Comparison

Pocket Drums vs ChordSmith

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Pocket Drums

This app serves as a portable drum trainer, offering structured lessons and visual aids to help users learn drumming techniques and practice rhythms. It features tempo control, diverse music styles, and progress tracking for aspiring drummers.

Highlights
  • Structured drum lessons
  • Visual drum kit maps
  • Adjustable tempo control
  • Premium drum tracks
  • Progress tracking
  • Practice anywhere
Features
Read full description

Pocket Drums is your ultimate portable drum trainer and practice studio. Learn drums, master rudiments, and practice anywhere — no full kit required. Download Pocket Drums and start drumming now! LEARN & PRACTICE ANYWHERE - Structured Lessons: Master beginner grooves, essential rudiments, drum fills, and advanced techniques. - Visual Drum Maps: See every hit in real time with an interactive visual kit map. - Total Tempo Control: Adjust the BPM, loop difficult bars, and practice at your own pace. - All Music Styles: Explore premium drum tracks across rock, jazz, funk, metal, hip-hop, and latin. - Track Your Progress: Save lessons to your library and log your daily practice time. Whether you are practicing on a drum pad or a full drum set, build real skills today.

About

ChordSmith

Features
Read full description

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.

Screenshots

Pocket Drums3 screens
ChordSmith4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Pocket Drums at none against ChordSmith's 1. Pocket Drums also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs fortnightly). On price, ads, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. ChordSmith sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Pocket Drums asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Pocket Drums ships an update every 4 days, ChordSmith fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 10, 2026 and October 23, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Pocket Drums versus ChordSmith: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPocket DrumsChordSmith
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 4 days — betterFortnightly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.616.4 — better
Further details — not scored
Size27 MB49 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSmark AiRemnant Workshop, Inc.

In-app purchases

None

Pocket Drums

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

ChordSmith

One-time1
  • Lifetime$0.99

Questions

Is Pocket Drums free?
Pocket Drums is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is ChordSmith free?
ChordSmith is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Pocket Drums or ChordSmith have ads?
Neither Pocket Drums nor ChordSmith shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Pocket Drums or ChordSmith?
Pocket Drums ships an update every 4 days, and ChordSmith fortnightly. Most recently, Pocket Drums was updated on October 10, 2026 and ChordSmith on October 23, 2026.

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