Fingering Brass vs Heavy Brass
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Fingering Brass
Access interactive fingering charts for a wide range of brass instruments and piano. View fingerings for written or concert pitch, with alternate options and audio playback. Supports multiple clefs and transpositions.
- Instrument fingering charts
- Alternate fingerings
- Concert pitch playback
- Written pitch input
- Multiple clef support
- Piano keyboard interface
- Transposition options
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Immediate access to fingerings (with alternates) for each instrument’s entire playable range. Get fingerings from the written or concert pitch. Support for Key Signatures to more easily find a fingering in the music you're working on. Instruments: F/Bb Double French Horn, A, Bb, C and D Trumpets (Cornet, Flugelhorn), Bb/F Tenorbass and Bb/F/Gb/D Bass Trombones, Euphonium and Baritone, BBb, CC, Eb and F Tubas The 'Piano' instrument displays the note names, the locations on the piano, and the musical notations of up to 8 pitches in either Treble, Alto, Tenor or Bass clef. The Notation can be transposed for most all instrumental transpositions. • Trombones include position guides for the different valve combinations. Common Clefs for Select Instruments: • Bb/F Tenorbass Trombone, Bb/F/Gb/D Bass Trombone, Euphonium and Baritone include Treble, Tenor and Bass clefs. • F/Bb Double French Horn, BBb Tuba, CC Tuba, Eb Tuba, and F Tuba include Treble and Bass clefs. Treble clef on the brass instruments follow British Band tradition of being in transposing notation for non-transposing instruments. Affects Bb/F Tenorbass and Bb/F/Gb/D Bass Trombones, Euphonium, Baritone, and BBb, Eb and F Tubas. How to Use: Pick a written note (touch the staff) and have the fingering displayed and concert pitch played on the piano. Play a concert pitch on the piano, and have that pitch's fingering displayed and the transposed note written on the staff. • If there are alternate fingerings available for a note, a button will allow you to navigate through them. • Use the 'Play Note' button to repeatedly hear what's being displayed. • Use the mute button to access the fingerings without hearing the pitches. Selecting a Pitch: Using the Staff (transposed for the current instrument): Simply touch and slide up and down on the staff to select the note, slide to the right or left of the note for sharps and flats. Using the Piano (concert pitch): drag in the area below the keyboard to move the keyboard, touch to play notes, touch & slide to change the pitch. When you glissando up the keyboard, notes will be notated as a raised value (sharps), when you glissando down, notes will be notated as lowered values (flats). Use the up and down arrows to move chromatically up and down without touching the music staff or piano keyboard.
Heavy Brass
This virtual instrument app provides realistic trumpet, trombone, and saxophone sounds for music production and live performance. It offers a wide variety of articulations and sound categories, supporting integration with other music apps and external MIDI controllers.
