Mobile App of the Month for Musicians

recording_guitarsOne of the web’s best guitar tab sites is Ultimate-Guitar.com. For years it has been a go-to site for professional and amateur musicians looking to learn new cover songs, figure out chord changes and nail solos. And it’s not just guitarists who use the site, either; it’s also used by singers and other musicians who need to learn the lyrics, keys and chords to songs, or to print songs out to share with the band.

And now, there’s an app for that: Ultimate-Guitar.com’s Ultimate Guitar Tabs. Versions are available for Apple and Android devices, both costing $2.99 to download from their respective app stores, with in-app upgrades ranging from $1.99 to $3.99. The latest Android version requires using Android 1.6 and up; the Apple version iOS 3.1.2 or later.

Instead of wasting paper and time by printing songs out to bring to practice, you can just share Ultimate Guitar’s expansive library of song tabs from your phone, including new songs — the app’s database is expanded daily to keep up with new releases.

The app makes songs easy to find with its Quick Search feature, and you can add tabs to your Favorites section for use when you’re offline. Autoscroll is another favorite feature among users, as it lets you set the scrolling mechanism to a comfortable scrolling speed as you’re playing along with the tab — that way, you don’t have to stop when you get to the end of one bar to manually scroll to the next.

Other features include the ability to create custom playlists and view chord diagrams while playing the tab, for those times when you don’t quite remember where your fingers should go when strumming an E minor diminished 7th. You can also change fonts to suit your taste and play music of the song you’ve selected, in case you’ve forgotten EXACTLY how it goes.

Though the app generally gets positive reviews across the board, but many  users don’t like having to pay for the in-app upgrades after already forking over three bucks. All the features listed above — and more — are included in the original $2.99 base price download, though. Last year, Ultimate Guitar Tabs was a runner-up in the 2011 “Best App Ever Awards.” It’s also received high marks in reviews from PC Advisor and Macworld for its versatility.

Plenty of guitar tab apps exist out there, but Ultimate Guitar Tabs gets our nod this month for its multiple features and ease of use for users of Android and Apple devices. If you don’t mind ponying up a few dollars for this type of convenience, this is a musicians app worth checking out.

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