Ukulele Tabs on iPhone: Tab Toolkit

Screencapture of Brown-Eyed Girl on iPhone

I have finally found it. A needed and fantastic program/app to carry my ukulele tabs with me everywhere.

Agile Partners has created Tab Toolkit for the iPhone.  As soon as I saw it, the $9.99 was not a problem.  I have uploaded my favorite  Guitar Pro Tabs for ukulele (and am now looking for more on the Web) and will next upload my Tabledit Tabs then finally the pdfs.  But the Guitar Pro tabs let you see the tab for uke, the staff and the fingering on the fretboard on a uke tuned high GCEA – my preference.

Tab Toolkit is fast.  I  used a browser on my iMac and connected to my iPhone and uploaded a bunch of my favorite gp5 (Guitar Pro) files. It took milliseconds. I haven’t had something upload that fast and work in a long time.  Congrats to Agile Partners — they are agile!  I also connected to the Web via wireless on the iPhone and went to ShadowFlare’s Ukulele Songbook and downloaded some guitar pro files.  I really like Zanarkland and Brown-eyed girl.  Thanks ShadowFlare .  Again, I was impressed with the speed of the download. Uke tabs were on my phone and playing faster than you could strum a C chord.

Uploading files

I have tried all kinds of music programs and apps on the iPhone since the iPhone was born.  Both free and purchased programs fill up 7 app pages on my iPhone relating to the ukulele, guitar, and other music editing programs.  ChordKumu ($1.99), UkuFingers ($3.99) , UkuleleSan (free), Ukechords (free), Ukulele (see Al’s review), Scale Buddy, Leleon, Pianist, Jam Buddy, Looptastic, Melodica, FretBass, Midomi, Minisynth, UkuTune, and PocketGuitar. I could go on.

Some of these apps are good, but the reality is I forget they are on my iPhone when I have my Ukulele.  If I am holding my ukulele I don’t want to turn on technology (unless I am going to record a song idea) so I don’t remember to look up a chord formation or check my tuning on the iPhone.

More often than not, I might be waiting for a 5 minute period in the car. I can reach into the backseat, pull out the car-uke and strum for 5 minutes. What I need are the tabs to the new song I am learning.  That accounts for the several music sheets scattered in the back of the car.   Now, I can have the tabs, chords, suggested fingerings in my iPhone. No more papers strewn on the backseat.

Something that is missing from Tab Toolkit — you cannot create a song from scratch — yet.  I hope that is an soon-to-be-added feature. I remember how happy I used to be with abc notation software on the Palm handheld computer for writing out song ideas.

For my next travels, I have  a collection of new songs to learn tidily tucked in my iPhone.  I will open Tab Toolkit, select from a long list of songs, and be able to listen, read tab, play along, and learn the corresponding notes.  Hurrah!