Essential Mac Apps For Musicians
The mobile boom brought forth a world of opportunities to creative individuals – especially musicians. Gone are the days when these artists were bound to full studio equipment (which costs fortunes) in order to get anything done. Professional music makers still need those, but our smartphones and tablets are more than capable of taking a quantifiable load of work.
Jun 11, 2015 At $4.99 on the App Store, GarageBand is an essential part of many musicians’ toolkits. DM1 – The Drum Machine When you’re ready to ramp up your drumming, look no. Jan 17, 2019 10 Must-Have Android Apps for 2019. There are more than 3.5 million entries in the Google Play Store, but these 10 essential Android apps deserve a spot on your home screen.
- Sep 30, 2019 These apps should make the time you spend on your Mac more pleasant and productive. And some of them might become so indispensable, you’ll wonder how you ever managed to get by without them. But no list of software is ever complete, so we invite you to share your favorite, must-have Mac apps in the comments.
- Here are our top App Store apps, best of all these essential Mac apps are free! If you make music on a Mac, you have two options: use a free but limited tool such as GarageBand.
What really makes us grind our teeth here at Android Authority is the fact that Apple has had a foothold on the music industry for a long time (in terms of mobile music making, at least). This is changing, as there is a plethora of Android developers making great apps for musicians, but we need to dig deeper into the platform in order to understand what’s going on.
Apple wasn’t doing amazingly well among musicians only because of its fame and widespread support; Android devices did have a limitation, which proved to be a huge slow-down. iOS has offered audio low-latency for a long time, something Google only implemented with the introduction of Android 5.0 Lollipop, along with multi-channel audio stream mixing and USB audio support.
With these changes in place, and considering Android does own the market in terms of numbers, we are sure to see some great developers getting on board with our favorite mobile OS. In the meantime, we would like to share some great apps any musician and music maker should take a look at.
Guitar Tuner Free (previously known as Guitar Tuna)
This app’s design is great, and I love having it around to tune my instruments. Mostly because it has support for tuning multiple instruments, including guitar, bass and ukulele (my personal favorite). It includes games for learning to play, a metronome and a design that makes it a breeze to use.
Serious musicians will also love that it touts “award-winning audio technology” and “professional accuracy for advanced players”. And with over 5 million downloads, this app sure has its fair amount of popularity.
Lyrically
Even the best of musicians forget lyrics, so it’s always convenient to have a lyric app around, just in case you need it. This application grants access to lyrics for more than a million songs, something considered to be heaven-sent to many cover musicians around. Lyrically can even recognize the music you are playing on your phone and present the right lyrics on the screen.
Pro Metronome
Having trouble syncing to a beat? Metronomes are no longer just tools that need to sit on top of a table. You can carry it around in your pocket, thanks to the power of our smartphones. Pro Metronome was a hit on iOS, and us Android users can also take advantage of it now.
Sure, other tuning apps include metronomes, but this one is far superior. The user can choose between many timing styles. Users can also “access subdivisions, poly-rhythm settings, and create complex patterns with triplets, dotted notes, and non-standard time signatures” if they purchase the Pro version. It’s also more precise than a real, mechanical metronome, as it’s not affected by friction, air resistance and other natural factors.
RecForge Pro
Musicians love their high quality sound recording. Sound needs to be as pristine as possible, and even though mobile is not quite up there with studio standards, I have to say RecForge Pro is about the closest you can get to the real deal.
RecForge Pro is a serious audio recorder. It can record in mp3, ogg or wav, and you can convert audio files between those formats, as well. It has support for storing clips in the cloud, and one can even edit these sound clips before doing anything with them. There’s a wide array of settings and tools for making your sound as perfect as possible.
I will advice that you get a good microphone to use with your handset, as phones usually don’t have the best microphones integrated.
Walk Band
How many times have you gotten inspired during your commute to the city, without an instrument within reach to hear how well your new song ideas work out? After all, music often sounds very different in your mind than it does coming out of an instrument.
Walk Band is meant to be more of a creative music-making app, with multi-track recording and a series of digital instruments you can play around with. That’s all fun, but I use it more as a tool for translating my thoughts into sound waves when on-the-go. Maybe you will find it just as convenient, so give it a go!
DJ Studio 5
Here is one area where Android is still a bit behind, with apps like Traktor DJ putting all their chips on Apple. That’s not to say there aren’t some good DJing Android apps out there, though. One of my favorites is DJ Studio 5. It’s completely free and all they make money on are skins. No ads, no hidden charges, no catch.
DJ Studio 5 is simple enough to welcome beginners, yet it has its good share of more complex features for the advances DJs out there. You at least have to try their unique scratch system and disk physics!
