Learning to play saxophone can be an extremely rewarding experience. Whether you’re learning soprano, tenor, alto or baritone – the saxophone is widely considered to be the most accessible of all the woodwinds.
With new technology constantly being developed to make our lives easier, it has never been a better time to refine your skills on the sax! I’ve done some research and have found a few apps that has the potential to make your life much easier! Here are 5 Apps you can use to improve your saxophone playing:
Fingering
How you can use it: this app will be perfect for beginners or those who have trouble remember any obscure fingerings.
- When a networked app or device connects to one of the tuners, the hardware marks it as in use. TV app, so the iOS app ($5) is the best way to push programs to your Apple TV through AirPlay.
- Operating Systems Mac OS X 10.4 PPC, Mac OS X 10.5 PPC, Macintosh, Mac OS X 10.3.9, Mac OS X 10.4 Intel, Mac OS X 10.3, Mac OS X 10.5 Intel, Mac OS X 10.6 Intel.
This is an amazingly useful app – learning correct fingerings is a core aspect of improving your playing and will undoubtedly give your skills an upgrade!
The app provides in-depth fingering charts for both brass and woodwind instruments. The app includes trill fingerings for minor and major 2nd intervals, as well as additional fingerings for minor and major 3rd trills.
The tuner itself is a compact size that fits into a spare USB slot on your Mac, and the other end has a full-sized coaxial socket to connect to your TV aerial feed. It also comes with the EyeTV software, which contains a program guide and can also record programmes to disk for later viewing. If you want to watch free TV on your Mac, we’ve looked at the best TV tuner for Mac in 2020 which can receive analog or digital free-to-air TV channels. The TV Tuners featured here make excellent alternatives to the original ElGato EyeTV on Mac which currently doesn’t work with macOS Catalina as it only supports 64-bit software.
If alternate fingerings are available for notes or trills – you can navigate through them to find the right one for you. Visual guides are also included for key names and locations to further understand the fingering charts.
https://ameblo.jp/soleabcardti1977/entry-12639875366.html. Personally, I think the user interface is a little clunky – but you can tell the developer has done their best to pack all the information onto the screen without too much crowding.
Available to buy on the Apple store, this app is exclusively for iOs devices. At $4.99, it’s a reasonable price for a tool packed full of features. There’s also an additional Fingering app optimized for iPad.
Anytune Pro+
Can you download google play sote on mac. How you can use it: perfect for learning songs by ear or for transcribing.
This is an excellent app for any teacher or student to implement into practice routines. It allows users to manipulate the tempo and pitch independently of one another. This app won ‘Best Mac Music App of 2013’ – so you know it must be something special!
With the touch of a button you can speed up or slow the tempo down – this is great for transcription or learning a new tune. Adjusting the pitch is also incredibly simple and allows a 24 semitone (two octaves) shift up or down.
The interface is pretty intuitive and focuses on the visualisation of the audio. This is great for multiple reasons. Scanning through the song to find the section you need is easy with the waveform represented so clearly.
The app also provides infinite markers – so you can place a marker on a verse, chorus or solo section you need. You can also loop between markers so you can keep practicing one section over as many times as you need!
This app is also portable – meaning you can use it on your iPad, iPhone, or even your desktop! Anytune Pro+ has a free trial available for Mac OS, so if you’re curious to try it out – give it a go! However, if you’re a music teacher, the developers have kindly made the upgrade to Pro+ completely free!
Reframe (bundled with Anytune Pro+)
How you can use it: use this app to remove other instruments from the track. This way you can isolate the saxophone to learn the piece and play along to the backing track when you’re finished.
Reframe is created by the same developers of Anytune and comes bundled with Anytune Pro+. Reframe displays frequencies across the spectrum in a funky and colorful interface, and allows you to crop, edit, mute or isolate these sections, much like cropping or editing an image.
Along with customised user control, there are also a list of presets, such as ‘Remove Vocals’ or ‘Solo Bass’; the app detects these instruments automatically and completes the job with the touch of a button.
This is incredibly useful if you want to remove your instrument from a recording so you can practice the part in your session, but still have the band to play along with so you can get immersed!
Or, you may want to remove the rest of the parts playing and focus on your own so you can learn or transcribe it.
Whatever the case, Reframe’s algorithm is excellent and does a great job at detecting and isolating the different instruments in a song.
The ability to use it in conjunction with Anytune Pro+ gives you access to so many features that are sure to make your practice sessions fruitful!
Tuner & Metronome
How you can use it: an easy to use all-in-one tuner, metronome and recording app.
Available on the Google Play store – for a very sweet price of nothing! For a free app, it’s had excellent feedback from the community.
