Web/Mobile App Critique

One mobile app I have on my Android phone is called GuitarTuna. GuitarTuna is primarily a guitar tuning app. In this function, the app uses a phone’s microphone to listen for a guitar being played and indicates onscreen the proximity of the tone’s frequency to standard musical notes. The standard tuning for a six-string guitar goes from low to high, E A D G B E. GuitarTuna is calibrated to automatically recognize which of those six strings the user is trying to tune and tell them if they are at a lower or high frequency than that reference frequency. In the screenshot below, the guitar is tuned too low for the low E:

By turning the tuners on the guitar while watching GuitarTuna, the user can get closer to the desired note:

 

It is three cents too high, but that is acceptable in most cases. One of the great features of GuitarTuna is its sensitivity to changes in frequency, which makes it difficult to accept that the instrument is tuned well enough, but also provides the opportunity for precision tuning if that is in the player’s interest.

Another fantastic feature is the Chord Library, which contains finger position charts for 12 different chord types for each root note and provides multiple positions for each. In total, there are 528 different chord charts in the Chord Library! 

  

While we’re on the topic of the app’s Tools section, I should also mention the Metronome. This helpful feature creates a steady percussive tone that players can keep time with while practicing their instruments. The frequency of beats can be selected on a scrolling wheel-type input, using + and – buttons, or by rhythmically tapping on the screen to set a tempo.

GuitarTuna also hosts several musical learning games to help guitarists improve in chord reading, ear training, and playing. The app organizes the time-based games by difficulty level. For example, the screen will display chords to play in succession and listen for the user’s guitar to confirm that they played the correct chords. Playing a right chord adds time to the clock, and the longer the user keeps up, the higher their score. These games can be helpful educational tools and are somewhat entertaining.

 

There are a few changes I would like to see to GuitarTuna. For one, the menu along the bottom of the screen contains five options, and two of those are advertisements for a different app called Yousician. I wanted to be as thorough as possible with my evaluation of GuitarTuna, so I decided to download Yousician to see what it’s all about. It is another music learning app with videos and games to aid guitarists in their development. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad app, but I found it annoying that it occupied so much real estate in the GuitarTuna app menu.

 

A different tone for the Metronome would also be nice. The stock percussive tone for GuitarTuna’s Metronome is the standard electronic woodblock sound that so many metronomes use. This is a fine choice for a metronome, but some variety would be welcome to allow different metronome tones for those practicing to measured beats, especially over extended periods.

Finally, and most significantly, the pay structure for this app bothers me. This app has been on my phone for years, and I have always been happy with the standard (free) version features. In the interest of giving a thorough evaluation, I decided to subscribe to the 7-day free trial for premium features. Following the 7-day free trial, access to the premium features is contingent on a $4.99 per month subscription fee. Frankly, I’m not too fond of subscription fees. I would be happy to pay a one-time fee for access to premium features, but the potential cumulative cost of a monthly subscription is not worth it in this case. There are some valuable enhancements, like access to different tunings and allowing for custom tuning calibrations. I would use features like this, but I will not pay a monthly fee to use them. In my opinion, the features in the standard free version are more valuable than the premium features that require the subscription fee.

As I mentioned, I have used this app for quite some time, and I plan to continue to use it in the future. Its recognition of and sensitivity to guitar-specific frequencies is impressive. It can usually recognize whole chords in the chord learning exercises, although sometimes it struggles to pick out each note if the chord is played rapidly. All in all, I am very satisfied with the standard free GuitarTuna app, but I will not continue the premium subscription.