After a long lapse, I’m finally getting back into playing guitar. I’m sure many amateur players have lived a similar story – whether it’s a lack of time or one too many broken strings, it’s easy to set your six-string down and go weeks, months, or even years without picking it up again. And when you do finally get back in the saddle, it can be hard to remember your favorite tunes, or even the structure of certain chords.
However, there’s hope for the guitar learners and returners out there – all it takes is a trip to the App Store or Google Play Store.
Homescreen heroes
This is part of a regular series of articles exploring the apps that we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
If you’ve ever tried learning the guitar, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Ultimate Guitar. The platform began life as a website in 1998, and has since expanded into apps for Apple and Android phones and tablets, boasting an enormous collection of official and user-submitted tabs, scores, and chord charts.
In my recent return to playing, I’ve been using Ultimate Guitar on slab phones, folding phones, and tablets, and I tested out the app’s premium features with the week-long free trial offer. Having spent some serious hours with Ultimate Guitar, here’s why it gets my recommendation.
So many songs
The very first thing to note about Ultimate Guitar is just how many songs you’ll find on there. You can view each song as a classically written score, as a tab, or as lyrics with labelled chord changes. I’m mostly interested in learning a few tunes to annoy people at house parties, so the last format is my favorite.
Better-known tracks may have officially verified tabs or scores, which are only accessible to UG Pro subscribers. The subscription costs $24.99 / £7.99 per month or $99.99 / £39.99 per year (we’ve contacted Ultimate Guitar for Australian pricing). With that said, I found the user-uploaded versions to be as good or better than the official tabs, at least most of the time. Each uploaded version comes with a star rating, which makes it easy to find well-transcribed tunes.
Across all my time with Ultimate Guitar, I was continually surprised by just how many tunes I could find. My collection quickly filled up with classics by Fleetwood Mac and John Martyn alongside cuts from newer bands like The 1975 and Big Thief, making it easy to build up a large library of music to practice.
It was also joyously easy to find tracks that land outside the traditional rock and pop canon; I was able to load up my collection with gems by Frank Ocean, Sampha, and Charli XCX. Since much of the database is user-generated, all it takes for a song to appear is for a user to transcribe it.
Perfect practice
Once you’ve picked a song to practice, Ultimate Guitar reveals itself as filled to the brim with handy features. On the chord guides, any chord can be tapped on for a diagram showing how to play it, and UG Pro subscribers can transpose the entire song or ‘simplify’ difficult chords.
Also limited to UG Pro subscribers is the ability to play along in the app, though users can also do this by just playing the song through their streaming service of choice or through another device. I do wish the ability to auto-scroll through a sheet was available to free users, though. That’s the only truly essential feature that’s locked behind a paywall.
However, many of the most useful tips come from users writing in the ‘margins’ – notes left by authors on when exactly to change chords, suggested playing styles, and so on. This gives Ultimate Guitar a sense of authority and community that’s hard to find elsewhere.
It tracks that the experience is at its best on larger screens. The huge 14.6-inch display on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra has been a valuable canvas for chord charts and tabs, while the folding Honor Magic V5 offers a large display in a more flexible form factor – though any of the best tablets or best folding phones would pair well with the app. Ultimate Guitar is still handy on slab phones, but the interface can feel a touch crowded.
Granted, there are some ads to contend with if you don’t want to subscribe to UG Pro, and the week-long trial is shadily attached to the expensive yearly subscription – I just barely remembered to cancel in time. Still, its massive library and ease of use make Ultimate Guitar my app of choice when I’m feeling musical.
You can find Ultimate Guitar on iOS and Android.
Do you use Ultimate Guitar? Is there a better app out there for learning guitar? Let us know in the comments below.
