When I step into the practice room, there’s a few things that I grab to prepare for a good session. My bass, a music stand, music or materials that I’m using, and my phone. Some of those make sense . . . but a phone?!? That’s distraction waiting to happen.
Well, once you put it on airplane mode, a phone has the potential to be a really great practice aide. There are a huge number of apps that will help you move forward in the uphill climb towards higher level musicianship. Once you find them, your phone can be an indispensable practice tool.
Over some years, I’ve gathered a collection of apps that I use on a daily basis during my practice routine and I’d love to share them with you. Some of these are core necessities for any type of music, so I think everyone would benefit from them. Some of them might work for me, but not be as useful for your musical goals.
I’m an Apple guy, so these are all apps I use on my iPhone; Android users, I know that some of these apps are cross platforms. If they’re not, I’m sure that there are similar Android apps – you’re going to need to let me know what that are!
Here they are, 5 apps that are essential in my practice room!
1. CLEARTUNE TUNER
This is generally the first app that I open when I start my practice routine. Sometimes I use it to tune my instrument, but I generally prefer to use my Snark clip-on tuner. I like to leave Cleartune open while I’m warming up as an external check for intonation; I use this both on my acoustic bass and fretless electric. It’s pretty responsive across the whole range of the bass and it’s got a huge display that I can see clearly from behind my bass. The wheel tuner, coupled with the straight line make microtonal adjustments quick and logical.
Cleartune has a wide range of features too if you want to get experimental or simply use it for something beside bass practice. For my needs though, I generally turn it on and start playing. It’s a perfect fit!
2. METRONOME PLUS
Any good bass practice session needs a metronome to develop good time – that’s a mandatory element in my book. Metronome Plus offers a simple interface with a convenient slider to change tempo. I like the fact that it’s not distracting; just give me good time. You can dig into other pages and pull up a wide variety of time signatures, subdivisions, and more. It’s also got a recording feature, a basic tuner, and more. It’s got that nice combination of simplicity and power.
On a side note, this is a free app, but a recent update integrated ads into it. You can pay $3.99 to take away the ads, which makes this a little more expensive than some of the other metronome apps on the market. I like the features though, so I think it’s money well spent.
3. TIMER
This is actually an app that you might not expect on this list, but I find it completely essential. Most of us have busy lives and limited practice time. I have found that scheduling my practice time into small focused chunks allows me to make steady progress on a variety of areas. When I start a new topic, I set a timer. When that timer goes off, I move onto the next topic. Sometimes it’s frustrating to shift gears, but I’ve seen huge benefits in the long run of practice.
Of course, this only works if you’re on a daily practice routine and you’re pretty disciplined about the content that you cover. That’s a bigger scheduling topic though – in fact, that’s a completely other blog post. Or series of blog posts!
4. IREAL PRO
This is probably the most impactful app upon my personal practice routine, and I use it on a daily basis. It basically allows you to crate rhythm section parts across a variety of styles over any chord changes. This is perfect for practicing grooves against different sets of chords, practicing soloing over chord changes, or learning melodies to tunes. You can download an extensive amount of songs from the forums, which lets you jump quickly into a huge amount of repertoire. There are options to loop sections, change keys, take out instruments, change the tempo, edit songs, or even write your own songs. It’s a immensely useful app with a powerhouse set of features.
At face value, iReal Pro is aimed at jazz musicians, and it works extremely well for developing skills in that arena; that’s not the end of the story though. There are rock, funk, and blues styles that serve as fantastic resources for practice. The forums also include a wide variety of popular music files – I’ve downloaded songs from The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson; I’ve seen a lot more. So whatever style you’re interested in learning, I’d highly encourage you to check out iReal Pro.
I love this app a lot and it’s hard to talk about it briefly like this. So look for deep dive iReal Pro blog posts in the future!
5. ANYTUNE PRO+
This app is perfect for learning songs, transcribing, or simply tightening up your skills to prepare for performance. It allows you to load a song into the app for play-along purposes; these do need to be songs that you’ve bought and downloaded. Once you’ve got the song in the app, you can slow it down or speed it up without any pitch changes and pretty minor sound degradation. I use this a lot – I slow down challenging parts and as I learn them, and then I creep the tempo back up as my skills advance. You can also loop sections, which is again great to learning complicated parts. You can transpose songs, apply EQ, and so much more. I like the organizational structures of the app too, which is good when you have a lot of songs in there.
In all honesty, I use AnyTune Pro+ on my iPad most times, but it is also available for your phone. It works great on the phone, I just prefer the bigger screen when I’m trying to work with audio. On either platform, it’s a pretty powerful practice tool.
There’s a couple more apps that I use in my practice, but these are the top five! Maybe I’ll come back to those additional apps in another post. Now, I want to know what you use for your practice routine. Do you use your phone? What are your favorite apps? Do you avoid your phone? Let me know in the comments!