5 iOS Apps for Guitar Players

Mobile production tools have made a lot of progress over the years. For gigging and studio musicians, the ability to replace expensive hardware with apps and a small recording interface, allows for a whole new range of performance options. Lately we’ve been using quite few apps to record guitar ideas here at The Loop Loft. Here’s a few of our faves:

Audioshare - When you want to route your guitar signal through some FX and record ideas down, Audioshare is a great resource. Audioshare is an audio management tool that let's you record, import, and edit sounds to use in other applications. Up to 3 FX apps can be loaded, and the main recorder page has a large, easy interface to work with, especially on iPad. Recording quality goes as high as 96k/32bit, and the library management is top notch, syncing with Dropbox, AudioCopy, or even Airdrop. This one gets opened on a daily basis here at the office.

Bias FX - We’re fans of BIAS Amp, so when Positive Grid announced BIAS FX was on the way, we got pretty excited. Out of the gate, BIAS FX is a highly tweakable guitar FX processor, with emulations of a bunch  pedals you’ve always wanted. But the degree of fine-tuning goes way beyond what you might expect from a mobile app, and advanced features venture into territory that simply isn’t (easily) possible with hardware. Take ToneCloud for example, which saves all of your pedal configurations to the cloud for you to recall on multiple devices or to share with fans and other musicians. The BIAS line from Positive Grid has caused a lot of players to leave their bulkier gear at home. This looks to improve as they keep updating an already great product.

Anytune - Practice makes perfect. Practicing a difficult piece that’s too fast makes you crazy. Enter Anytune. This free (!) app will play back a song or loop at any speed you choose, without ruining the pitch in the process. Now you can slow don’t songs that you’re learning and bring them back to full speed once your comfortable. You can organize songs into folders and set-lists, loop sections, and even import audio from video.

Ultimate Guitar Tabs - The amount of songs in this catalog is massive. With chords, notes, and lyrics for over 800,000 songs, it’s the perfect resource to make sure you’re always learning new music that’s actually engaging to you. You can sort by tuning, difficulty, search and save favorites for offline use. Optional IAP tools also included a tuner, metronome, and chord library.