QuickAdvice: How2Play
How2Play (Free) by Play Music Publishing is a guitar and bass lesson app for the iPhone or iPad that includes video, audio and musical notation. Although it doesn’t contain a plethora of helpful hints, easy to follow steps, or theoretical information, it is free. It is a bare bones version of a French language website that offers guitar and bass lessons for about $5 each.
The free app comes with 14 excerpts, seven for guitar and seven for bass. The first excerpt for each instrument is a short video. Two are about technique, one about sliding on the fret and one about alternate picking. The rest of the excerpts have three audio tracks. One of either guitar or bass only, one with guitar or bass and a backing track, complete with backing instruments like piano, lead guitar and drums. The subjects of the lessons range from playing power chords to linear baseline in 16th notes.
The musical notation comes with tab, so if you can read music or tab, you are set. If you don’t know how to read music or tab, you are out of luck, as there is nothing provided to help you with it.
The lesson downloading feature appears to be available only in French right now. Presumably, other languages will be ready soon. It seems odd that they would release this app in the United States when they are not even ready for it. The app is obviously a gateway to purchasable lessons online. Once you do so, you can store the downloaded lessons in the app.
I have to say that, even for a free app, this one is not worth the download. This is mainly because I have no idea what the purchasable lessons on the website are like. For all I know they may be the best video lessons ever, probably not though.
Overall, this app is not a good idea. It is likely to scare away beginning guitarists. There is no instruction as to how to accomplish the sounds you hear on the tracks. Those who have already learned enough guitar or bass to be able to comprehend the information in this app will likely not need the information presented here.
