Star Scales Pro For Guitar app review: learn to play like a pro

Star Scales Pro For Guitar

Price: $1.99 (as of 06/08/13, marked down to Free)

Star Scales Pro For Guitar by JoyApps s.r.o. is giving you a way to enjoy this app for free for a very limited time. If you've often wondered if you've got what it takes to be a guitar player here's your opportunity to give it a try. The app has been designed to help you learn about playing the guitar and then show off your new-found skills when you actually play.

The app was updated on Jan. 31, 2013 and is available in English, German, and Slovak at this time.

 

User Experience
This app aims to take the confusion out of playing a guitar by not bothering with over-complicated charts and instead focuses on scale patterns. By doing this you're able to work on muscle memory, speed, and accuracy all at once.

As you work on the scales you'll be able to follow along with the note names that clearly show your finger positions on the fretboard. Everything is well laid out and allows you to concentrate without feeling over-whelmed by information. The app is able to accommodate both left and right hand fretboard play and you can choose from seven and six-string guitars.

 

Features
Features of this app include the ability to zoom in and out on a fretboard so you can get a clear look at the pattern, view the fretboard in portrait or landscape mode, and practice with the random scale pattern generator. The scales you'll find within the app are jazz, rock, and blues. You can even share one pattern of a scale as an image on Twitter, Facebook, tumblr, or by email.

Additionally you can hide or display the remaining notes of a scale, there is double length playback for root note of scale, and the app has been designed to feature easy orientation with clustered scales.

At any point you can switch between tunings, keys, or playback mode. Search for a scale pattern with the search bar tool or if you feel creative you can make your own scale pattern.

 

Update Info
In the latest version of the app, version 3.1.2 there were a number of small bugs fixed.

 

Customer Ratings and Feedback Comments
The app currently has 19 customer ratings with an average rating of five out of five stars. While most people enjoy the app and find it incredibly useful when learning to play the guitar one comment is that it's missing an eight-string option.

 

Personal Comments by Reviewer
This app is definitely about taking you to that next level of guitar playing. While the goal of helping you play like a pro is a little lofty the app can certainly teach you some basics about scale patterns, which will help you in your quest to become a better player. What I liked is that this app could be used by someone completely new to playing a guitar and still not feel lost in the instructions.

 

Pros

• Takes a different approach to teaching guitar and uses scale patterns
• Your finger position is clearly showed for each pattern
• There is a variety of scale patterns to choose from
• The app supports landscape and portrait mode

 

Cons

• This app is not free on a regular basis
• It doesn’t feature an eight-string guitar option
• It is limited in the types of music genres you can learn patterns in (rock, blues, and jazz)

 

For: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad with iOS 5.0 or later. Star Scales Pro For Guitar is optimized for iPhone 5.