Stemly Live Multitrack vs ChordSmith
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Stemly Live Multitrack
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Stemly is the multitrack player built for live performance — bands, worship teams, DJs and solo artists who play along to backing tracks. PLAY YOUR STEMS LIVE Load multi-channel audio and route every track to its own output — vocals, click, guide, backing instruments. Works with any USB audio interface, or Headphone Stereo Mode when you don't have one. LYRICS, MATCHED AUTOMATICALLY Lyrics are matched to your songs by title, so the right text appears the moment you pick a song — even without loading any backing tracks. Use it purely as a lyrics display and Wi-Fi broadcaster if that's all you need. Send them over Wi-Fi to any phone, tablet or laptop on stage — no app to install, just scan the QR code. CONTROL FROM ANYWHERE Pair with the free Stemly Remote app to start, stop and navigate your setlist from across the stage — perfect when your hands (or your iPad) aren't within reach. BUILT FOR THE STAGE, NOT THE STUDIO One-click mixer, per-song volume memory, safety-locked STOP/PLAY, and a clean interface designed to be readable under stage lighting — even at 2am after soundcheck. One-time purchase. Works across all your Apple devices signed in with the same Apple ID — iPhone, iPad and Mac.
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. Haptic tuning lets you feel the tuning as a gentle tick: quick when you are far off, slowing as you close in, a steady pulse once you arrive. An optional soft cue marks the moment you lock on. Needle response sets how steady the reading is, from Responsive to Steady. Notes, cents and frequency read out in retro LED-style digits. 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 spans eight octaves, C0 to C8, and 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.
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Verdict
Stemly Live Multitrack and ChordSmith are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Stemly Live Multitrack sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and ChordSmith sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Stemly Live Multitrack ships an update weekly, ChordSmith fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and October 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Stemly Live Multitrack | ChordSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Weekly — better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 8 MB | 49 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Andrzej Bandosz | Remnant Workshop, Inc. |
In-app purchases
Stemly Live Multitrack
- Stemly Full Version$17.99
ChordSmith
- Lifetime$0.99
Questions
Is Stemly Live Multitrack free?
Is ChordSmith free?
Do Stemly Live Multitrack or ChordSmith have ads?
Which is updated more often, Stemly Live Multitrack or ChordSmith?
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