Best Tuning Apps

After we gave you some tips on how to catch fish and we showed you some fish finders from Lawrence, we thought that, if you’re a musician, you might also want a tool to help you find the perfect note. As a result, this article will discuss the best tuning apps that you can find for your mobile device.

How did we get to tuning apps?

From the early ages of music, those that played instruments needed a way to see if their instrument is in tune. A classic way to check the tonality of your instrument is to check it with the help of a piano. By pressing a key on the piano and then trying to reproduce the same musical note on the instrument you play, you will find out if the instrument is in tune or not, and that is thanks to the fact that pianos tend to stay in tune much longer.

But that is not the only way to check the pitch of your instrument, as you can do that with many different devices. Pitch pipes are easy to use and they take little space, but what most people prefer is the use of special devices that act as tuners. Depending on what instrument you play, you will be able to find a tuner for that instrument.

You can have chromatic tuners or clip-on models that attach to the instrument, or, if you’re playing an electric guitar or bass, for example, you can even make use of a pedal to help you with finding the perfect pitch.

But for the casual player, that is not always a feasible solution. With the new age of digitalization, a new trend is starting to appear – tuning apps. They are becoming more and more popular, better, and as a result, used by more musicians.

A tuning app will always be there on your phone, ready to help you when you need it. Coming with many more features than a classic tuner can provide, and most of the time for free, you might consider getting one of these apps. So here are some of the ones we would recommend.

GuitarTuna

Apart from the funny name, this app does come with some cool features that are great for beginner guitarists. One great advantage that it offers is the fact that when using it you can pick the string that you want to tune, which is usually not a feature of tuners.

That also means you won’t need to know the names of the strings, as the app shows the tuning pegs as they are in real life. It also helps you in two ways – it gives you the sound that the specific string should have when played, but it also offers you the possibility to play the string and it listens and tells you if the sound needs to be higher or lower-pitched.

When you get the string in tune, the app rewards you by playing a sound that lets you know you have the string in tune. If you play a string the app will show you on-screen how low the note is, and if you tune it up or down, you will also see that on-screen, so it is very intuitive. The app also comes with a metronome and a chords function.

There are also some simple games that will help you learn how to play the guitar. It is one app that has a lot of features that will help beginners and it is also free.

TonalEnergy

Moving on to an app that isn’t free, this one costs almost $4, which you might consider as a cheap price to pay for something that gives you all the things this app does. It should be mentioned that the app works on both iOS and Android devices.

It is not only a tuner, but it also acts as a metronome, it provides sustained tone and it has recording functions. What is really impressive about all of these things is that they can all be used at the same time. This is great for the times you want to capture a certain part of a song and see if it is in tune or not.

You can go over what you recorded and see if the notes you played were in tune or not. When bending strings or playing instruments that have harder-to-reach notes, this is of great help. You won’t be able to achieve the same level of excellence with a tuner that only shows you the notes live, because you pass through them too fast.

In an easy-to-understand manner, the visual indicator of the app moves down if you are flat and upwards if you are sharp. A smiley face will appear when you are right on tune. The metronome function is also one full of potential as it allows you to choose the tempo you want it to play. It can also give you an accent on the beat you want.

It also has a pitch wheel that you can use to play multiple musical notes at the same time, or one after another, and see how well they sound together. This is a great tool for those looking to compose.

Tunable

Another app that costs $4 and is available for both Android and iOS devices, this one is a tuner that also comes with many other functionalities. The main feature that it has is allowing your phone to use the microphone to check if your instrument is in tune.

However, it also comes with the option to generate notes and provide “drone” capabilities, which essentially mean providing you with a certain prolonged note that you can use to either tune your instrument following that note or to use it to see if it works well with other musical notes.

You also have a metronome included in the app, and this is what makes it an all-around good choice for any aspiring musician. The tuner is a very precise one and it offers the possibility to find the perfect pitch from instruments from the tuba to the piccolo.

The metronome is an awesome one as well. It can allow you to adjust the tempo from 10 to 300 beats per minute, and it flashes on every downbeat, offering you a visual cue. You can even set the tempo you want by tapping, and the app will set the tempo automatically based on your tapping.

Boss

Experienced players might remember the actual physical tuners that Boss made. They were reliable, versatile and affordable for what they could offer. Boss tuners were lightweight so many musicians carried them around in their cases. But because the company felt they were left behind, the new era of digitalization brought a new product from Boss – the app that lets you tune your instrument.

It’s a free app that can be downloaded on Android and iOS devices. In terms of looks, it reminds you of those old tuners that they produced, and this is what makes them ideal for older musicians that enjoyed the style of analog tuners.

Being a chromatic tuner, it is intuitive to use, and a great partner to have if you’re playing a stringed instrument especially. You can tune your instrument by playing certain notes and the app will show you if you are pitched too high or too low. Alternatively, you can make the app produce the musical note you want and after that, you can follow that to recreate it on your instrument and thus get it in tune.

Coming with a rating of 4.4 stars out of 5, it is an app that is largely appreciated by its users.

iStroboSoft

The priciest app in this selection is one that sells at $10 on both iOS and Android devices. In case you’re wondering what makes it so expensive, the answer to that is the fact that it comes from a company that is known for producing strobe tuners. This kind of tuner is said to be the most precise.

Sensible to a massive range of pitches, this emulation of a strobe tuner will let you tune everything from a harp to a bass guitar. It is, however, one app that works better on iOS devices as it offers more functions there. With the help of an external mic, you can boost the input, while it also includes a noise filtering option, for iOS devices.