Music Wrench

UPDATE: Still my favorite music practice app, but now even better!!! I just discovered it has a "Space Invaders" shooter game that yses intonation as the controller to shoot notes!! Makes sight reading practice so much fun! And playing notes in tune outside of a melodic context is sharpening my ears. This app is so wonderful. I use it several times a day. ORIGINAL REVIEW: I use this app every day while I practice violin. I love it! I love the scales practice, I love the metronome, and I love getting a visual history of my intonation. Every day I record my sections of my pieces as I practice them. Music Wrench records the audio and records a color coded visual display that tells me how in tune or out of tune each note is. I actually turn my back to my iPad while I play with Music Wrench running. Then I stop and self evaluate. I think about which notes were flat, which were sharp. and which were in tune. After I self evaluate, I turn around and look at Music Wrench to see how accurate I was. Then I listen to the recording and watch the color coded display as I listen. This has helped my intonation so much! I never practice without it!

I can’t imagine practicing without this app as my warm-up and as my recorder as I play. I can practice scales, improvisational exercises, riffs, you-name-it, and check my intonation as I go or after I have finished. This app has allowed me to hone in on my trouble spots to really get it right — and to work on my overall tone, rhythm, and sound. It is so much more effective than a standard recorder, because it is visual. You can literally see how you are playing as well as hear it. Thank you!

This is a surprisingly useful app. Professional musician and teacher. In the practice mode you can look at width of vibrato and constancy, (yes, keeping 3 down while vibrating 4 visibly helps!) you can see accidental squeaks from bow or bow/finger timing, I suspect there are many more uses than checking intonation. I wish it worked for the viola C string -it currently does not. It would be nice to have at least the single-line intonation feedback available for those 7 too-low notes.

This has become a go-to app for me since it gives continuous intonation feedback in the context of scales, tonality exercises, and even some musical pieces. Given it meets my needs so well and I use it every practice session it deserves 5 stars, but I sure wish it were possible to upload musicXML. Given the limited repertoire, it seems like a demo until you really start to use it. The UI is a bit odd, but you get used to it and it works.

This app could be one of the best in the industry. It has all the requirements for violin (metronome, intonation analysis, scale practice, etc..). It’s really a must for every violin player. But I really hate the user interface. It seems the developer took it from an older app or software and just posted. It requires significant face lift