Developer Patrick Madden contacted us to let us know that he’s updated Live Guitar – a universal iOS app that provides a guitar-style interface. It’s designed to make selecting chords quick and easy, with enough space to either play the guitar finger-style, pick, or strum.
Velocity sensitivity is emulated by adjusting volume based on where a string is touched; this allows for more expression and more natural sound.
The new version works with Audiobus, and also has full MIDI out support, so that you can drive other synths (and multiple synths at the same time, with each channel being transposed if you like). Because most guitar based songs revolve around a few chords, you can load in sets of chords on a song-by-song basis, and these chord sets can be imported and exported using Twitter.
Madden, the software developer at Secret Base Design, is also the developer of Audio MIDI Connect and MIDI Control.
Here’s a video that shows the new version in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdu3K6XPnzQ
Live Guitar is available in the App Store for US $1.99.
The “A” string sample sounds like it wasn’t fretted properly when recorded.
I left the sample in, because I kind of liked the organic feel from it. To each their own, I guess — you can play other synths, so if you want, you can use the tones out of Thumbjam or bs16-i, and so on.
The free version just updated in iTunes — probably worth checking out if you’re interested in guitar-style controllers.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/live-guitar-free/id455702977?mt=8