Hasta La Gadget!

If you play the guitar, and you have an iPad, you should buy TabToolkit. Short of having a teacher with you all the time, it’s probably the best way I have seen to learn new music.

Guitar Tab is a way of writing down music specifically for the guitar. It’s not as information-rich as standard musical notation, but it’s a lot easier to follow. At its core, TabToolkit will display tabs for you, just like they’d look on paper. But if you use Power Tab or Guitar Pro files, both designed to be read on by computer, then TabToolkit goes into overdrive.

Load in a song (from your computer or via the built-in web-browser) and you’ll see the tab along with musical notation, and below that there is a picture of a guitar’s fretboard and strings. Press play and things really get going. A line runs along the notation to show you where you are in the song, and red dots appear on the fretboard to show you where your fingers should be. Better still, the app actually plays the song thanks to a built-in multi-track synthesizer. That’s right, you get a whole band to play along with, only they never get tired and they never drink all your beer.

There are various controls and options. The best is the speed-dial: spin the wheel and you can slow the music down (or speed it up, should you really hate yourself). you can also choose which instrument you want to learn. Tabs default to the main guitar track, but you can choose to see any instrument for which a sequencer track has been included. You can also switch off the standard musical notation, change the size of the display, switch to left-handed mode (try that with printed tabs) and have a keyboard instead of a fretboard shown at the bottom.

There are some problems with this iPad version (launched in April – there’s an older iPhone version). While you can tap-to-stop the music, doing so skips the “playhead” to wherever you touch on-screen. Further, you need to hit the tiny play-button to resume. But that’s about it. As I said, if you’re learning the guitar, you owe it to yourself to spend $10 on this app. My favorite part? Take a look at the screenshot at the top: You can choose to have the metronome sound as a cow-bell. Just where might that be useful?

I played the guitar a lot when I was younger. Back then, there was no internet. Songs came in books, or on pieces of paper scribbled by friends. If something like TabToolkit had existed back then, I wouldn’t be such a terrible player today.

TabToolkit product page [Agile]

See Also:

• iPad Sheet-Music Foot-Switch is a Real Page-Turner
• Headstock Guitar Tuner Picks Up Vibes
• Turn Your iPhone Into an Electric Guitar With iShred
• Mobile Phone Guitar Makes Sweet Music

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Guitar Sidekick brings your phone to your guitar, while your guitar gently weeps originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Fingerist is a $150 iPhone holder that makes you look even more like an idiot when you pretend to play guitar. The little box has a slot into which you slide the phone. You then fire up your favorite music-playing app (a virtual guitar or keyboard, for example) and commence to play (what I believe the kids refer to as “rocking out”). Because of its size, and two metal nubbins to connect a strap, the Fingerist makes the experience a little more like holding a guitar, and a little less like strumming a slab of glass and metal.

For that $150 (the price of an actual cheap electric guitar) you also get a 3-watt built-in speaker (3 AA batteries required) and a line-out socket to hook it up to an amp.

I suppose that it could be fun as a novelty, but the still-tiny size means that when playing, you’ll always look like you’re performing hammer-ons up at the top of the fretboard, which is the guitar equivalent of crossing your arms at the wrists whilst playing air-drums.

Despite this, I love the retro, blocky faux-wood design. It would make a great iPhone speaker dock, too, without all the guitar-playing shenanigans.

Fingerist [Evenno via Uncrate]

See Also:

• Make It: iPhone Guitar Connection Kit
• Hook Your Guitar to Your iPhone and Rock Out with iRig
• Turn Your iPhone Into an Electric Guitar With iShred
• PocketGuitar is Best iPhone Hack Ever
• Mobile Phone Guitar Makes Sweet Music
• Guitarbud Hooks Axe to iPhone

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

If you own a guitar and an iPhone and just want to practice or play for a few friends, there’s no need to carry around a massive amp or guitar rig anymore. Griffin Technology and Frontier Design Group have collaborated to create the Griffin GuitarConnect cable, which you can use to hook up your guitar to your iPhone, and the iShred LIVE iPhone app, which gives you all the features of a more complex and complicated rig in the palm of your hand.

The GuitarConnect cable is specifically designed to plug in to your guitar, bass, or other instrument using the quarter-inch cable on one end and into your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad on the other using its 3.5mm cable on the other. Once you have the GuitarConnect cable, you’ll want the iShred LIVE companion app to go with it.

We still can’t get time with the Fender Mustang Pro guitar controller while actually playing Rock Band 3, but the gang at the Mad Catz booth were fine enough with us letting us toy around on its own, sans game. So, how does it feel just silently going through chords and scales? Sturdy as can be, sure, and the 100-plus buttons for the neck feel like they’ll stand up for a good bit of time. That said, it felt harder than a real guitar locating the strings and frets — especially a pain for faster chord changing. Also a burden? No ability to bend strings — not that you’ll be able to bend on the Squier Stratocaster either, as it turns out, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue. We also got some eyes on the MIDI Pro Adapter for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii; there isn’t much to look at for now, but if you get your kicks from plastic dongles, hey, we’ve got all the photos you need below.

Rock Band 3 Fender Mustang Pro guitar controller and MIDI-Pro adapter eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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