Chordmaster is a guitar app that gives you quick access to pretty much every chord imaginable.
Often when I’m writing a song I’ll have a chord progression that I like, but I am missing one chord. It’s a very frustrating prospect. You start going through the chord catalog in your mind, trying to find something that works and you just start pulling chords out of your ass for a half an hour until you finally say, “FINE! I’ll get the stupid chord book!” Guitarists hate the chord book. Scanning through books is a for nerds…we’re guitarists dammit.
That brings me to the Chordmaster app. This thing is very, very cool. You have a top slider in which you pick A-G, then you choose major, minor, diminished, and then you have another slider with pretty much every variation you can think of. Ever wondered what an A flat 7 #5 #11 sounded like? Well, that brings us to the absolute coolest part of this app. Once you have selected a chord, you can strum the strings and try it out. You can do one string at a time or a full strum and it works just like a guitar. So you can dial in exactly the sound you need and you don’t need to keep going back and forth to the guitar to try each chord out. There are a few free apps that let you dial in the chords, but the advantage to quickly hear them played really sets this apart from any of those apps. Another nice feature is the ability to see and play the chord all throughout the neck by just pressing the up and down arrows. So if you can’t find the chord on this app, it doesn’t exist.
Graphics: They are top notch. The layout is perfect and the look is very slick.
Sound: The guitar sound is not super realistic, but it is more than good enough to get an idea of what the chord will sound like.
Conclusion: If you are a guitarist, buy this right now. Buy it twice and then buy it again. Never look like a nerd again scanning through silly chord books.
Other thoughts: I think this app might work well for other musicians as well. Anybody that plays an instrument with chords might find this handy. It’s simple enough to convert the notes to whatever you might be playing.
I give this app 5 out of 5 chord books.
Price: $1.99
