Best iPhone Guitar Apps

The iPhone’s a pretty sweet bit of hardware right? For me, it’s proven time and time again that it is much more than just a smartphone. What makes the iPhone tick is that there’s an app for everything, and the iPhone can do just about anything and everything that there is to do under the sun – apart from maybe doing your dishes, mowing the lawn or doing your laundry, but I’m sure there’s an app on the way which does all that too!

Technology, and the way it’s progressed is just mind-blowing. Just a couple of years back, the ability to read your emails and browse websites on your phone was a huge deal. Now, there are now well over 600,000 apps available on the iPhone, with stuff ranging from star-gazing, to personal fitness apps, and games that leave today’s handheld consoles in the dust!

So it comes as no surprise then, when we see the plethora of music apps, and especially guitar-related apps on the iOS platform. Some of these apps are downright brilliant, and once you start using them, indispensible when it comes to guitar play.

I’ll be looking at and reviewing a few of these guitar-centric apps in this post. All of these are absolute must-have apps if you’re a guitar-guy (or gal), and should be put on your iDevice immediately – regardless of whether you have an iPhone, an iPod or an iPad!

All of the apps reviewed below can be downloaded off iTunes. Prices are correct at the time of writing.

1. GuitarStudio - $4.99

A great app when it comes to guitar play on your iDevice, GuitarStudio lets you learn and play your favorite guitar songs and tracks right on your iPhone. It is a virtual fretboard, which harnesses the power of iPhone’s brilliant capacitive touch screen capabilities to let you strum with your fingers like you would normally do. The best thing about the app is its ability to let you tinker around with chords and scale settings, change sounds (between 6 or 12 stringed guitar and nylon or steel strings as well), and comes with a whole host of other features as well – all of which allow you to play just about any song under the sun with ease, right on your iPhone!

2. iShred Live – Free

iShred is a virtual amplifier for your electric guitar, that can be used as such once you connect your electric guitar with your iPhone through the ‘GuitarConnect interface cable from Griffin Technology’ or another similar cable. Once done, iShred acts as a virtual amplifier, and performs just as any electric guitar amplifier would perform. It adds all sorts of effects and other tools to your electric guitar, comes with a variable overdrive feature, and has two effects for starters – the HK-2000 and the Q-36. In addition, you have other guitar tools available at your disposal, such as 48 user-defined presets, metronome, a chromatic guitar tuner, and a looping music player that lets you play parts of your favorite songs from the music app in loops. And that doesn’t even begin the mention the ton of other effects available as in-app purchases (don’t worry, theyre all pretty cheap). All in all, a great, portable amplifier that complements your electric guitar setup, and one that’s absolutely free!

3. OmniTuner - $5.99

Hands down, one of the best guitar-tuning app on the iPhone, at least for me. OmniTuner is fast and extremely simple to use, has a great LED and/or stringboard-based interface which is very newbie-friendly yet powerful and robust, and comes with a whole slew of options like the ability to tune both the guitar and other instruments. But above-all the app uses the iPhone microphone, eliminating the need to purchase additional accessories that might be needed otherwise. This, coupled with its sophisticated pitch detection engine that works with all sorts of stringed music instruments, makes it a kickass portable guitar tuning app, useful and extremely practical on the go.

4. FourTrack - $4.99

A ‘studio away from the studio’ is probably the best way you could describe FourTrack! Or maybe even ‘a studio inside your pocket’ would be a more apt description. Either way, FourTrack is the perfect app for any musician, useful for when musical inspiration hits you at the most inconvenient of times! This multi-track audio recording app lets you have all the facilities of a studio (well, not all, but you get the point!), by giving you a fully-featured fourtrack right in your phone – unlimited multitrack recording with 16 bit, 44.1 kHz recording quality, pan control, timeline-based setup, and the ability to record songs within the same session. All things considered, FourTrack is a great, multipurpose and a nifty app for today’s singer, guitar-player, pianist or any musician!

5. GuitarToolkit - $10.49

Quite possibly, the swiss army knife of guitar apps on the iPhone, Guitar Toolkit offers just about everything under the sun needed by your average guitars player. It is a collection of essential guitar tools, such as a highly-accurate chromatic tuner, a metronome with tons of features, and comes with a massive library of chords and scales for every instrument. Speaking of instruments, it has 6, 7 and 12 stringed guitars, 4, 5 or 6 stringed bass guitars or even multiple stringed, ukulele, banjo and mandolin! A must-have for every iDevice owner!

6. 7 Chords - $1.99

Endorsed by Gibson as being one of the five most essential iPhone applications for musicians, 7 Chords is a large and comprehensive chord repository right on your iPhone. The app has over 1500(!) of the most common chords for electric and acoustic guitars. Extremely newbie friendly (in terms of usage and the interface), and suitable for both beginners and seasoned guitar players alike. 7 Chords makes use of clear and easily-understandable tab notations, and shows the chord name, the frets to play and the fingers to be used to do so. And if you want to listen to a chord, simply tap it to hear it play from your iPhone’s speaker.

7. Gibson’s Learn & Master - Free

A guitar app by the legendary and iconic Gibson Guitars – known for producing some of the best axes in the world, such as the bestselling guitar of all time, the Gibson Les Paul. The app would (and should) be another great addition to the guitar-based apps on your iDevice. The Learn & Master puts a wide range of guitar playing tools at your disposal, all of which enable you to become a better guitar player. But the good stuff doesn’t end there, since Gibson gives you access to full-length lessons from its critically-acclaimed and award-winning Learn & Master guitar course! This course is designed to take you from being an absolute novice to an intermediate guitar player and ultimately a guitar-pro. And the best part of that the app, as well as the course is totally free! And that’s not all, since the StudioShare component of the app allows you to record, mix and share your music with friends. Overall, a fantastic app which gives you excellent value for money!