on Metronomics, an app developed by John Nastos offering quite a few new features that go beyond your basic metronome app. However, I was recently tried out “Time Guru” by Avi Bortnick (John Scofield’s sample guru and rhythm guitarist) which does many of the same things – and also a few different things....

I have not been a huge fan of any of the iOS drum machines or drum-along “screen tapper” drums-set style apps. But BeatStudio, by Frontier Design Group, brings something new to the table that is really useful and is changing my opinion of this sort of app. Not only does BeatStudio offer multitrack recording abilities, quantization, editing and an array...