...The iPhone next month has left a lot of Android users wondering whether they, too, should jump on the Apple bandwagon.If you’re musically inclined, the answer is probably yes, because apps for musicians are in much shorter supply on Android than on Apple devices. Just look at what’s available to players of the country’s most popular instrument, the guitar.
On Android, you can pick through some passable tuners and scale guides. On Apple, you have apps that can breathe new life into the instrument.
For about $50, and an inexpensive hardware connector, versions of apps like AmpliTube, AmpKit and iShred Live give guitarists a mobile recording studio with nearly every traditional sound effect. And you can test more limited versions of these apps for far less money.
For hobbyists who don’t own an array of amps and effects pedals, but who would like to experiment with sound, the apps are great fun. For professionals, the apps come in handy when generating and recording new ideas while away from the studio.
Of the three, I found AmpKit+, the full version of the app, the easiest, most versatile and the best value, especially on an iPad. The app costs $20; the limited version is free.
Like the limited version of other guitar apps, iShred Live is free, with more guitar effects available à la carte within the app. The full version of AmpliTube costs $20, and a limited version is free, but unlike the others, you must buy separate versions for the iPhone and iPad.
You can try iShred Live with just an iPhone headset. The microphone picks up the guitar’s sound and plays back your song with a sound effect.
That’s especially handy for acoustic guitarists who usually can’t plug their instrument into anything. But for those with electric guitars or acoustic-electric hybrids, the best results with these apps come when you connect the guitar to the iPhone, using hardware like Griffin Technology’s GuitarConnect ($30 at GriffinTechnology.com) and IK Multimedia’s iRig ($40, at IKmultimedia.com ).
AmpKit+ and AmpliTube offer a wide range of sound effects, including standards like distortion, wah and delay.
Each app has important features lacking in the other, but in general, if you want to record multitrack songs from within the app, AmpliTube is the better call, while AmpKit+ offers a nimbler environment for experimenting.
AmpKit, the free version, includes two effects pedals, one amp, two speaker cabinets and two microphones. AmpKit+ includes 13 amps, 18 effects pedals, 13 cabinets and eight microphones.
The app is nicely intuitive in most ways, but flawed in one major respect. I needed to tweak the AmpKit+ settings before the effects worked as well as they did on the other apps. Among other things, the sound effects were clipped short, and feedback was occasionally a problem. Todo el artículo aquí en el NYT.
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