4 iPhone Applications to Help You Learn Guitar

Great guitarists know that the guitar requires many hours of daily practice to master. For many, it's hard to find the time, as you're not likely to have a guitar sitting around you at work or at school. However, there are some fantastic programs on the iPhone that can help guitarists of any skill level perfect their playing. Here are four iPhone applications that can help you learn the guitar, or help you keep your skills fresh and strong.

1. Fretsurfer - This game was developed as an iPhone application by a guitarist, for the purpose of helping guitar players learn to instantly identify the note that any guitar fret produces, and vice versa, the corresponding frets to any notes. It operates very simply; you're presented with the image of a guitar fretboard, and the game quizzes you, with several difficulty levels and custom game options to let you zone in on a particular area of the fretboard. Great for refreshing your knowledge of the fretboard, or relearning it completely.


2. Karajan Beginner - There's no such thing as a great musician with a terrible ear. This free program provides ear training, allowing you to learn what different chords, notes, intervals, and scales sound like. You get five different instruments to listen to and several different modes of play. There's a pay version of the program with more options, but beginning and novice guitarists will appreciate the ear training provided in Karajan.


3. Guitar Toolkit - While the Guitar Toolkit app doesn't actually have a mode that teaches you guitar, it will prove invaluable as a practice assistant, with a very accurate built in microphone, a large chord library, and a metronome--as any great guitarist will tell you, it's absolutely crucial to spend at least some of your practice time with a metronome. It's about $10, but consider that even a low-grade tuner would likely cost more than that, not to mention a chord library and metronome. A steal for the price.