Lick Transposer vs ChordSmith
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Lick Transposer
Easily create musical phrases using a piano or microphone and instantly transpose them to all 12 keys. Save your transpositions as formatted images for practice. Customize interval and direction preferences in the settings.
- Create musical phrases via piano or microphone
- Transpose to all 12 keys
- Switch between Bass and Treble Clef
- Save transpositions as formatted images
- Customize interval and direction preferences
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Create a lick(musical phrase) using the on screen piano or audio from microphone and immediately transpose it to all 12 keys. Switch between Bass and Treble Clef by tapping the Clef in the Lick creator. Save the transpositions easily to a formatted image for practice. Select the interval and direction preferences from the Settings. This app is intended to be simple and intuitive, but more features will be added later. Send feedback for what features you would like to see!
ChordSmith
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Chordsmith is a chord finder, a chromatic tuner and a drum machine built for the same instrument — yours. Sixty of them, from six-string guitar and four-string bass through banjo, mandolin, ukulele, violin, cello and double bass, and on to the bouzouki, oud, guzheng, sitar, koto, nyckelharpa, balalaika, charango and kantele. CHORD FINDER Pick a chord and see how to play it on the instrument in your hands, in up to 100 voicings, ordered from the easiest shape upward. Change the tuning and the shapes change with it — every voicing is computed for the strings you actually have, not looked up in a table for standard tuning. DADGAD, drop D, open G and every other preset is one tap away. CHROMATIC TUNER Five displays to choose between: a sweep needle, a strobe for last-cent work, chromatic spokes, a continuous note strip, and one you will want to see for yourself. Every instrument carries its own tunings, drop and open included. Set your reference by ear as well as by number — play a note from a piano, a drone or another player's instrument and the app takes its pitch as the tonic, which is how you tune to an ensemble that is not at A=440. METRONOME AND DRUM MACHINE Ten kits — standard, click, electric, 808, Latin, cajón, djembe, darbuka, tabla and taiko — and twenty-seven feels, from straight eighths and a swung shuffle through son and rumba clave, bossa nova, the reggae one-drop, bembé, tresillo, maqsum and malfuf. Tap tempo, a BPM counter, compound and odd meters, and an accent pattern you edit, so 7/8 sounds like the 7/8 you are counting. CHORD DETECTION Play a chord and the app names it, tracks the key as you go, and keeps a running transcript of what it heard. The spectrum analyser runs on the room rather than on a preset, so it works with no instrument selected at all. NINE TUNING SYSTEMS Equal temperament, and the ones that came before it: Werckmeister III, quarter-comma meantone, Vallotti, Young II, Kirnberger III and Pythagorean, with a temperament octave for tuning a piano, harpsichord or clavichord by ear. Quarter-tones as 24-TET for maqam, and Thai equidistant 7-TET for the krachappi, the phin and the saw. SIXTY INSTRUMENTS Guitar in six, seven and eight strings and the Russian seven; bass in four, five and six; ukulele in three sizes; mandolin, five-string and tenor banjo, violin, viola, cello, double bass and the Hardanger fiddle; cavaquinho, viola caipira, vihuela, guitarrón, bajo sexto, cuatro, charango, bandurria and laúd; Greek bouzouki in tetrachordo and trichordo, the Irish bouzouki, Turkish and Arabic oud, bağlama, gambus; erhu, pipa, guqin, guzheng, koto, gayageum, shamisen, sanshin; sitar, tanpura, veena and the Carnatic violin; balalaika, domra, dombra, morin khuur, nyckelharpa, kantele; krachappi, phin, saw duang, saw u and the đàn ghi-ta phím lõm; piano, harpsichord and clavichord. BOUGHT ONCE Fourteen days to try everything, then one purchase, yours for good. No subscription, no account, no advertising. The tuner and the detector run entirely on your device — nothing you play is recorded, uploaded, or sent anywhere. The app works with no network connection at all, which matters more in a rehearsal room than it does in a shop.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: ChordSmith at Free against Lick Transposer's $1.99. Lick Transposer's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1). On update cadence, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
ChordSmith is free to download; Lick Transposer costs $1.99 up front. ChordSmith sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Lick Transposer asks for nothing beyond the download.
Lick Transposer ships an update every 10 days, ChordSmith fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 7, 2026 and October 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Lick Transposer | ChordSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 10 days — better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | — | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 16.4 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 19 MB | 48 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jeff Taboloff | Remnant Workshop, Inc. |
In-app purchases
Lick Transposer
No in-app purchases
ChordSmith
- Lifetime$0.99









