Overview

Guitar is a great acoustic guitar program for the iPhone. It is extremely playable, letting you combine powerful chords and leads lines quickly and easily. You can use it to explore musical ideas, learn songs, and even play along with your iTunes music.

The layout

Guitar is divided into 3 main sections:

1. The main screen where you play music by selecting a chord or fret button, and then strum or tap individual strings.

2. General functions are accessed by tapping the General Menu button (in the bottom left on the Main screen). This pop-up list is where you will configure system Settings, manage and backup songs in your Playlist, begin making a New Song, or activate AirPlay.

3. Song-specific functions can be seen by tapping the Song Menu button in the lower right corner. This lets you edit existing songs, select 6 or 12-string guitar, picked or plucked style, reverb On/OFF, and the Recorder for saving your best licks.

Other menus and dialogs will appear to help you complete tasks. And you can always tap the Menu buttons to see what actions you can perform.

Playlist, Songs, and Buttons

click to zoom

Your playlist is the list of all your songs. The playlist can be expanded, reduced, and reordered as described in the Playlist chapter.

In Guitar a song is:

1. A unique song name

2. A set of 10 buttons that define how Guitar plays its strings. More on Songs can be found in the Song Editing chapter. Buttons can be programmed into several different modes such as Chords, Scales, or Frets. The different modes are described in detail in the Button Types chapter.

3. A "Sound" which includes the current string selection, picked or plucked style, reverb, and other parameter settings.

4. If you have recorded a performance of the song, the recorded sequence will also be saved. Recording is a great way to sketch musical ideas, or just show off your Guitar chops to your friends.

Guitar version 1.2 and later lets you save your songs wirelessly over the web to the Frontier Song Server. You can later retrieve them from the server to your iPhone. This keeps your work safe in the event something happens to your iPhone or iPod. More on this feature in the Backup chapter.

Guitar version 1.3 and later includes AirPlay. With AirPlay you can listen to shared songs from other Guitar and iShred users worldwide. Hear one that you really like? Save it to your own Playlist with the tap of your finger and practice it yourself. And you can also record and share your best licks and hear them online as well!

The rest of this help documentation describes all the facets of Guitar in detail ... how to configure it, how to play it, and how to use each screen. While many people figure out Guitar quickly without reading this information, there are a few shortcuts that are not obvious in the interface. These are described in detail, along withe other tips and tricks in the Shortcuts chapter and might be worth a look even if you don't read any other chapter.

We hope you enjoy making great music on the iPhone with Guitar!