TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

Gibson Guitar App Gets the Price Right

R. Colin Johnson | Date: 03-23-10 | Comments

Guitarists expressed their appreciation of the free Gibson App for iPhone, which includes a guitar tuner, a metronome, chord charts and lessons�one of over 100 similar offerings ranging in price up to over $100.

Gibson Guitar recently began offering a free app in the iTunes App Store that guitarists seem to either love or hate. Almost 5,000 users have rated the app in less than a month, but the votes split almost equally between giving it the highest rating (five stars) and the lowest rating (one star), with relatively fewer ratings in-between.

The Gibson app's tuner works by listening to the notes you are playing through the iPhone's built-in microphone, then displays the tone's note and how close to in-tune it is on an old-school-looking analog meter. For beginners, the tuner also has a simple mode that shows a Gibson head-stock with the names of the notes written on each tuning peg. The simple tuner just displays whether the indicated string is sharp, flat or in tune, and handles standard as well as special tunings like open G and open D, plus seven others.

Guitarists who loved the Gibson app's tuner made comments like: "Tuner works great ... just what I wanted, a good free tuner. ... Love it, tuner is on spot ... why pay for a tuner?"

Guitarists who hated the Gibson app tuner made comments like: "Very disappointed. No substance. Tuner is lame ... the tuner was way off ... tuner does not work."

The second part of the Gibson app is its metronome, which competes with more than 20 other metronome apps. After choosing a time signature, such as 4/4, and the desired beats per minute, the metronome supplies a tick-tock style audio metronome as well as a flashing visual indicator. Users who want to set the metronome's speed intuitively can also just tap three times to set the beat, after which the Gibson app metronome picks up the beat.

Guitarists who loved the Gibson app said about its metronome: "By far the best tuner/metronome combination ... have not seen a free chromatic tuner or a metronome as easy to use as this one ... The metronome is pretty simple. It�s hard to mess that up, but still it�s good."

Guitarists who hated the Gibson app said about its metronome: "The metronome is a joke ... even the slowest tempos are out of time ... Metronome and tuner are lame."

The Gibson app also includes chord charts for the most common forms of minor, seventh, minor seventh and sustained chords in the open position. And it shows the forms for barre chords with roots on the sixth string and fifth strings, plus five free video lessons demonstrating playing those chords. Videos also cover comping chords as a rhythm guitarist, chord progressions in other fretboard positions and the basics of jazz guitar.