We're on a bit of a roll recently. After releasing a series of top-charting mobile tab apps, and our recent Ultimate Guitar Store, we've got one more treat for you.
Meet Songful, a brand new iPad app developed by Ultimate Guitar and instruMagic. It's the easiest way to play guitar without knowing how to play guitar, with live lyrics so you can sing along.
Alright, we put our hands up: you're probably the wrong audience for this, since you spend so much time and effort learning how to play a real guitar using our huge tab library. But this is a community, so we wanted to tell you about it, and hope you'll support our efforts anyway. Hopefully some of the diehard guitar purists will go easy on us!
How does it work? Simply load a song you want to play, and strum the guitar strings while tapping a chord-change button while you sing along to the lyrics on-screen. You can switch between guitar or ukulele sounds, switch to alternate tab versions for each song, or tell friends about it via Facebook and Twitter sharing.
It's so easy that even your grandma could play it. Why not give them the iPad to play on rhythm while you tear out a face-melting solo?
Watch this video demo to see it in action:
It's available for $2.99 (£1.99) on the iPad App Store right now. Tell a couple of friends about it, they'll love it.
As usual, we welcome your feedback. Let us know your thoughts in the comments, or you can tap the flag icon in the app to give us feedback from there. Thanks!
a handy way to show someone a song you've written if you don't have a guitar with you, but giving you the ability to re-arrange things and experiment which you don't ge twith a recording
Just buy Rocksmith. Caters to your playing level, has great songs on it, and you are playing a REAL guitar. I don't think any seasoned guitarist will learn anything from it, but it sure as hell is fun and good practice
The fact is rocksmith isn't ideal either. Fact is the hundred bucks or whatever you spent on it could have been spent getting lessons from a real teacher. This whole new thing of "making the guitar dumbed down or seemingly 'fun'" is silly. Nothing beats controlled practice.
I've done controlled practice, I've done lessons, why not give Rocksmith a chance? I take it for what it is: a videogame. The only one I play for that matter. Imagine if everyone who played videogames AND guitar replaced Call of Duty or Halo with Rocksmith, and still did their normal practice/jam/lessons/whatever, they would improve quicker. So why not?
Would you really improve? Rushing to play the notes as fast as possible just to get the highest score?
I couldn't care less what video game players did, its just true that the bajillions of players who haven't used this still have gotten better without it, and that's because of controlled practice.
Why don't they make RockSmith for Bassoon, or Tuba then, if RS is such an amazing way to do it?
Dude, read my original post. I didn't say that Rocksmith was ideal or an amazing way to learn guitar. But it is vastly better than an iPad app where you click buttons. Like I already said, anyone who knows how to play guitar isn't going to learn anything new, but it's still good practice.
And yes, you really can improve. As a long time guitarist, I recently started playing bass. Using Rocksmith, I've improved my finger dexterity, speed of playing, and rhythm. It doesn't replace playing with a live band, but it's fun and can help encourage you to practice.
The fact is you could have reached the exact same skill level on the bass without rocksmith, and confirms that nothing is better than proper controlled practice.
Probably true, but that is the nice thing about video games, its easy to sit and play one for 4 hours. But I rarely have the discipline to do controlled practice for 4 hours. I'm done arguing, I am going to go play some Rocksmith
Yup, sometimes I do. And to the many other procrastinators out there who occassionally need a little extra motivation to practice, I recommend checking out Rocksmith. At the very least, its a fun way to mix up your normal practice routine and learn some new songs
am i the only one getting sick of all these apps? i mean... damn.. its a phone! my cellphone has buttons and camera. it can text and call. get a life world!
It's typical marketing strategy of everything nowadays. 'We'll make all our apps for Apple, and forget about Android, because it's clearly inferior to Apple IOS in every way.....'