Caustic 3
Sadly, we are far from getting anything similar to Garage Band, which continues to be a great tool even for some serious musicians. With that said, w can also say there are some great apps like Caustic 3 around, which allow us to create music from our mobile devices.
This app’s design is inspired by rack-mount synthesizers, which I say give it an awesome style. You can choose from a wide variety of synthesizers and different sounds. It’s fun and it’s free to use. You will need to pay $9.99 if you want the ability to save or export your projects, though.
Which apps do you use for making music?
Of course, this is all the opinion of one humble musician here. I am sure many of you have found great uses for other apps, and maybe you even have better alternatives to the ones I happen to love. Whatever the case may be, please do share your thoughts on the comments below.
Do you use any of these apps? Which are your favorite applications for making music?
It’s a fine time to be an iOS musician. There are a ton of great apps out there that can help you refine your craft and even perform live music in new and interesting ways.
I recently wrote about how I play guitar live at church using a xSonic xTone interface and Bias FX on my iPad, but there are many other high-quality iOS apps available to musicians. Whether you are looking to digitally replace a large sheet music library, write songs on the go, get some help practicing difficult musical passages, or just need a little help staying in tune, these apps have you covered.
iReal
iReal Pro is an app to help musicians of all levels master their art. It’s part songbook and part digital backup band, allowing you to import (or create) easy-to-read song charts and then select backing instruments that you can play along with.
The chord charts are all stored in a digital library, allowing you to access thousands of chord charts from your iPad. You can create your own chord charts and easily share them with others, but the real value of iReal Pro for musicians is in the backing tracks. You can select any chord chart and change the style, and the backing instruments will adapt instantly. For musicians looking to develop their chops in different styles they may not normally be able to try with other live musicians, this is a great way to stretch your abilities. You can change tempos and key signatures easily, and there’s even a practice mode for learning tough passages. Just select a passage you want to loop, and practice mode will repeat it over and over, gradually increasing the tempo each time.
iReal Pro is available as a universal iOS app for $13.99. There is also a Mac version available for $19.99.
forScore
forScore is an iPhone and iPad app designed to help you organize your sheet music. It allows you to import sheet music as PDFs, and even purchase content from within the app through services like Noteflight and MusicNotes. The big advantage of using forScore is that you don’t have to carry around a ton of sheet music anymore. As someone who used to always carry hundreds of pages of sheet music with me to orchestra practice, I’m a big fan of keeping everything stored digitally. I always have my iPad with me anyway, so not having to carry music around is great.
But forScore does more than just store PDF files. It intelligently solves some of the major problems classical musicians face when playing off of sheet music — like having to stop and turn the page. ForScore gives you the ability to do “half-page turns” so you can see the bottom half of one page and the top half of another, and works with Bluetooth page turners like PageFlip and AirTurn. It even has built-in audio tools like a metronome, pitch pipe, and tuner. The design is beautiful, and it even has Dark Mode and support for iOS 13 features.
forScore is available as a universal iOS app for $14.99.
Perfect Tempo
Perfect Tempo is an app that does one thing, and does it well — it allows you to modify the speed of songs you’re trying to learn without changing the pitch.
The thing that makes Perfect Tempo so powerful is the integration with Apple Music. I used to run into this limitation using other apps in the past. As a guitarist who occasionally wants to learn how to play a solo I hear in a professional recording, I’d get frustrated when trying to import a song to slow it down and be told I couldn’t do so. But with Perfect Tempo, you can speed up or slow down any song in the Apple Music library.
You can repeat the entire song or select a specific section to make practice easier, and you can even control tempo, volume, and repeat from your Apple Watch. It’s also a great app for dancers who want to practice a routine at a slower pace to learn complicated steps.
Perfect Tempo is available as a universal iOS app for $4.99.
Music Memos
Music Memos is a free app that is actually made by Apple to be a musical scratchpad for musicians to quickly get their ideas down. Just open the app and hit record. Once you have your idea down, Music Memos will analyze the audio and suggest chords for what you played. It’s optimized for acoustic guitar and piano, but you can use it for other instruments as well (though your results may vary).
Once you have your audio recorded and the chords are identified, you can add a virtual drummer and bass player with the tap of a button. Unlike iReal Pro which gives you the band and it’s your job to play along with it, Music Memos attempts to insert a band behind what you’ve recorded. It doesn’t always do a perfect job of lining everything up with what you’re playing, but it is pretty cool to record something quick and instantly add a virtual backing band.
Music Memos is available as a universal iOS app and is free.
