By Carolyn Heneghan
Tech-savvy air guitarsmiths will get a kick out of the latest mobile guitar simulator, Songful, which transforms your iPad into a musical instrument you can really strum. This song-based app will have you playing along with your favorite tunes in no time—no matter what your musical experience level might be.
The app draws from Tel Aviv-based music apps developer instruMagic’s latest gesture-controlled technology and Ultimate Guitar, the largest community of guitarists and largest database of chords and lyrics. Even if you have never picked up a guitar, this app will make you feel like a virtuoso within minutes. And with such an expansive music catalog available, you should be able to find all or most of your favorite songs to jam out to—whether by yourself or surrounded by a group of friends.
Songful’s clean and user-friendly opening page displays some of the digital library’s top songs against a light wooden background resembling the body of an acoustic guitar. Simply click a song to load it into the app.
The first time you load up the app, you’ll receive instructions that detail how to use the virtual guitar. Close the instructions if you’ve already figured out what you’re doing. If you ever need to access the tutorial again, click the Help icon at the bottom of the main screen.
While you’re playing, you’ll strum along by swiping across the screen, and you’ll tap the arrow button in the top right-hand corner to switch to the next chord. After the chord is changed, continue swiping to hear that next chord played aloud, and you’re all set to play the full song. There are even different versions of the chords with ratings for their accuracy that you can choose between by selecting Versions from the bottom of the screen.
Note that there is no single string capability, only the strumming of entire chords. You can also click the back arrow button underneath the chord changer to switch back to the previous chord.
The music itself doesn’t play along from within the app—though you certainly could play it in the background yourself—so you can strum the chords at your own pace. This could also help intermediate to professional players practice the chords of a song to play on the own guitars once they’ve learned it on the app.
The chords are written above the lyrics to demonstrate when the appropriate time is to switch chords, so feel free to sing along to help you keep the beat. You can also switch between guitar and ukulele for a wider range of accompaniment sounds.
The Hit the Deck option allows you to toss in some taps on the body of the app guitar, which increases the utility and breadth of sounds possible with the app. You can even play with vibrato by simply shaking the iPad after strumming the chord.
In terms of song selection, the music catalog contains up to 200,000 songs for you to choose from with unlimited access provided by Ultimate-Guitar.com. You can add songs to your Favorites list to make them available to play even when you don’t have an Internet connection. The Top 100 list, displayed on the opening screen, is also always accessible, even offline.
The songs are listed with the name of the song, artist, and level of difficulty—easy, medium, and hard. You’ll learn how to switch more quickly between chords while you strum to be able to learn and play the more difficult songs as you go along.
You can toggle between the lists of Featured apps, your Recent selections, and your Favorites using the top toolbar of the main page. There is also a search box so you can search directly for the tunes you want to play rather than browsing.
The app is a unique approach to tablature as well as a simple and fun way to make air guitar even more seamless and realistic—and now even technologically savvy. It allows you to not only learn and play along with an entire catalog of songs, but it also allows you to add your own voice and expression to the music itself.
Songful is available for download from the App Store for $2.99.
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