Guitar Tab Notes vs Fretbox

Guitar Tab Notes is a fast sketchpad for guitar players. When a riff or a chord shape shows up, open the app and get it down before it slips away. Instead of finger numbers or fret numbers, every position on the fretboard is shown as the actual note it plays (C, C#, D and so on). You read the sounds, not the shapes, so an idea still makes sense days later and is easy to move around in your head. WHY GUITARISTS USE IT - Capture ideas fast. Tap the fretboard and the note appears. Nothing in the way. - Think in any tuning. Standard, drop, open, or completely custom alt tunings that you type in and save. Every note name updates instantly across all of your chords. - Made for sketches, not for perfection. Group ideas into projects, drop in quick section labels like verse or chorus, and reorder everything by dragging. - Hear it back. Tap play to strum a chord and check an idea on the spot. - Color your voicings. Highlight alternate notes in four accent colors (turquoise, violet, amber, coral) right on the diagram. Colors can even share one spot with the main note: the dot splits into colored sections. - Capo aware. Set a capo and the fretboard and note names follow along. EVERYWHERE YOU WRITE Guitar Tab Notes runs on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and your whole sketchbook syncs automatically through your private iCloud. Start a riff on the couch with your phone, then finish the arrangement on iPad or Mac later. Nothing to set up and no account to create. EXPORT AND SHARE Send a single chord as an image, or a whole song as plain text or as a print-ready PDF: clean black-on-white A4 pages with your section labels, automatic page breaks and a choice of 2, 3 or 4 chords per row. On Mac, exports go through the standard Save dialog. Simple on purpose and quick by design. Keep the guitar in your hands and let the ideas land.

Fretbox opens the Guitar Pro and MusicXML files you already own, and plays them back properly. Everything the big tab apps keep behind a subscription is here at no cost: playback, speed control, looping, muting tracks, offline access. No account. No ads. No survey before you are allowed to use it. OPEN WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE Tap a file in Mail, AirDrop or the Files app and it opens here. Guitar Pro 3 through 7, .gpx, and MusicXML. Everything is copied into the app, so it stays with you when the wifi does not. PRACTISE PROPERLY • Play at 25, 50, 75 or 100 percent • Loop the bar that keeps beating you • Speed trainer — raises the tempo 5 percent every time the loop comes round, up to full speed • Metronome and count-in • Mute or solo any track, and learn the guitar part over the band TUNER INCLUDED A chromatic tuner with real pitch detection. The microphone runs only while the tuner is open. Nothing is recorded, stored or sent anywhere. SOMETHING TO PLAY FROM THE START Four technique exercises written for this app — chromatic warm-up, spider, minor pentatonic, string skipping — plus two public domain pieces. ONE THING TO BE CLEAR ABOUT Fretbox has no song catalogue. It plays the files you bring to it. If what you want is a searchable library of a million transcriptions, this is not that app — and we would rather say so here than have you find out after downloading.