The best apps for guitar: 5 essential apps for guitar students in 2022
There’s never been a better time to learn guitar. Thanks to the constantly advancing world of music technology, the days of lugging around a bag full of guitar related gadgets are truly behind us. Nowadays, you can fit your own digital guitar toolkit right inside your phone or tablet.
I’ve compiled a list of the 5 apps that I use almost every day with students. In no particular order, here are the 5 apps that every guitar student needs.
1. Anytune
Price: Free/Optional add-ons
Platform: iOS only
Anytune is probably my favourite app on this list, and the one I find myself recommending to students most frequently.
Anytune allows you to alter the speed of any audio file stored on your device, without the loss in audio quality that you’d expect from a free app. Combined with the ability to loop and repeat sections, this makes it an excellent tool for transcribing and practising songs at a slower (or faster) tempo. You can also alter the pitch, which is particularly useful for singers.
I should mention the one small drawback of this app, which is that you can only import songs that are stored natively to your device at time of writing. This means that if you use a streaming service like Spotify or Apple Music, you’ll need to purchase a song through the iTunes Store and download it to your device before it can be imported into the Anytune app. As frustrating it is, this is actually caused by copyright measures put in place by streaming services, and is unfortunately beyond the control of the developers of Anytune.
Anytune is currently only available for Apple devices, but the developers claim that they are working on Windows and Android compatibility.
More info here: https://anytune.us/
2. Tempo
Price: Free/£2.49
Platform: iOS/Android
As any of my students will tell you, I’m a huge advocate of practising with a metronome. Rhythm training is an essential part of every instrument, and in my opinion there’s no better way to develop your timing skills than with a metronome.
Whilst there is a huge selection of metronome apps available, my particular favourite is Tempo by Frozen Ape.
There are many features that make Tempo a great app, but the one that really sets it apart from its competitors is the ability to create set lists. Tempo lets you create and save presets (i.e. songs) at different tempos, then organise presets into set lists which you can recall at any time, making it a great solution for both practicing and performing. You can even share setlists via email with other Tempo users.
The app comes in two versions: ‘Tempo’ available for £2.99, and ‘Tempo Lite’ - the free version with reduced features.
More info here: http://www.frozenape.com/tempo-metronome.html
3. GuitarTuna
Price: Free
Platform: iOS/Android
Every guitarist needs a good guitar tuner. Generally speaking I’d recommend a physical clip-on or plug-in tuner, as these tend to give more accurate results. However, there are several decent tuning apps that use the device’s built-in microphone, many of which are more than good enough for most people’s needs.
If you’ve spent much time on YouTube, chances are you’ve seen an advert for Yousician. What you may not know is that in addition to their main offering, they’ve also developed a pretty great tuning app.
Like most apps these days, GuitarTuna comes as a monthly subscription at £4.99. However, the free version is still completely usable, and comes with most of the features that you’d ever need. I use this app regularly with students, and I’ve never found myself needing a tuning or other feature that wasn’t available with the free app.
The main reason I choose this app over its competitors is its user friendly interface. It’s intuitive and easy to use, making it a great option particularly for younger learners.
The app also has some other useful features, such as a chord diagram library and a simple metronome.
More info here: https://yousician.com/guitar-tuner
4. forScore
Price: £7.99
Platform: iOS only
This app is made primarily for performing musicians, but can also be a useful tool for students.
The idea for this one is fairly simple; it’s a digital sheet music library. forScore allows you to import PDF sheet music, guitar TAB, lyrics (or any thing else, really) and organise it into folders and setlists, so you can keep all your music in one place. With forScore, you no longer need to carry around folders full of printed music, or negotiate awkward page turns!
There are also some really useful additional features, such as the ability to annotate PDFs within the app.
Whilst it sounds like a fairly basic app for the price, it is in fact a very powerful tool, and one I use every time I perform and almost daily in lessons.
More info here: https://forscore.co
5. Guitar Pro
Price: £6.99
Platform: iOS/Android
Guitar Pro is designed primarily as a sheet music editor for guitar and bass. It’s an excellent tool for songwriting and transcribing, and one which I use almost daily.
It also functions as an interactive TAB player, making it incredibly useful for learning and practising songs.
Although the tablet apps are slightly limited in features compared to the full Windows and Mac versions, they still offer some seriously useful features for students. You can increase/decrease the tempo, change the key, and loop specific bars or sections. Guitar Pro will also play back whatever is written in the TAB using its Realistic Sound Engine - a library of simulated instrument sounds - to guide you as you play through the music.
Guitar Pro works exclusively with .gp files (files created in the desktop versions of Guitar Pro), however it’s easy enough to download and import TABS in .gp format for all of your favourite songs.
More info here: https://www.guitar-pro.com/en/index.php?pg=guitar-pro-ios-android
Are there any other apps that you think should be on this list? Let us know in the comments!