Top 7 Free Guitar Apps for Android that are Actually Useful

There are dozens of list of android apps floating around on the internet. Many are indeed useful, but most of them have "fillers" included just to bloat the list. Many of the apps on the market are bloated unnecessarily as well.

So, here is a bare-bone list of apps that I personally used and found to be actually useful to guitarists:

1. Basichords :

Description: A good dictionary app for chords showing chord diagrams.

It includes 5700+ positions, playback / auto-play option, finger positions, chords information (root, 3rd, 5th, 7th...), etc. Supports various tuning systems too.

File size : 184 Kb only

Download from Google Play : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tekartik.android.basichords




2. PitchLab Guitar Tuner (FREE) :

Description : A great guitar tuner app having eight separate visualization modes (one shown on left) and multiple tuning presets. The app samples the notes you play and shows you their frequency and deviation from the standard.

It has a built-in stroboscopic tuner for greater precision. It has a sound spectrum analyser to help you figure out notes being played, including notes of chords to help you figure out chords being played as well.

File size :  275 Kb only

Download from Google Play : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.symbolic.pitchlab



3. Mobile Metronome :

Simple metronome app for your android. It plays a repeating beat sequence that helps you adjunct your playing timing. There is also a visual beat counter built in.

It allows you to set beat-rates of 10 to 230 beats per minute and 2 to 20 beats per measure. Beat subdivision possible are quarter, eighth, triplet, sixteenth, quintuplet and sextuplet notes.

 File size - 225 Kb only

 Download from Google Play : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gabriel.metronome



4. Ear Tuner :

Description : Learn to recognize chord progressions from songs just by listening to them. It helps you with your chord progression recognition too.

You would be presented with sound buttons - some would be labelled and some that you would have to figure out by listening. It takes a bit of practice, but the interface is self-explanatory.

File size :  260 Kb only

Download from Google Play : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jcgapps.eartrainer



5. Reverse Chord Finder Free :

Tap in notes on the virtual fretboard and search for all chord names that match the shape you entered. Quite indispensable to me especially when figuring out names of uncommon chords from shapes played on the guitar.

File size : 7.7 Mb - This is quite a heavy app in terms of file size but there isn't anything else on the app store to match.


Download from Google Play : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sardine.chordcapture




6. SoundForm Signal Generator :

So you want play an exact note on your phone and tune your guitar to that. Maybe tune your guitar to A446 tuning? Well, now you can.

Enter the exact frequency, e.g. 446 Hz in our example, into this app and play the sound. Tune your A string to it and use the standard self-tuning method to tune the rest of the strings.

File size :  49 Kb only

Download from Google Play : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.julian.apps.SoundForm



7. Guitar Music Analyzer Free :

So you need a little help in figuring out the chords to a song? Well, here is a handy app that gives you more than just a hint.

This app shows the frequency graph in real-time of notes being played, from which you can recognize the played notes. This helps you decipher the chords being played.

File size : 521 Kb only

Download from Google Play : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dubbeldam.chf.free


Basic clarifications:

- All apps listed above have varying requirements and should be compatible with most current systems.
- All of them have been used by myself and found to live up to their claims
- All of them are free to download and use (some have built-in ads though).
- Efforts have been made to choose apps with the smallest file sizes for functionality on offer.
- All details and specifications are described as they were at the time of writing this post (20th August 2013).
- Apps that are actually browsers for tab/chord websites have been excluded.
http://basicmusictheory.blogspot.com/

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