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Peterson Strobe Tuner For iPhone/iPod Touch

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a7Have an iPhone or an iPod touch? Need a tuner? You NEED the Peterson Strobe Tuner for the iPhone/iPod Touch. I’ve tried many of the tuners available that are available for the iPhone/iTouch, free and paid. This one is worth the $10.

If you don’t know what a strobe tuner is, check out this wikipedia entry. I have had a Peterson Virtual Strobe tuner since 2001. It is annoying accurate, but not really something you can take out on a gig. It is large. And stuffing it into your gig bag isn’t really an option. I have mine mounted on my stand in my studio.

Back to the iTouch/iPhone version. Putting the two on a stand together, and trying to tune, both strobe tuners pretty much work the same. You try to get it to stop moving. The hardware version is a little more smooth in its motions, and iTouch/iPhone version is a tad jerky, but not really anything to complain about. In fact, the iTouch/iPhone version didn’t get confused as to what note I was playing. The hardware Strobe tuner sometimes things I’m tuning to an F when I’m really doing a concert D. I’ll see about making a little video showing them in action.

Bottom line. If you have an iTouch (second Generation) or an iPhone, the Strobe Tuner is well worth it.

10 out of 10. I’d say it is perfect.

UPDATE:My assistant Beaker (Matt) and I did a real simple little video of my original VS1 and the iPhone app. Enjoy

Reviews

JAM for iPhone/iPod Touch

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I’ll admit I am an unabashed Apple fan. I do use a PC for menial tasks like generating Band in a Box backgrounds, or to download some Bittorrent stuff. Anyhow, when the iPhone came out, I got one within the first week. It has been amazing. Then they opened up the OS on the iPhone (and iPod Touch) to developers……which has lead to something like 10,000 applications, of which about 40 some (mostly free) have found a home on my iPhone.

Enter JAM. Jam is a very interesting product from some blokes down under. Think Aebersold, but better. You buy JAM for $9.99, and you get 5 “Cassettes” (I guess CDs haven’t made it down under yet?). Each Cassette has an interface something like this
jam cassette screen You can control the volume of each instrument, or mute it. Or mute multiple tracks. The tracks are played by real musicians (no Band in a Box here), just like most all of the Aebersold volumes.

Is this a perfect application? It is close. One thing it really needs is a slider to let you fast forward or rewind the song. Also, pitch shifting, speeding up or down, and looping would be nice. There is no reason why it couldn’t do it, as the iPhone/iTouch can run some pretty impressive games.

The Developers who were kind enough to send me a free be of the program said that they are working on some (or perhaps all) of these for a future update. That would be great. I’d also like to see them add the ability to make your own tracks and have them be able to be loaded into the program (like an Open Jam or something).

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, and want some new backgrounds to practice with, JAM is something to look at. 8/10 (2 points deducted for no ability to rewind or fast forward the songs or even pausing them…..which is kind of important).