Top 10 Apps for the Budding Guitarist

This past year I started taking guitar lessons.  Access to lessons and guitar information is a lot easier than it was when I first started (and later gave up) the guitar in the early 80's.  I remember struggling each week just to tune my guitar - now there's an app (hundreds of them) for that. 

So here is my list of useful guitar apps that are available for the iPhone (because it is easier to take with you) than the ipad.  All of the apps are FREE except Garageband and Guitar Jam Tracks. 
My schema for organizing and the apps I chose are as follows:

Apps for Studying / Lessons:

• Fretsurfer - functions like a game helping you learn note locations on the fretboard
• Chords - like the name, it is a simple no nonsense diagram of all chords for the guitar
• Virtual Guitar Free - an electronic progammable guitar, great for playing along or when you don't have your guitar with you.
• Top 100 Guitar Songs - video lesson from super teacher Marty Schwarz - breaking down the top requested guitar songs.  Videos hosted on Vimeo.

Apps for Recording & Creating:

• Garageband - Apple's easy to use interface turns the iphone into an instrument, can plug in to record ($5.49)
• Ampkit - a free plug in sound / effects and amplifier kit - lets you create the sound you desire
• Soundcloud - record your own sounds, share with others via web and connect with others using the social sound platform
• GuitarJam Tracks - learn to solo over professionally recorded tracks in the key you choose.  Each key includes a list of chords and scale charts.  This app is not free but almost $1.99

Apps as Tools / Gear:

• Epic Chromatic Tuner -  Simple tuner with all of the tuning options like open and drop tuning
• Ludwig Metronome - I like the simple dial and minimal bells and whistles - just the beat
• Gibson Learn & Master - and all in one free app which includes metronome, tuner, chords and a recording option.  Highly rated and good for the beginner

Final Projects

Loving all the final project ideas.

Final Projects

Loving all the final project ideas.

Week 3 reflection (dena)@

Does reading and/or annotating have using mobile tools have any potential to transform teaching and learning?

Students have always been able to read and take notes on the go.  Books, notebooks, pens, highlighters, all are light weight, portable, don't break when you drop them, and don't require mysterious signals in the air to make them work.  What's new and interesting about online tools is the potential for students to share and collaborate on what they are doing.

Right now the tools are clunky, not easy to use, everyone doesn't have access to them and wifi access, the thing that really makes these mobile tools, is sporadic at best.  Maybe these things will improve in the future.  But by then, we'll probably have moved onto the next generation of clunky poorly working tools.

WEEK 3 PDF Challenge

Week 3 Reflection (Sam)

I know, I know, I'm way late on this. My bad.

Week 3's work was a little frustrating for me, partly because I believe in the web as this living, breathing, changing thing and to spend part of the week annotating PDFs drove me a bit bonkers. It's important to know how to do these things, yes. But I also think that PDFs are without a whole lot of function these days. The can act as documents for a legal purpose, but the need for PDFs is going away.

What really excites me (and what I assume we'll get to) is the idea or writing our own interactive textbooks. Students shouldn't have to buy (or rent or borrow or carry) a backpack full of stuff. As access to the internet becomes less a privilege and more a right, I suspect we'll get there.

The NMC readings were both interesting, but I felt this constant thread of "we're not there yet" throughout. Maybe I'm just projecting some of the values of colleagues and friends onto NMC, but I think we are there. Tablets and phones are affecting learning everyday. Just because it's early days yet doesn't mean it's not happening.

Week 3 Challenge B - Evernote (Sam)

I chose Evernote to annotate my documents. I generally like Evernote, and it's much more than an annotator.

What it does: Evernote allows its users to save and annotate clips of text and images from the web. Additionally, users may import and annotate PDFs. Evernote does something really cool in that it scans images and image-based PDFs for text and makes that text searchable from within Evernote. Like most apps these days, Evernote syncs across devices (though offline access on mobile devices might be a premium feature). Finally, users can just use Evernote like a notebook for regular old note-taking.

Why it's good: Evernote does a great job of organizing clips and PDFs, primarily by date. Again, everything becomes searchable once it's uploaded to Evernote, which makes finding things extremely easy. And across-device syncing. That's great.

What needs improvement: I'm sort of surprised that Evernote hasn't become more a web-skin like software. One can clip from the web, but it seams it would be great to be able to annotate easily while sending it to Evernote.