- Trumpet, Trombone, Saxophone sounds
- Multiple brass section samples
- Switchable and crossfadeable articulations
- Audio Unit v3, Inter-App Audio, Audiobus support
- External MIDI keyboard and controller support
- Integrated effects with presets
- MIDI player and recorder
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Heavy Brass delivers the most flexible and innovative approach to modern brass sounds ever provided by a virtual MIDI instrument!¹ With this ultimate brass app your productions and live performances will gain such powerful and amazing tone you previously were only able to retrieve from a real brass section! This app contains the following instruments: Trumpet, Trombone and Saxophone sampled in four different brass sections. Watch and listen to the demo video on our product website! Minimum requirement: at least iPad 3 / iPad Air 1 / iPad mini 2. This app supports Audio Unit v3, Inter-App Audio and Audiobus, so you can directly use it with other apps as well! External MIDI keyboards and controllers are supported as well of course, both via Lightning/USB cable connection, as well as wireless via Bluetooth LE MIDI.¹ There are 3 fundamental sound categories: „Singles“, „Switches“ and „Combis“, where „Switch Sounds“ allow you to either switch or crossfade between configurable articulations. Some „Combi Sounds“ allow you to switch or crossfade between predefined articulations as well. 24 Single Sounds: Solo Trumpet, Solo Sax, Solo Trombone, Heavy Brass 1-4, Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, Section 4, Crescendo, Growl, Doiks, Shaker 1, Shaker 2, Staccato 1, Staccato 2, Staccato Sax 1, Staccato Sax 2, Falls 1, Falls 2, Falls 3, Falls 4. Switch Sounds: Five base sounds: Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, Section 4 and Crescendo, which are switchable or crossfadeable to four alternative articulations: Shaker, Growl, Doiks or Falls. 16 Combi Sounds: Sections Velocity Layer 1, Sections Velocity Layer 2, Sections Velocity Layer 3, Sections Velocity Layer 4, Sections Velocity Layer 5, Sections Velocity Layer 6, Sections Modwheel Layer 1, Sections Modwheel Layer 2, Staccato Layer 1, Staccato Layer 2, Staccato Round Robin 1, Staccato Round Robin 2, Staccato Round Robin 3, Sections & Staccato Round Robin 1, Sections & Staccato Round Robin 2, Sections & Staccato Round Robin 3. General Features: • Low latency disk streaming. • Polyphony up to several hundred stereo voices.² • Configurable audio latency down to 1 ms. • Integrated effects with 18 presets. • App States: Save app's entire state as user presets. • 16 parts. • Provides Audio Unit v3 plugin version of this app, which allows it to be used as virtual instrument directly within third-party multi-track DAW apps. • Support for Apple's "Inter-App Audio" system. • Audiobus support. • MIDI velocity response curve editor. • Master Tune & Scale Tuning. • App can keep running in the background, so you can play on your keyboard while e.g. using Safari or another app to display scores or surfing the Internet. • Virtual on-screen piano keyboard with velocity support, scalable & scrollable. MIDI Player / Recorder: • Record, save and load your songs in standard MIDI file format. • Share your songs easily as audio file. • Unlimited amount of tracks. • Configurable target MIDI channel per track. • Unlimited recording and playback length. • Open MIDI (.mid) files directly from other apps (i.e. from Safari, Mail). • Download or upload MIDI files with iTunes. • Load your favorite songs as MIDI files from the Internet, and watch at the virtual keyboard how to play it. • Metronome. • Use the "Tempo Zoom" dial knob to i.e. slow down playback at any time and learn your favorite songs more easily. ¹ For more information about adapters and connecting external MIDI keyboards: https://doc.crudebyte.com/iOS/External_MIDI_devices/ ² Various sounds are using several voices per note. Polyphony depends on the exact device model being used. You find a polyphony table on our product website. Anti-Spy Commitment: We take your privacy very seriously. None of our apps contain so called „spy” behaviors and we committed ourself to a very high privacy standard. For more information read our „Privacy Policy for Mobile Apps”.
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Heavy Brass at 81% against Fingering Brass's 33%. Heavy Brass also leads on update cadence (every 2 months vs every 16 months) and ratings volume (37 vs 2). Fingering Brass's advantage is price ($1.99 vs $9.99) and rating (4.5 vs 4.2). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model and device support 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
Fingering Brass costs $1.99 and Heavy Brass $9.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Fingering Brass holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 4.2. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Heavy Brass has 37 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 33% of Fingering Brass's written reviews are positive against 81% of Heavy Brass's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Fingering Brass ships an update every 16 months, Heavy Brass every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Fingering Brass | Heavy Brass |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 — better | $9.99 |
| Rating | 4.5 (2 ratings) — better | 4.2 (37 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 33.3% of reviews | 81.3% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 37 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 16 months | Every 2 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPad | iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 134 MB | 353 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Patrick Q. Kelly | Christian Schoenebeck d/b/a Crudebyte |
Customer experience
Fingering Brass
Heavy Brass
In-app purchases
Fingering Brass
No in-app purchases
Heavy Brass
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Fingering Brass free?
Is Heavy Brass free?
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