Tonaly
Tonaly was known as Ultimate Circle of Fifths until recently, and is a songwriting and practice tool that is built on the famous circle of fifths model that will instantly be recognizable to students of music theory. If you’re new to music theory, don’t worry — you don’t need to know any music theory in order to use the app. Just scroll the wheel to select your key, and the app will show you the other chords that are in that key. This makes it a great tool for songwriters who are trying to find that perfect chord for a song. You can add chords to a progression below the circle of fifths as you go, expand the drawer on the bottom to see the chords on a keyboard or fretboard, and even tap the play button to hear what it sounds like on the virtual instrument you have selected.
It’s also a great practice tool for musicians who want to develop their chops. In addition to helping you become familiar with the chords in the circle of fifths, there’s also a Scales mode that makes it easy to practice any scale in any key. There’s a couple of scales included like major ionian and minor dorian, but you can unlock more than 80 different scales with a $2.99 in-app purchase.
Tonaly is available as a universal iOS app for $4.99.
GuitarTuna
What’s the difference between a guitar and a fish? You can’t tuna fish.
GuitarTuna is a free app made by Yousician (a great app in it’s own right for learning how to play) that helps you keep your instrument in tune. Just pluck a string on your instrument and GuitarTuna will detect the sound using the microphone on your device, giving you instant visual feedback without any cables. I’ve had mixed results with iPhone tuners in the past, but GuitarTuna boasts award-winning audio recognition technology that guarantees “an insanely accurate tuning result.” I’m not sure how to measure whether it lives up to that claim, but in my experience it is pretty good.
Nikon ndf mac high sierra compatible software windows 10. And even though the name says GuitarTuna, it also works with a lot of different stringed instruments, including:
- guitar
- ukelele
- bass
- violin
- mandolin
- cello
- and much more
The app is free to download, but the premium version is pretty pricey ($4.99/month for all tunings, chords, instruments, etc.). As a basic free tuner, it’s great.
GuitarTuna is available as a universal iOS app for free.
TonalEnergy Tuner
If you want a better tuner and are willing to pay a few bucks as a one-time purchase, the TonalEnergy Tuner is currently at the top of the App Store music charts and does a great job. It gives you visual feedback through a circle in the middle that becomes a green smiley face once you are actually in tune. It offers support for a large pitch range, and even allows you to modify reference point for tuning from the standard A = 440 Hz.
The app also gives you a powerful metronome with lots of tempo patterns and subdivision options, and the analysis tab gives you instant feedback to help you practice. Using the Target Tuner or Pitch Tracker features can help you create rewarding and attainable goals during a rehearsal or when working alone. It even offers Shortcuts support and an Ableton Link feature that allows you to play in-time with other Link-enabled apps on the same network.
TE Tuner is available as a universal iOS app for $3.99.
Just Press Record
Just Press Record is made by the same developer as Perfect Tempo, and is an audio transcription app. It’s a mobile recorder that gives you one-tap recording ability (even from your Apple Watch) and syncs your recordings across iCloud. Think of it like Voice Memos on steroids.
The major feature of Just Press Record is the built-in transcription. Just like accessing a voicemail on your iPhone, the transcription is displayed below the recording title. Once you record your audio, you can edit the transcription to fix anything it messed up and you can even edit the recording and remove any sections you don’t need.
Just Press Record is available as a universal iOS app for $4.99. If you decide to purchase Perfect Tempo and Just Press Record, there is a musician bundle available on the App Store that can save you a few bucks.
Hum
One of the problems I used to run into as a songwriter was having audio ideas in one app and lyric ideas in another. Hum is the iPhone app that fixed that problem for me by combining note-taking and audio recording into a single app for capturing and organizing your songwriting ideas. Just create a new “hum” and type out your lyrics, then tap the record button to capture the melody line that goes with it. All your song pieces are stored together, making it much easier to go back and develop them later.
Hum is a beautifully designed app that is easy to use, but it does quite a bit. You can attach metadata to your song ideas like key, tuning and mood, and attach recordings to your lyrics so you can work on them at the same time. You can sync your hums via Dropbox, and toggle a recording countdown if you prefer a little space at the beginning of your recording.
Hum is available as an iPhone app for $2.99 Mac png to pdf.
Capo Touch
Capo Touch is a phenomenal app that analyzes a song file and detects the chords, key, and tempo of the song. From there, you can slow the song down to practice a difficult section you’re trying to learn, transpose the key on the fly, isolate or eliminate instruments or vocals, and much, much more.
The only knock on Capo Touch is that you have to purchase songs you want to learn from iTunes instead of accessing them from your Apple Music library. So while Capo Touch is much more powerful than Perfect Tempo and does a lot of additional things, if you just want to slow down a section of a song so you can learn how to play it, then Perfect Tempo is probably a better option.
Ipad Apps For Musicians
Capo Touch is available as a universal iOS app for free, though there is a fairly expensive in-app purchase of $19.99/year to unlock all features.
Our Must-Have, Most Used Productivity Apps
Essential Mac Apps For Musicians Free
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.