Planet Waves Chordmaster For iPhone review

  • £1.79
  • $0.69
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A compendium of chords in your palm

MusicRadar Verdict

it's about as much value as £1.79 could ever possibly give you… as long as you have an iPhone, of course. It even has a lefty mode if you're a wrong 'un.

Pros

  • +

    Chords, thaaassands of 'em. Brilliant interface. Amazing value.

Cons

  • -

    Sus2 chords called add9s.

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Apple iPhone users will be familiar with the endless applications created for the beast, enabling you to do, play, research or work out, well, pretty much anything.

Planet Waves has introduced the Chordmaster app into the already crowded list of chord library apps. It contains over 7800 easy-access inversions.

In Use

You simply fire up the application on your iPhone, select the key, then the chord type from 'major', 'minor', 'dominant' and 'diminished', then scroll through variants including 7, 9, triad, 11 b5 and seemingly endless others.

You can then pluck strings individually on the screen or strum in any direction to hear the chord or the notes within it - represented as note names or intervals. Don't like that particular position on the neck? No worries, just scroll to the next inversion - there are up to seven different fingerings for every single chord!

A few issues with some chord names notwithstanding - Chordmaster refers to sus2 variants as 'add9' - this is an immensely powerful, useful tool to have at your side when either working out songs or looking for inspiration for new voicings.

It's much more comprehensive than the popular 7 Chords application, but slightly more fussy to use.

Mick Taylor
Editor-in-chief, Guitars Group