With a 4.5/5 star rating by a whopping 47,129 users – it’s obvious this app is satisfying a lot of musicians.
The interface for this app is incredibly streamlined and simple; looking very user friendly and slick. With a touch of a button you can toggle the metronome on and off, access the tuner, select a rhythmic pattern and even record your playing!
There are some amazing additional features available for purchase within the app as well.
If you’re practicing in a noisy environment or the volume limit of your phone isn’t sufficient to hear the beats on your metronome, this app offers a fantastic solution – visual beats. The flashlight on your camera serves as your metronome!
Saxophone All-in-one
How you can use it: use it for checking scales, referencing fingering, and transposing songs.
Saxophone All-in-one aims to provide you with everything you’d want as a saxophone player. It provides you with a collection of the most popular Blues scales as well as providing you with the common Major and Minor scales.
This app is well suited for beginner players. More advanced players may find a few features lacking – such as fingerings for the altissimo notes.
However, it’s a great app to have if you find yourself transposing songs from one key to the next. Keep in mind that it only offers transpositions for alto saxs.
The app also offers a select number of tutorials for beginners. Again, more experienced players will find little value in these tutorials except for maybe a quick refresher.
The app also offers a select number of tutorials for beginners. Again, more experienced players will find little value in these tutorials except for maybe a quick refresher.
ForScore
How you can use it: use it to organize and keep track of your sheet music.
ForScore is an excellent organisational tool developed exclusively for iOs devices. The interface is stunning and simple; sorting and accessing your sheet music is going to be an absolute breeze with this app.
ForScore can import pretty much any PDF score, as well as connect to various cloud based servers such as Dropbox.
You can keep your scores organised by tagging them – it could be the name of a composer, period or genre. ForScore will categorise and sort everything for ease of access!
Adding annotations to your scores is a simple process – you can use or edit presets to add notes, markings or symbols to any score.
Sharing scores is also simple; through email, Bluetooth and even Airdrop.
For $9.99, this is an easily justifiable purchase that will completely transform your sheet music collection!
Conclusion
The saxophone is a beautiful instrument, with so many benefits from playing. It’s a social instrument that thrives in the context of a band, and has a beautifully unique and distinct tone with a relaxing and smooth feel that characterizes jazz!
Musicians need tools to refine, practice and ultimately improve their craft. With so many apps available to musicians these days, it’s easy to get a little lost in all the noise.
This list will give you more tools that are genuinely useful at your disposal – while helping you get more out of your sessions!
About the author: Glen Parry has been a musician for over 15 years. He’s done everything the hard way so you don’t have to. You can find more musical advice and audio gear buying guides, such as this guide for selecting pianos, over at AudioMastered.com.
To check out more great info on the best electric and electronic gear to help take your sax playing to the next level, check out Glen’s site at http://www.AudioMastered.com.
Related
Keeping a violin in tune during practice is always a painstaking endeavour. While some people resort to splurging on standard digital tuners, many violinists prefer the smart way of using violin tuner apps on their smartphones and iPads. Which is why we have done a rundown of the best violin tuner apps online that allow easy tuneage on the go. Below we have listed some of our favorite mobile apps for iPhone and Android users.
How to tune a Violin with a Tuner App?
In most violin tuning apps, there is a digital display that shows what note you are playing while a needle hovering over a dial in the middle of the screen displays the method to tune the string. Ideally, the needle should be very close to the center point or right at the dot. Most mobile violin tuners start flashing the screen when the string is in tune.
When the needle hovers over to the left of the dial, it means your string is “flat” or very low or loose. On the contrary, if the needle hovers to the right side of the dial, it implies the string is “sharp,” or very high or stiff (denoting high tension).
Note: You might also want to check out these brilliant guitar tuner apps that come with built-in metronome. Want to master your vocal recordings in one take? Check out these amazing auto tune apps for Android and iPhone.
Top 10+ Violin Tuner Apps in 2020
1) Tuner Lite
A chromatic instrument tuner and pitch pipe especially for beginner violin aficionados, Tuner Lite boasts an LED visual display that is quite easy to read and discern. Recipient of glowing customer reviews on the Play Store, users have described Tuner Lite as a reliable, easy-to-use digital tool for tuning violins efficiently.
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What’s more, Tuner Lite also features automatic reference note calibration so that it detects the pitch of the note accurately and helps in faster tuneage.
2) Tuner G-Strings
Not a fan of tuning your violin by ear? Tuner-gStrings is a nifty app that lends a magical hand for those who need some help in attaining the perfect tuneage without much effort.
Considered by many as one of the best violin tuner apps, Tuner-gStrings is a free chromatic tuner app that measures sound pitch and intensity in a jiffy so that your violin always remains in tune whilst practicing. Some other noteworthy features of this app include a variable range nonlinear scale, orchestra tuning, and various temperaments.
