gStrings Free Tuner for Android phones

I recently purchased an Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S3, and have been amazed at the catalog of applications available. One that caught my eye as a musician is the gStrings Free Tuner. Below is a review from MakeUseOf.com.

• September 28, 2012
  
• By Angela Alcorn

If you’re a musician of any kind, you’ve no doubt thought about getting some kind of pitch-giving app on your smartphone. For Android users, there are lots of different apps to choose from. However, whatever your instrument (but especially for guitarists), you should really consider using gStrings Free Tuner.
The gStrings Free Tuner app is tiny, free and yet packed with features that will leave you with no need for any other tuning or pitch-checking application. We’ve got it listed as one of the Best Android Apps under Audio, but it’s about time we really showed you what it’s all about.

The Basics Of gStrings Free Chromatic Tuner

At first glance, you can easily see that gStrings offers most of what the average musician needs in a tuning app. You can pick any note in a chromatic scale, play that note in the app to tune from or get the app to listen to your instrument playing it and show you how close you are to the right note.




The display shows the note you’re aiming for in the centre of a swinging needle, tells you the pitch of the note in Hertz and then shows you the pitch of what you’re playing (or singing) in Hertz and on the visual display. This makes it easy to tune your instrument up or down and re-check the pitch until it’s right.

n short, this application is ideal for most purposes. It acts as a pitch pipe and helps you tune your instrument. But that’s not all it does – There’s more.

Advanced Settings

The microphone can be optimised to pick up the pitch range of your instrument as well as fine-tuned to be more or less sensitive as required. If you need to, you can change the octave of the notes you’re given to tune from, which will make it much easier to tune your instrument if you’re not using the original octave.





For people who don’t use the ABCD naming convention, it’s possible to change to another system, such as solfege or AHCD.

Very Advanced Features Of gStrings Free Chromatic Tuner

For musicians who need something more than a straight chromatic scale, gStrings offers some incredibly advanced tuning features which you’ll love. You can change the tuning to be orchestra tuning, which redefines A from 440Hz to 443Hz. You can even change the temperaments to be equal, meantone, just, comma or more. Native C can also be made more or less precise according to your needs.





There are also even more options to tweak things including giving yourself more accurate markers in the display around the target note, FFT rounding or changing the scale range or tampering function.

Love it?

If you love the gStrings Tuner, you might like to know that they offer an ad-free version for 2€. Plus, the same company also make a metronome app for 1€ you should check out.

More Guitar-Based Reading

If you love guitar, there are dozens of excellent articles you should read on MakeUseOf. Try these for starters:

• Play Guitar Better No Matter How You Read Music With TuxGuitar
• Two Essential Free Guitar Lesson Sites For Beginners
• 5 Free Apps That Help You Learn & Play Guitar [Android]
• 6 Free Music Documentaries For Fans Of The Guitar [Stuff to Watch]
• 5+ Free Apps To Help You Learn & Play Guitar [iOS]
  
  
  Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/gstrings-free-chromatic-tuner-guitar-instruments-android/

5 Free Apps That Help You Learn & Play Guitar [Android]

• June 26, 2012
  
• By Yaara Lancet

Years ago, I found a classic guitar at home and taught myself how to play it. I was never a guitar guru, all I could play were some chords, but even a handful of around twenty simple chords can amount to hours of fun and hundreds of different songs to play. These days, I don’t have a guitar anymore, but like many others, I do have a smartphone. So how does playing guitar mash up with today’s “there’s an app for that” world?
Recently, after reading Dave’s post about free iOS apps that help you learn and play guitar, I realized that there’s a whole world of mobile guitar out there that I’m not taking advantage of! So yes, my old classic guitar is long gone, but I’ve set out to find some awesome Android guitar apps that will teach me how to play again and let me practice a little bit, even without owning one.

Guitar: Solo Lite [1.6+]

Solo for Android is a $3.99 app which can help you learn guitar, and acts also as a guitar simulator. The free version, which I actually recommend if you’re a beginner, includes an acoustic guitar simulator, and a huge chord library for you to browse, learn and choose from. For each chord, you can see the exact chord diagram, learn how it’s played on real guitar, add it to your virtual guitar and play it on your phone. You can also add any chord you’re missing to the library by showing the app its exact fingering.

The full version includes more instruments, the option to play along with your own music, and no ads. You can try out some featured apps to earn coins, which you can then use to unlock the full version without paying a dime.

Learn Guitar Chords [2.1+]

Learn Guitar Chords is an app suited for those who are just starting out learning guitar. If you already know your chords, and want to focus on playing, you can skip this app. The app takes you step by step through the fingering of different chords, from the most basic to some more advanced ones.
It shows you exactly which finger to put where, which strings to play for each chord, and you can actually play the virtual guitar to hear what each chord sounds like. There are not many chords included in the app, but it’s great for learning the absolute basics.

Chords! Free [1.6+]

Chords! is aimed at more advanced players, who have already mastered their basic chords and want to learn more about them and their different fingerings. The free version lets you search through the huge database for different chords, learn about them, listen to different fingerings and learn how to play different chords. It includes 5 different tunings for different instruments, and if you’re left handed, you can flip the fingerings to suit the way you play.
The full version ($3.99) lets you also reverse search chords by entering the fingering and finding which chord it is, includes more scales and tunings, and no ads.

Robotic Guitarist Free [1.6+]

Robotic Guitarist is for those who want to jam on their phone without a real instrument, but is also really useful for those who do own one. Robotic Guitarist lets you choose chords out of a vast library, and play them on the device. You can also learn fingerings from the app, and listen to each individual string by itself.
The free version also includes a metronome and a tuner, which you can use for playing on any instrument (including the phone itself), and even includes several instruments you can choose from. Get the full $2.99 version to get rid of ads.

The Chordinator [1.5+]

Ending this list is The Chordinator. While not being the most slick app I’ve ever seen, it’s a great addition to the collection if you’ve already mastered some chords and want to put them to use. It’s meant for those who actually own a guitar (or two different devices), and want to easily find songs to play on the go. The app is very easy to use: simply search for a song or an artist, and follow the Google links the app finds for you.
Once you tap the link, the Android guitar app will automatically save the chords file for you and store it on your device. You can then browse your files and open the songs to view the chords and play. You can even enable auto scroll to have the song advance by itself as you play.

Final Note

There are many, many more guitar apps for Android out there. I would love to hear which apps are your favorites and which you think are the best to use.
Use this collection to either get started with learning guitar, or to play basic guitar on the go, no matter where you are. And don’t forget to check out 5+ Free iOS Apps To Help You Learn & Play Guitar if you happen to own an iPhone!

Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-free-apps-learn-play-guitar-android/