Best Apps for Learning Guitar on iPhone or iPad
Updated March 10 2015.
What Can Apps Do?
Apps can be a very helpful support tool for your practice. Increasingly, guitar learners are switching to apps to serve as their guitar tuners, metronomes, and more.
However, apps can not teach you how to play the guitar all by themselves. Only you can do that! And it’s fair to say that no app can take the place of a qualified teacher.
Apps can be really great at performing a limited set of functions (such as a metronome app, a tuner app, and the like).
The Recommended Apps
Better Ears – Ear training
Better Ears ($14.99) this ear training app will help you take advantage of those small pockets of free time that tend to show up throughout the day. Learn to recognize chords, scales and intervals, while reinforcing your knowledge of music theory.
Cleartune – Guitar tuner
Cleartune - Bitcount ltd. ($3.99) this is by far the best tuning app on the App Store. You can tune to various tuning systems, and with both a coarse and fine meter, it’s highly accurate. When this app came out, some people started throwing away their guitar tuners. Although this app is great to have in a pinch, a good clip-on tuner remains a must.
Tempo – Advanced metronome
Tempo Advance - Frozen Ape Pte. Ltd. ($3.99) by far the most advanced metronome available anywhere, professional musicians are using this metronome as a tool for doing advanced rhythmic exercises.
Guitar Jam Tracks – Practice improvisation
Guitar Jam Tracks - Ninebuzz Software ($4.99) is a useful practice tool for anybody interested in improvising. You can use this tool to choose a jam track in one of many styles, and then put it on loop to practice your improvisation skills.
Kindle – Read music
Kindle - Amazon (Free) Surprised? There are lots of great books out there for learning the guitar, and now you can put them on your iPad to keep all of your learning resources in one place.
Drum Beats+ – Drum Track and rhythm pal
Drum Beats+ - Ninebuzz Software($3.99) sometimes, you don’t want to play with a jam track, but you also don’t want to hear a metronome. Drum Beats+ is a great app for building your rhythm because you can play along with a drum beat instead.
AmpliTube – Use your phone as an amp
AmpliTube - IK Multimedia ($9.99) finally available on iPad. You do need to get some kind of cable for it, such as the Apogee Jam [?]Affiliate Link. But once you have this, you can jam along anywhere with just your iPad and a pair of headphones. This app has the potential to change the way the electric guitar player practices!
Notion – Write music on iPad
Notion - NOTION Music, Inc. ($14.99) if you’re doing any music composition, this is a great app for writing music on iPad.
As the creator of Hub Guitar, Grey has compiled hundreds of guitar lessons, written several books, and filmed hundreds of video lessons. He teaches private lessons in his Boston studio, as well as via video chat through TakeLessons.