guitartoolkit
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Agile Partners rock GuitarToolkit 2.0
Agile Partners (who've come up at TUAW a few times) have released GuitarToolkit 2.0, a major upgrade to the original app which adds extensive features and an iPad version. GuitarToolkit boasts a range of tools geared at guitar and bass players, but now includes enough flexibility to work with any fretted instrument you can imagine. This is a free update for existing customers, and additional functionality is available as a one-time, US $4.99 in-app upgrade. In addition to being redesigned to take advantage of the iPad's size, the new release expands from 500,000 chords to over 2,000,000 chords and scales--and now--arpeggios. There's full capo support, too: slide to any fret and scales and arpeggios automatically adjust. All of GuitarToolkit's features support six, seven, and twelve string guitars, as well as four, five and six string bass, banjo, mandolin and ukulele. The GuitarToolkit+ upgrade activates interactive Chord Sheets (a great tool for composition and building chord progressions), an Advanced Metronome (with visible flash option), a drum machine and Custom Instruments. Drum patterns can contain as many as 32 tracks, and you control time signature, number of bars and have access to 75 sounds in nine different categories. The Advanced Metronome is available immediately on the iPad, and coming shortly to the iPhone/iPod touch. The Custom Instruments capability is pretty cool, especially if you're playing something that doesn't necessarily fit into the standard guitar mold. Choose an instrument type, string and pickup type, assign a tuning, even add a capo if you like. GuitarToolkit+ includes great-sounding samples for every combination, as well as over 60 amp/effects presets powered by AmpKit. The tuner in GuitarToolkit is highly accurate and supports just about any tuning you can imagine (including custom tunings). More than I'll ever use, I'm sure. There's also a high-contrast mode to make sure you can use it in any lighting situation. All told, if you play a fretted instrument of any kind, the US $9.99 app (and the US $4.99 in-app upgrade) will probably pay off pretty quickly. This is the only app I've seen that offers this kind of flexibility and provides as many composition tools. Check it out in the App Store.
Guitar World & Agile Partners introduce Lick of the Day app
If there's one thing we love here at TUAW -- besides Apple, of course -- it's music. And it especially rocks our world when these two great loves meet. So, when we got wind that Agile Partners (makers of GuitarToolKit and TabToolkit, which, by the way, are fantastic) and Guitar World Magazine were collaborating on an iOS app, well, you can only imagine, the TUAW offices were in a ruckus. Today sees the launch of Guitar World Lick of the Day: an iOS app that teaches you a new guitar move every day, by the pros. With tutorial videos featuring Guitar World instructors, and the likes of Joe Satriani and Zack Wylde (to name a few), now you can have that master class you've always wanted! So, how does it work? You download Lick of the Day free from the App Store. It comes preloaded with a few sample lessons, but the idea is that you subscribe to the lessons for either one-month (US$4.99), three-months (US$12.99) or six-months (for US$19.99). Each lesson is video instructed with a corresponding practice mode. In the practice mode there are settings that control the music notation, tempo of playback, a looping option and playback with a metronome. A "dynamic fretboard" will show your fingers where they need to go, synchronizing with the scrolling music notation. It's all very sharp and effective. And if you're left handed, don't fret! You can invert the fretboard to accommodate. Finally, each lesson has a "performance note" that's written by a Guitar world instructor, too. We've had a brief play around with the app and can safely say that we are already shredding it up like never before. The tutorials come in a variety of styles / genres of music for guitar: from rock and blues to jazz and country licks. With iPad and iPhone / iPod touch versions, If you're a guitar player and you're looking to improve your skills and technique, we'd definitely recommend you go and check out Lick of the Day, now! However, if you've never picked up a guitar or you can only just manage Kum-ba-yah-my-Lord, you might need a more experienced friend to help you get your head around it. Either way, Lick of the Day is an exciting and effective app that we can't wait to spend more time with. Hit the read button for some PR shots of the app and a video about the app.
Macworld 2010: A few more video tidbits
It's hard to believe that it's been a week since I left Macworld Expo 2010 to head home. Last night, I finally went through the last snippets of video from the Expo and put together this short compendium of three interviews. The first company I talked to was Telnic.org, a group which champions the use of the .tel top level domain as a type of global address book. There's a free iPhone app available for updating your .tel domain information from anywhere. Next, I visited shortly with John from Agile Partners, the developers behind GuitarToolkit. TUAW's resident musician, Mat Tinsley, reported on this app last September and it's quite impressive. Finally, I talked with the folks from myRete, who have created an interesting social networking app called WhosHere. There are over one million users of WhosHere, and with the free texting and VoIP capabilities of the app you can ask the locals in cities around the world for travel tips or a date. Want to perfect your language skills with a native speaker? WhosHere is an easy way to find someone to chat with. As with several earlier videos, this suffers from a bit of mic noise. Our apologies!
Buyer's Guide: 33 things you don't need if you have an iPhone
Every time I walk through Warehouse Stationery (New Zealand's equivalent to Office Depot) or Dick Smith's Electronics (pretty much Best Buy), I'm struck by how probably half the products in each store are pretty much useless to me since I've got an iPhone. Thanks to the apps that come pre-packaged with the iPhone and the more than 100,000 third-party offerings now available in the iTunes Store, the iPhone has gained functionality that might have seemed hard to fathom under three years ago when Steve Jobs first announced the device. "A widescreen iPod with touch controls... a revolutionary mobile phone... a breakthrough internet communications device... these are not three separate devices. This is one device." So Steve Jobs told us all back at Macworld Expo 2007. But since then, the iPhone has grown to be much more than just those three concepts. What follows is a sort of anti-buyer's guide, a list of products and devices that you may never need or even want to buy again (or receive as a gift) if you have an iPhone. Some of these are certainly open for debate, but more than a few of them are products that, for all intents and purposes, are completely unnecessary if you have an iPhone. (Items in bold also apply to the iPod touch).
A musical scratchpad on your iPhone
I've built a recording studio on my iPhone ... kind of. It doesn't output production-quality mixes -- or anything close -- but it makes a great scratchpad for recording and developing musical ideas. It didn't take any special effort, just a few apps which I've found really handy, especially when working with acoustic instruments. Tuning up First, I've been using GuitarToolkit ($9.99US in the App Store) for tuning, general metronome needs and finding chord phrasings. There are dozens of apps available with similar features, and I haven't tried enough of them to fairly judge merits (if you know of an outstanding app, let's hear about it in the comments!). I grabbed GuitarToolkit when it was a little narrower of a field, and it's been a sturdy, steadily-improving app which has never given me reason to look around. Read on for the rest of the "mobile studio" ...