3) Violin Tools Free
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Touted as the perfect tuning app for beginners, Violin Tools Free can not only fine-tune your instrument with high precision and rapid pitch detection algorithm, you can also use it whilst practicing to figure out if you’re playing the right notes.
Wondering how? Simply by deploying a gradient color scale, this app notifies you in which direction you need to adjust your finger positions and pluck the string. All together, Violin Tools is one of the best violin tuner apps for beginners and budding violinists.
4) Pano Tuner
Thanks to its state-of-the-art technology, you can tune your violin in seconds flat with Pano Tuner at the helm. This splendid violin tuning app discerns the sound your strings make and displays the correct pitch of the note.
Simply glance over at the offset from the current pitch that you want to tune the string to. Pano Tuner also boasts a bonus feature that allows adjusting the concert-A frequency to sync your violin in harmony and unison with other instruments.
5) nTune Violin
Are you looking for a decent app to accurately tune your violin like a pro? Look no further than NTune: Violin Free a formidable violin tuner app which uses real recorded violin notes instead of computer-generated random sound effects.
Furthermore, nTune Violin comes loaded with the preset basic tuning of G, D, A and E and includes playback options of Pizzicato (plucking) or Arco (bowing).
6) PitchPerfect
Sick and tired of constantly playing out of tune despite tuning the violin a few minutes back? You need to have a good long gander at PitchPerfect, an easy-to-use violin tuning app that will take care of all your tuneage related fiascos.
Simply, open the PitchPerfect app on your Android or iOS device and play a string to see if you are in flat, sharp, or perfect pitch. From there, maneuver Pitch Perfect’s preset tunings to tune the exact note that you want.
7) Master Viola Tuner
Symbolic of its name, Master Viola Tuner is a nifty app that makes short work of your violin tuning hassles. Its algorithm supports automatic tuning that recognizes violin sounds when you pluck a single string repeatedly. Master Viola Tuner comes loaded with two modes: pitchfork and tuner, and differentiates between American, European and solmization sound names.
The Pitchfork mode requires playing all recorded violin sounds automatically (from lowest to highest string) to tune your violin in tandem. On the contrary, the tuner mode automatically recognizes the sound of strings being plucked and helps you tune each string. All in all, Master Viola Tuner is one of the best violin tuner apps for Android and iOS smartphones.
8) Tuna Pitch
If you are an advanced violinist deft at tuning strings with ear practice, then Tuna Pitch will further boost your tuneage. This free violin tuning app comes with an inbuilt pitch pipe that lets you play a reference not to aid tuning by ear.
What’s more, Tuna Pitch automatically detects the pitch using your Android or iOS device’s microphone and displays the currently plucked note name, frequency and octave.
9) Tune-O-Rama
Tune-O-Rama is a foolproof app that offers a chromatic tuner which can be accessed with a single tap on the screen. Aided by its formidable 4-tier pitch detection algorithm, Tune-O-Rama guarantees near 100% accuracy and pitch sensitivity. Which is why it is one of the best violin tuner apps for attaining accuracy in tuneage.
Furthermore, Tune-O-Rama boasts an impressive detection range of 1200+ Hz and can be used to tune many other string instruments including Guitar.
10) ClearTune Chromatic Tuner
With acclaimed rock bands such as The Killers and The Black Keys among its honorable patrons, ClearTune is a remarkable violin tuning app worth its weight in gold.
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It features a chromatic string instrument tuner and pitch pipe that allows violinists to accurately tune their instrument using inbuilt microphone in their Android smartphones or iPhones. Wait, there’s more in the offing. ClearTune includes notable features such as support for transposing various string instruments, and automatic or manual note section.
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Benefits of Using a Violin Tuner App for Beginners
You must be pondering what are the underlying benefits of using a violin tuner app? Below we have listed some great incentives of using mobile violin tuners.
Convenience: With a violin tuner app at the helm, you don’t have to lug around or pack your clip-on electronic tuner in your gig bag when you head out. Just whip out your smartphone, turn your favourite mobile violin tuner on and get ready for melodic and impromptu violin jam sessions galore.
Free of Cost: While a regular electronic tuner can set you back by $30 to $50, most violin tuner apps on our list are totally free to download. Windows 7 home basic product key generator. Eye fi x2 download mac.
Ease-of-use: Beginner violin students might get frazzled tuning a violin using another instrument or harmonics. Luckily, many violin tuner apps are pretty straightforward and easy-to-use since they can detect exact pitch.
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And…that’s a wrap! Did you like our list of the best violin tuner apps for Android and iOS? Sound off in the comments.