Agile Partners Opens TabToolkit Tab Store

Agile Partners Opens TabToolkit Tab Store... Agile Partners, a leading developer of guitar apps for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, today announced the grand opening of the Tab Store as part of TabToolkit Release 2.0. A winner of the prestigious Apple Design Award, TabToolkit lets guitar, bass, drum, and keyboard players learn and jam along with their favorite music. Now, with the addition of the Tab Store, TabToolkit users gain access to officially licensed, full-score transcriptions that include complete notation for each guitar, bass, drum, and keyboard part, as well as vocal tracks with lyrics.

The Tab Store launches today with hundreds of popular songs in a wide range of genres and more songs will be added weekly. Here are just a few examples of the many great officially-licensed songs in the Tab Store: “Limelight” by Rush, KoRn’s “Freak on a Leash,” “Smoke on the Water” from Deep Purple, and The Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil.” Each song is available as an affordable in-app purchase for only US$0.99. Agile also announced that TabToolkit, previously priced at US$9.99, will be available FREE OF CHARGE for a limited time in celebration of the Tab Store grand opening.

“We’re excited to bring carefully transcribed, full-score music to our TabToolkit customers worldwide,” said John Berry, a principal with Agile Partners. “We expect that guitar and bass players, drummers, and keyboard players will all really enjoy the Tab Store editions of their favorite songs. Because all instrument and vocal tracks are included in Tab Store songs, they’re perfect for learning and for jamming along.”

TabToolkit goes beyond the capabilities of most digital sheet music platforms because it smoothly renders both guitar tablature and standard music notation on-the-fly at full device resolution, rather than unevenly scrolling statically-formatted pages. With the 2.0 release, TabToolkit supports smooth, full-resolution music notation rendering on the new iPad Retina display. In addition, TabToolkit supports live multi-track audio synthesis with tempo control; you can easily mute, solo, or adjust volume on every track individually, a must for practicing and playing along. Even effects such as guitar bends and slides are perfectly synched with the notation.

The new Tab Store’s content likewise stands out from typical digital sheet music. Most digital sheet music is formatted into single sheets that include vocals and perhaps one or two instruments. Tab Store songs, in contrast, are “full-score” transcriptions with independent notation tracks for every guitar, bass, drum, and keyboard part, as well as vocal tracks with lyrics. And because Tab Store songs are transcribed into actual music notation instead of static pages, they not only display in multiple tracks, they can actually synthesize audio in multitrack mode with independent control of each instrument.

“TabToolkit users have always appreciated the ability to control the audio synthesis of each track,” said Berry. “For example, you can mute the guitar part of a song while being guided by the bass, keyboard and drum parts playing in the background. Now with hundreds of popular songs in their complete, full-score glory available in the Tab Store, TabToolkit users can feel like they’re playing along with their favorite bands.”

A popular feature that has been available since the original release of TabToolkit is the visual display of a fretboard or keyboard that shows fingering positions synchronized with the scrolling tab or standard notation. In TabToolkit 2.0, keyboard players can now view right and left hand fingering together on the keyboard display, and drummers can see a dynamic drum kit  showing drum hits synchronized with the drum track of any song.

Other new features in TabToolkit 2.0 include:

-A/B looping, perfect for practicing.

-Support for guitar tablature rhythm notation.

-Volume mixer view allows simultaneous volume changes across multiple instrument tracks.

-Vastly improved audio synthesis, based on new high-fidelity audio samples for over 190 different instruments.

-Innovative vocal engine based on actual male and female voice samples for use on vocal tracks.

-New metronome sounds, with a total of 27 pairs of samples.

TabToolkit supports several multi-track music notation formats, including Guitar Pro, Power Tab, and Tab Store format. TabToolkit also supports text tabs and PDF-based sheet music; note however that text and PDF tabs do not support advanced capabilities such as multi-track notation and audio playback. TabToolkit works on all iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models, and delivers highest audio fidelity on iPhone 4 / 4S, iPad 2, and the new iPad (3rd generation).

For more information about TabToolkit, visit tabtoolkit.com