Agile Partners has launched TabToolkit, a guitar tablature and music notation player for the iPhone and iPod touch.
“When we launched GuitarToolkit and considered what we could do next for guitarists, we immediately thought of a tab player,” said John Berry, a principal at Agile Partners. “Although the technical challenges were daunting, we’re excited to have created another must-have tool for musicians, whether their interest is rock, metal, jazz, country or classical,” said Berry.
TabToolkit is the first application to bring a rich tab-playing experience to the mobile platform. Berry comments, “We’re thrilled that we were able to pull this off — a fully featured tab player, including real-time rendering of guitar tablature and music notation, let alone MIDI audio synthesis, all on a mobile device. It is a testament to the power of the iPhone OS platform that we could deliver such a rich experience for musicians.” TabToolkit runs on all generations of iPhone and iPod touch devices, and is fully compatible with iPhone OS 2 and 3.
TabToolkit includes an audio synthesis engine, tempo playback controls, metronome, and an easy-to-use tab upload and download manager. The app displays several types of guitar tabs, including Power Tab, Guitar Pro, text, and PDF file formats. With Power Tab and Guitar Pro tabs, TabToolkit automatically scrolls tablature and standard music notation while enabling users to hear the instrument being played.
Key features of TabToolkit
- Support for text, PDF, Power Tab, and Guitar Pro file formats – Instrument audio, metronome, auto-playback, music notation, and multiple tracks are supported for Guitar Pro and Power Tab files.
- MIDI synthesizer that enables users to hear the instrument being played
- View both standard music notation and tablature notation
- Automatically scroll through music with tempo control
- Turn on a metronome with a wide range of sounds
- Select from multiple instrument tracks
- Display a fretboard (for any fretted instrument with 4 to 7 strings) or piano keyboard that shows finger positions
- Upload tab files directly from your Mac or PC
- Download tabs from the Internet using the built-in web browser
- Portrait and landscape orientations for viewing while docked or on a music stand
- Lefty mode inverts the fretboard to display correct finger positions
- Built-in help, news and feedback support
TabToolkit is available for $9.99 (U.S. price) in the iTunes App Store.
