These apps make my practicing so much better.
If I got a new device, these are the six apps I would install for my music practice, right away. I use them all at least every couple of days, some of them every single day.
1 – Tonal Energy
This is an app that I’ve got a lot of questions about in different videos, and it’s just sort of my default tuner app that I find myself going to all the time. And it was designed by, I think by a couple of band directors or something like that in Texas.
It definitely is used a lot by private teachers, but by professionals also in the classroom and is super deep. I barely scratch the surface with this app’s deep features. There’s this tuner mode, which is quite useful. And I love the green smiley face feedback that you get when you’re in tune.
I love this app for many reasons, but one is that it is loud. So I can put a drone on, let’s put a G drone on and I can hear that over my bass.
You can also use this analysis mode which folks have noticed on videos before. I used to do this back when I taught Classroom Orchestra and I would use this very mode and I projected up on the screen and I have people use it to kind of understand dynamics.
You can see what a note looks like. You can look at attack, decay or something sharper, and we would have the whole orchestra doing this and trying to make certain shapes. And that’s one mode. But there are many modes. There’s also spectral. So this is kind of like your frequency analysis that you can see. Also note staff, which is a neat mode.
It’s got a great metronome. I usually don’t use this as a metronome, but it’s excellent. You can do all sorts of subdivisions, so you can really nerd out on this thing. And it has all sorts of recording features in here too. And I use other apps for recording, but this one does a great job and it’s probably the most useful set of practicing tools that I’ve seen on the market.
It’s also available for iOS and Android. Not all of these are available for Android, but this one is.
2 – Tunable
I discovered this app while doing a project with intonation expert through Molly Sharp. She recommended it for this workshop that we did and I like tunable because it is the feedback that it gives is a little more useful for me as a player as opposed to Tonal Energy.
With this app, you can really get accurate with your pitch, and it’s like trying to stay in the lanes when you’re driving a car. I found a few minutes of practicing with this every day really helps to kind of like get my brain in focus in terms of intonation
3 – Clipza
An app that I do use for recording a lot as a free app called Clips and this awesome app is designed with Suzanna Klein. I did a whole podcast episode about, this and it’s really cool because it has a 30 second delay on the recording, so it’ll basically show me right now what I did. It’s kind of like being able to do an instant replay on your practice if you just leave it on the stand.
4 – Modacity
The app that I use every single day is Modacity. This is my practice app of choice and it’s kind of like a workout recorder, but for practicing. I have this list called Current, and that’s just what I’m working on right now. It’s all these exercises set up and the first thing I do is I click Tune, Rosin, and Get Set and I love that because it now has this timer going, letting me know how long I’ve been futzing around before I actually start practicing.
It also has a great record option and some great practice tools built in. I also find this to be a great place to house recordings of stuff I’m working on.
5 – forScore
The big bummer about something like digital music is you got to get your physical music into the device somehow. I’ve been playing bass for decades, so I’ve had piles and piles of music at my various offices and homes over the years. I finally sat down and scanned most of it years ago, and I’m so glad that I finally took, like, I don’t know, like a couple for workweeks to just get it all into forScore, which thankfully also backs up very well.
This app allows you to organize your music and do all sorts of stuff with it. You can search and then one of the most powerful things for me and just in my life is it allows me to group things into set list, which I do for events that are coming up.
I have all my music here. I can hop in and I have all my bowings marked. I can attach recordings and such and really just do all sorts of cool stuff. This is super powerful.
Back when I taught private lessons, all my students and what they were working on here when I did bass coaching, all of those things are listed here as well. I would just immediately scan what was happening in a specific school and I’d always have the music and then past events.
6 – Newzik
I love this app, and I’m using it personally as well as forScore. This app has a slightly different interface, and it takes a collaborative approach with organizing your music, sharing scores between different users, different musicians within your band, like a rock band or a jazz band or even within an entire symphony orchestra.
