5 Best Music Apps For Beginner Guitarists

Guitarists of the world just starting out their journey into endless solos, long hair and plenty of volume will want to spend at least a second or two mastering their instrument. Here are a few apps that might help you along the way.

1.ClearTune – App updated 13th October 2010, Price £2.39, Developed by Matthew Finn, Bitcount Ltd.

First and foremost, play in tune. There are a plethora of tuner-apps available on iTunes but this is really the only one to get. The slightly higher price may put some people off but when comparing this to buying an actual physical chromatic tuner, your saving a bundle. Cleartune is accurate, precise and looks great; more than can be said for other tuner-apps. Guitar Tuner for example has been said in other reviews to not even be in tune rendering it completely pointless.

2.Guitar World Lick Of The Day – App updated 15thDecember 2010, Price Free, Developed by Agile Partners Technologies LLC.

Created in conjunction with world’s best selling guitar magazine, Guitar World, this app is perfect for keeping up to date with the latest riffs and licks. It provides high quality videos from the likes of Joe Satriani and Zakk Wylde plus a whole host of award-winning instructors. Along with the video, you get a detail breakdown of the lick on the fretboard, in tab and notation, plus handy metronome and looping features to polish your new riffs. For all the lefties of the world the fretboard can be inverted so you don’t feel as left out as you must do when actually trying to buy a guitar.

3. ChordBank – App updated 28th January 2011, Price Free, Developed by Christopher Ladd.

Okay, so you’ve shelled out on the nice tuner, and no doubt ended up subscribing to Lick of the Day; now time to save some money where it can be saved. This freshly released app has the capabilities to help you find, play, hear and ultimately learn over 2,100 chords. Sound the chords as a whole or string by string to check your fingering, although suggested fingering is given to use as well. Move the fretboard up and down to learn the different positions of all types of chords; major, minor, diminished, augmented just to name a couple. This app really is all you need for learning chords on guitar. Job done, money saved.

4. Jam Tracks – App updated 20 November 2010, Price £1.19, Developed by Rick Belluso.

Chords, check; now time for some scales. With a series of Jam Track apps from Nine Buzz Software you can work your way through 14 different keys, experimenting with the scales provided on the screen in tab and on the fretboard. All songs provided also show the name of the chords to help you gain understanding of the sound of scales over certain harmonies. Rock, blues, jazz and reggae are all explored in this practical series of apps. Jam Tracks will not only teach you your basic scales but gives the opportunity to practice them by simply jamming and soloing. Simply running up and down your scales is great to make your fingers more nimble, but rarely do blistering, hair-swinging, monitor-mounting solos just run up and down a boring C major scale. Within no time you be wailing like Hendrix, be-bopping like Wes Montgomery or simply turning your Marshall to eleven and finding that feedback sweet spot.

5. Be-A-Rock-Star! – App updated 27th August 2010, Price Free, Developed by Barbara Webster, Dream Makers

When writing this article I was going to mention that there are no apps on helping you achieve rock-stardom specifically, just the instrumental tools to get there. However not wanting to lie I thought I’d check, and so I found Be-A-Rock-Star. In actuality a more fitting title would be ‘Be A Rock Star in 20 steps’ because it has the feel of a rock n’ roll self help book. However it does have a few good practical pointers you may wish to consider. “Experiment knowing full well that temporary small failures are inevitable, takes many small failures to make a success.”

Nothing could be truer when learning an instrument. It takes time, hard work and commitment, but luckily all that hard work and commitment is incredibly fun when you put it in to practice.

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