Pros and amateurs alike benefit from iPad music apps
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TheiPadwas adopted readily by musicians and by people who wanted to be musicians.
forScore
you might do all kinds of neat things with the tablet with the right app.
Plug in a guitar with a guitar interface and use it as an effects processor.
Record and tweak music using your iPad as a digital workstation.
forScore
Turn the iPad itself into a musical instrument or learn an instrument using it as your teacher.
Read sheet music while you play.
Where should you start on all of this musical goodness?
Yousician
Try some of the highest-rated iPad apps available for musicians.
Overall iPad App for Musicians: Yousician
Turns learning to play an instrument into a game.
Load your own songs into the app.
Moog
Includes lessons for guitar, bass, ukulele, and piano.
Lacks variety and becomes repetitive after a while.
Subscriptions are pricey and noncancellable.
Sonosaurus
Appears crowded on small iPad screens.
Yousician is the perfect app if you’re new to learning a musical instrument.
It’s free to download but requires a monthly or annual subscription after a trial period.
Apple
Even if you’ve been playing for a while, it can be a handy tool.
It allows you to play along with it in a manner similar to music games likeRock Band.
For Organizing Your Music: ForScore
forScore
A simple and stable app.
Alexander Gross
Excellent for organizing and cataloging music.
Includes extras for musicians.
Displays sheet music in PDF format.
Fingerlab
Works with collections, but each song must be bookmarked.
Fans of the forScore app say it’s the best music reader anywhere.
Its clean interface was designed exclusively for iOS devices.
EUMLab
Use it to download sheet music or load PDFs onto your tablet and play in seconds.
The forScore app partners withMusicnotesto give instant access to purchases.
you might annotate, play along with an audio track, and create setlists.
EUMLab
The app supports split-view and slide-over multitasking on iPads with these features.
Play hands-free with its page-turning devices and MIDI signals, or use its built-in remote control.
Digital Guitar Tuner: GuitarTuna
Yousician
Excellent app for tuning guitars.
TablEdit
Attractive, easy-to-use interface.
Chord libraries and metronomes aren’t special.
Free version includes only standard six-string guitar tuning.
Wooji Juice
Is your ukulele out of tune?
How about your mandolin, banjo, or bass guitar?
You need GuitarTuna, the premiere tuning app for all stringed instruments.
It’s easy, fast, and accurate, even for beginners.
It offers more than 100 tunings, including standard, Drop-D, half-step down, and 12-string.
App for Synthesizer Fans: Animoog Z Synthesizer
Moog
Great job recreating analogue Moog sounds.
Dozens of presets to play with.
Interface feels like a tool and not just a display.
Cool sounds and effects.
Steep learning curve for anyone not familiar with Moog hardware.
Doesn’t sound exactly like Moog hardware.
Synthesizer fans love Animoog Z, a polyphonic synthesizer designed for the iPad.
It includes waveforms from classic Moog oscillators and allows users to explore the space of those sounds fully.
It supports MIDI In, so you canuse your MIDI controllerto create the sound or use the touch interface.
Lots of instruments, scales, and keys to choose from.
Fun music creation app.
Steep learning curve for novices.
ThumbJam is a virtual instrument designed specifically for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.
Rather than provide an on-screen keyboard linked to instrument sounds, it turns your rig into an instrument.
This makes it a unique and intuitive way to “play” your iPad.
For Apple Purists: GarageBand
Apple
Easy to record and mix music.
Large built-in sound and loop library.
Includes lessons for guitar and piano keyboard.
Lacks depth when editing parameters.
Doesn’t support plug-ins.
No view of the mixing console.
Easily the most popular music app, GarageBand packs in plenty of functionality for a relatively low price.
First and foremost, it’s a recording studio.
Not only can you record tracks, but you might also play with buddies remotely through virtual jam sessions.
If you don’t happen to have your instrument with you, GarageBand has virtual instruments.
Most Realistic Digital Keyboard: Music Studio
Alexander Gross
Realistic, configurable 85-key keyboard.
More than 100 free instruments.
Needs clearer instructions for novice users.
Trash folder deletes files slowly.
Music Studio is for people who like the concept of GarageBand but feel constrained by its limitations.
For Drummers: DM1 - The Drum Machine
Fingerlab
It’s fun and sounds great.
Lots of drumkit samples included.
Great selection of effects.
Easy for nondrummers to operate.
In-app purchases in a paid app.
Lacks swing control for individual beats.
One area where the iPad excels is as a drum machine.
Along with drum pads, the app includes a step sequencer, a mixer, and a song composer.
Chromatic Tuner: InsTuner
EUMLab
Six tuning modes.
Clean, modern-looking interface.
Works with almost any instrument: stringed, woodwinds, brass, timpani, and more.
Ads appear in the paid app.
Not useful when at noisy gigs.
Needs presets for standards tunings.
InsTuner is a chromatic tuner that works with any stringed instrument.
In addition to tuning, the app includes a tone generator for tuning by ear.
Metronome App: Pro Metronome
Three options for pitches.
Buttons and wheel to alter the beats per minute.
Easy to change pitch on one or more notes in a measure.
Subdivisions require in-app purchase.
For Reading Tablature: TEFview
TablEdit
Great for learning new music.
Option to slow down tempo while learning new music.
Includes metronome and countdown.
Interface is not intuitive.
Requires a trial and error approach.
Awkward file management system.
Guitarists who deal with tablature love TEFview.
TEFview supports TablEdit files in addition to ASCII, MIDI, and Music XML files.
Wooji Juice
Good for basic audio editing.
Easy to filter out background noice.
Lots of filters and special effects.
New users need instructions.
App doesn’t save when recording is paused.
