When I first spotted Name That Guitar Riff, via the excellent AppMiner app-tracking app, I thought I might give it a whirl while it was at a discounted price, but honestly did not expect it to last long on my phone.
So far though, it ‘s been a surprise hit with my 6 year-old daughter “ and was her choice for a quick joint review today. This is slightly amazing to me, because she doesn ‘t know any of the groups featured in the app “ but she finds it fun and asks for us to ‘play it ‘ daily. So we sat down a little while ago and recorded our thoughts on this app and now it ‘s my turn to set them out here
What Does It Do?
This is a very simple app. It plays a portion “ the guitar riff “ of a famous song and you try to guess which band it is. Once the riff finishes, you can replay it if you didn ‘t hear it well enough or if the band name was just on the tip of your tongue when it ended first time round.
Once you ‘ve made your guess, or given up, you just tap the ‘Reveal The Answer ‘ button to see the name of the band.
If a song or band interests you, you can also click on the Next ? button to get a set of follow-up questions about the song. These cover three levels of increasing expertise “ advancing from Groupie, to Roadie, and then Rock Star.
You can also hit the ‘Buy Song ‘ button to jump out to iTunes and purchase a track.
What Does It Do Well?
The vast majority of the included songs really do feature some great guitar riffs, and are very catchy. This is the biggest attraction for my daughter I think, along with the fact she just enjoys guessing games a lot. So we ‘ve discovered she likes quite a few classic songs via this app “ such as ‘The Boys Are Back In Town ‘ by Thin Lizzy. Nice.
It ‘s super easy to use “ no guidance required for this one at all. Everything is on one easy to navigate screen and you can just dive straight in.
If you ‘re familiar with some or most of the music included, it ‘s a lot of fun to guess the bands and to see how well you can do on the background questions.
What ‘s Not So Good?
Our number one complaint / wish list item is that there should be more songs included. I ‘m not certain how many songs are included, but once you use it for a while you notice an awful lot of repeats and only rare new ones. This should be beefed up in a future update.
It seems heavily weighted towards the Classic Rock and Heavy Metal genres “ with a little alternative rock and a few other genres represented, but only sprinkled fairly lightly in the app. I think more of a mix of genres, or better still an ability to choose a genre, would be a very nice enhancement.
Overall
This app has been more fun than I expected, a very pleasant surprise. The fact that my 6 year-old review partner likes it a lot is a huge surprise, and makes it a definite keeper for now. I hope some good updates will come along for it “ especially an increase in number of songs included “ so that it can have a lasting place on our iPhone.
There ‘s also a Lite (free) version of Name That Guitar Riff. The Lite version includes only 7 riffs and their associated questions “ interestingly, the description for that one mentions that the full version contains ‘way more ‘ songs without giving a number.
You can find Name That Guitar Riff in the App Store now, for $0.99.
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TAGS: iphone apps, iPhone music apps
