Ultimate Guitar – was $3/£3, now FREE
Learning to play an instrument can be an expensive business – and though tuition apps like Yousician and Fender Play can wind up much cheaper than hiring a professional tutor, they still involve a recurring subscription cost.
Which is why we were pleased to see Ultimate Guitar go free. At its most basic, the app is a crowd-sourced archive of chords and tablature for over a million popular songs.
It’s great for beginners looking to learn some classics in between lessons, but even experienced players can benefit from the wealth of transcriptions found here. Why buy expensive sheet music when you can look up chords and tabs for free?
Note that this isn’t a temporary sale but a change of approach for the app, so we’d expect to see the price remain at zero for the foreseeable future.
Ultimate Guitar also offers “pro” features such as interactive tabs and backing tracks, unlockable via in-app purchase. These are very much optional extras, however, and we’re pleased to report that all the regular chords and tabs are available completely free.
If you own a guitar, bass, ukulele, or even a piano, free access to a million songs is hard to ignore. There’s no real downside to sticking this on your Home screen for the next time you feel like jamming.
Thanks to Gavin Whitner of Music Oomph for the header image used in this article.